Vienna, Vienna, just you, and you alone

Because Vienna was the capital of music, at least in the 18th century, many pieces were not only premièred there but were also immediately musically adapted there too.

There are a variety of ways of engaging fruitfully with the musical works of others, to a greater or lesser extent. One option might be an arrangement, i.e., the adaptation of a composition for a different combination of instruments than originally intended. Entire operas could be arranged for piano, for example, and so find their way into aristocratic salons or bourgeois living rooms. The 19th century also saw the development of the paraphrase, a freely embellished arrangement of popular themes from operas, often in the form of a concert fantasia written for the piano. These also included the variation, or, to be more precise, the series of variations, which took a well-known melody as a model and altering it to a greater degree in each variation, whereby the tempo and key can also change.