women, gender, Vienna, 19th century

The musical culture of the Slavs living in Vienna in the 'long 19th century' is still a little-researched topic. Among the Slavs, the Czechs predominated (logically given their geographical location), and around 1900 their number was estimated at 300,000. Only in recent years have attempts been made to research people, institutions, repertoire, event mechanisms and development conditions in more detail. Czech musicology has shown more interest in this area, although "Slavic/Czech" Vienna is a common cultural heritage of both former Habsburg Monarchy states. An absolutely untouched field is a gender-specific view of this music scene. The focus of the text belongs to the second half of the 19th century. It is a first attempt at a typology of women - especially female performers - in the music business. The incomplete and insufficient primary research unfortunately only allows for certain probes, whereby the main sources are press releases, annual reports of the Viennese-Slavic associations, programmes of events, memoirs and publications on the culture of the Viennese Slavs/Czechs in general. One of the aims of the text is to suggest/offer some typological approaches. It is mainly professional (or semi-professional in the sense of domestic music at a good level) female performers who are presented, because the greatest amount of information is available on this group. A chronological list of the performers would make little sense, so the following factors were emphasised: where the women were from (guests from Bohemia/Moravia versus Viennese), their nationality (or cultural identity), motivation (hobby versus profession, family bands, patriotism, etc.), the nature of their participation (mainly singing, instrumental playing, rarely music-related journalism), etc.