The Sound of Cultures Clashing

The men of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra play a music they say is unique.

It is a sound of distinctly full brass and velvety strings, with great precision and dynamic range, a sound shaped by Brahms and Mahler, a sound--some musicians say--that only this all-male, all-white orchestra can make.

The claims of some members that the exclusionary policies of the philharmonic give the ensemble its greatness have created an international furor--one quieted but not resolved when the orchestra voted last week to admit women for the first time in its 155-year history.

On the surface, the controversy involves basic issues of discrimination and equal rights. But at its core lie questions about aesthetics and economics and the changing definition of cultural identity.

Many see the Wiener Philharmoniker as symbolic of the way Austrian society stubbornly clings to tradition. Indeed, the former seat of the Hapsburg Empire remains a tightknit, conservative country locked in rigid propriety and strongly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church.

The orchestra’s policies have sparked a U.S.-led protest and the prospect of demonstrations when the philharmonic performs in Orange County tonight and Wednesday.

There has, however, been little domestic protest. Numerous Austrians participating in recent radio phone-in programs voiced support for the orchestra, and many of the callers were women.

But Austria is changing, slowly, having joined the European Union, where it is being forced to become more economically efficient and conform its social standards to those in the rest of the West. And immigration during the past decade has created a less homogenous population.

For this new Austria, the orchestra imbroglio is an embarrassment, the musicians who resist change seen as fuddy-duddy dinosaurs.

“The tradition [of a male-dominated artistic world] is so heavily imprinted in this country that I think that is the main factor--they are afraid of change,” said Agnes Grossman, who, to the amazement of many, became the first female director of the 499-year-old Vienna Boys Choir in October.

Yet Grossman had to make her musical name in Canada, not her native Austria, because of the lack of opportunity at home.

“Austria is a land of tradition, and one of its great traditions is this orchestra, with its very specific, wonderful sound,” said Grossman, 53. “It happens to be men who have created this tradition, because 100 years ago there would not be women even considering entering the orchestra.

“The misunderstanding is that only men can do it. With the evolution of women becoming excellent musicians, we know that talent does not depend on [being a] man or woman. . . . Some people in Austria have not moved with this evolution.”

National Identity

Controversy over the orchestra has been a blow to Austrians whose very national identity is wrapped up in Mozart, opera and the sound of music.

Following the collapse of the once-proud Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, what was left of Austria became mired in political and economic chaos. Its subsequent collaboration with the Nazi Third Reich and native son Adolf Hitler brought new shame on the country. Austria then found itself situated awkwardly on the backside of Western Europe, the last outpost before the Communist East Bloc and the bloody Balkans.

Its main claim to fame was its contribution to music, culture and the classical arts--a source of national pride and validation, as well as economic possibility thanks to tourism and worldwide marketing.

“Our cultural identity is the most important identity that we have,” said Ioan Holender, manager of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, from which the philharmonic draws its members.

What kind of cultural identity, though--promoted by the government and permitted by society--is the question on many women’s minds.

Regina Himmelbauer, a music historian who tried to rally the protests from Vienna, said the orchestra’s anointed role as international “ambassadors” since the end of World War II has projected a less-than-inclusive image and made the ensemble untouchable, sacrosanct.

“You question them, you are questioning Austrian culture,” she said. “It is very difficult to criticize them.”

Consequently, the campaign to promote women in the philharmonic remained a quixotic endeavor locally, waged by a few people labeled “enemies” of the orchestra.

The discrimination practiced by the Vienna Philharmonic is typical of Central Europe. Although the Austrian ensemble was, until last week, the only all-male orchestra of world-class stature, Germany’s leading orchestras refused to admit women until the 1980s, and the Czech Symphony continues to keep them out, according to Elena Ostleitner, professor of music and sociology at the University of Vienna.

Musicologists suggest that philharmonic members who resist the integration of women may really be afraid of changes in their community rather than in their sound.

Stereotypes that women do not have the lung power or upper-body strength to play tubas, trumpets and percussion instruments have faded in most concert halls. Blind auditions have shown that it is often impossible to distinguish between male and female virtuosos.

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But an all-male orchestra, like any all-one-anything institution, creates its own mystique and camaraderie, a kind of locker-room culture in which members feel cozily comfortable with one another. Stories abound of philharmonic members sharing ribald jokes or perusing Playboy magazines during performances.

With its vote to admit women, the orchestra immediately named harpist Anna Lelkes a full member. She had languished for 26 years in a kind of limbo, playing with the ensemble because of a shortage of male harpists and given equal pay, but not permitted to join. Her name never even appeared in concert programs until a 1995 performance in New York.

“I did not exist until [now],” Lelkes told a newspaper in Salzburg, the central Austrian music capital, after the vote.

Most likely, change will come to the Vienna Philharmonic slowly, and it will be years before a significant female presence develops.

Likely Tensions

At least initially, impinging on the old members’ way of life could create resentment among them that would strike a discordant note in how the ensemble operates. The first women to join Lelkes will have a tough time of it, Ostleitner predicted.

“If women are around, men have to be more circumspect, and that can have an impact on the way they live their day-to-day lives,” Susan McClary, professor of musicology at UCLA, said in a telephone interview. “But those are cultural tensions, not musical ones, even though they would affect the way people feel about their music-making.”

Because women have been excluded from the philharmonic, they also have been denied the salaries, lucrative recording contracts and other financial perks reserved for the men at the top.

“The more an orchestra is valued, the less women are allowed in,” said harpist Gabriela Mossyrsch, 31, who has played for the last nine years with Vienna’s popular, lesser-paid Folk Opera Orchestra, which is about a quarter female.

The Vienna Philharmonic was founded in 1842, at a time of imperial rule and monarchal absolutism. Even today, it operates like a guild. Fathers in many cases pass on the tradition and entitlement to their sons. The musicians also are professors at Vienna’s leading conservatory, teaching their sons and other young men who will later become members of the orchestra and professors themselves, who in turn will teach new generations, continuing an unending line of like-trained musicians.

All of that creates a homogeneity, a uniformity of style and performance, said musicologist Joyce Shintani, a Los Angeles native who has conducted in Austria and Germany for years.

“They all move their bows in the same way,” she said. “They all take a breath in the same way.”

But women are learning the same style and have been nurtured by the same sound, Shintani and others said. Roughly half the student body at the prestigious conservatory Hochschule Fur Musik are women. Yet never has a philharmonic member chosen a woman when he has brought his star pupil to sit in on an orchestral performance.

Its detractors portray the Vienna Philharmonic as not only an all-male bastion but one of all-white maleness, as loath to hire musicians of color as it is to hire those with ovaries.

Indeed, all 140-odd men of the philharmonic are white, and only two, father-son violinists, are Jewish, according to orchestra officials. That largely reflects Viennese society, which is predominantly white and where a tiny Jewish community is all that is left after the Holocaust. And while immigration in recent years has brought people to the city from the former Yugoslav federation, Eastern Europe and Arabic countries, they are for the most part relegated to second-class status.

The problem comes in whether the orchestra links its ethnic exclusivity to its perceived musical superiority, as critics charge.

Philharmonic members have been quoted over the years as favoring ethnic homogeneity as well as stylistic continuity. Now officials angrily deny that they are racist. In addition to the two Jewish violinists, the philharmonic lists two Gypsy (Roma) musicians and six “foreigners” from countries that include Denmark, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and New Zealand.

Asian musicians, especially from Japan, are flocking to Vienna to study. Many now attend the Hochschule, but none has been invited to audition, according to philharmonic officials.

New members “have to be integrated into our little community,” said philharmonic Chairman Werner Resel, because “we have to sit next to each other for 40 years.” He said artistic talent is the basis for choosing musicians, but he also said the orchestra will continue its practice of requiring pictures of applicants before they are invited to audition.

Resel, a cellist, said labor regulations governing maternity leave, which can last two years under Austrian law, and similar matters had to be rewritten before women could be admitted because of the workload of nearly 400 concerts a year, including opera performances, plus scores of rehearsals.

“It is not that we don’t like women or that we are some kind of machos,” violist Walter Blovsky said. “There are serious problems” that come with including women.

And then there is that unique Viennese sound.

Origins of ‘Sound’

In addition to the musicians’ skill and similar training, the sound comes from the instruments used, most of which are made in Austria with antique methods of construction that give them a special resonance. Playing them is, in the words of one expert, like using an Underwood manual typewriter instead of an IBM electric.

The oboes, tubas and other wind instruments produce rounder sounds than, say, in the United States, where influences such as Dixieland jazz favor a more projecting sound.

“This is a very special orchestra with a very special sound, and it would be very bad to change that sound,” said Holender, the state opera director. “But it is not excluded that women can do it.” Orchestras that have admitted women “are surely none the worse for having a number of women.”

Wilkinson is The Times’ Vienna Bureau chief.