Illustrated by images and music, this lecture explores developments in visual art, architecture, science and politics that formed the backdrop to an unparalleled explosion of musical genius. What were the special qualities that enabled one city to foster such a golden age of music peopled by composers like Mozart, Haydn, Glück, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss and Schoenberg? All lived and worked in Vienna where proximity to nature, politics, and a burgeoning middle class fuelled a cultural blossoming enhanced by its central location in the Hapsburg Empire and ‘wine, women and song’ philosophy. Why did it end so abruptly with WW1?