2023-12-31 18:00:09
The Beautiful Blue Danube, The Emperor’s Waltz, Radetsky’s March… These legendary works have become the emblem of a ritual celebration: the Viennese New Year’s concert. Every January 1, at around 11:15 a.m. (Paris time), the first chords of one of these whirling dances resonate in the Austrian capital.
For more than eighty years, this high mass has been given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, renowned for “its unique velvet sound in the world”, according to maestro Riccardo Muti. The ceremony, broadcast on radio and television since 1958, is followed live by some 50 million people in more than 90 countries.
It is therefore to the dizzying rhythm of the waltzes and polkas of Johann Strauss father and Johann Strauss son (and some of their contemporaries) that the new year is celebrated. Two and a half hours of dizziness. As if, basically, this intoxication was necessary to open the year, in a world full of noise and fury. As if this splendor, under the gilding of the Musikverein (“House of the Vienna Musical Union”), was necessary to protect against the blows of fate. As if the very melody of the waltz, as cheerful as it is nostalgic, responded to this human ambivalence – this tension between joy and tears.
Chefs with legendary names, from all countries, led this event: Lorin Maazel, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Georges Prêtre (the only Frenchman), Daniel Barenboim… This year, it will be the German Christian Thielemann.
But what exactly do the velvet sounds of these waltzes of the new year mask? Beyond the somewhat fixed ritual, you should first know that a – quite subtle – element of freedom slips into the execution of these musical pages each year.
Analyze the interpretations
This is where science comes into play. Or, more precisely, the digital analysis of the recordings of these concerts, which made it possible to rigorously compare their interpretations. A difficult task for a human brain. “Even musicians with very good musical memories have difficulty remembering large numbers of performances accurately”explains Chanda VanderHart, musicologist at the University of Vienna.
A team from this university has developed two software programs capable of supporting our musical memory. The first, Mei-friend, makes scores readable by the computer, which can then “understand” the structure of a musical work and play it with simple intonation. This software uses a musical encoding format and above all, it « makes it easy to find interesting passages, mark them, add annotations and share them »explains David Weigl, music computer scientist, first author of this work.
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