Is there a correlation between AE and classical music?
Its hard to claim any geographic location has a more illustrious history in music than the viennese music scene. With composers like mozart, haydn, beethoven, Schubert, schoenberg, and im sure im leaving out other major ones, was there something in Austrian society that allowed the arts to thrive and libertarian thinking?
or do we chalk it up to Menger was an anomaly and the wealthy Austrians just enjoyed music the most so they were willing to pay more than the rest of the world?
This doesn't seem to me to be a very compelling thesis because it would not account for why it is that Austrian policy was not especially classically liberal, nor why Mises began writing in a period of very anti-liberal sentiment. If AE and classical music were correlated then it should have been an exceedingly popular school within Austria and it should have permeated into public policy and public opinion
Neodoxy, you assume that classical music is popular in Austria. Is that a priori knowledge?
Neodoxy, last time I checked, the most popular genre in Austria was techno.
Mises loved classical music. According to Hülsmann, when Mises was in his eighties, he could still be moved to tears by a beautiful opera.
Prior to WWI, Vienna had become the "New York" of Europe. It was a center of philosophy, science, art, music, industry, finance. It had long been the musical nexus of Europe... in 1829, for example, the 19-year old Frederic Chopin would debut in Vienna to launch his career as a performer and composer. As you noted already, many of the big names from the classical era - Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert - orbited around Vienna.
Clayton -