Maria Bach
- Apr 17
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Maria Bach (1896–1978) was a composer, poet and visual artist of remarkable range. Through her work she translated memories and impressions into sound and image – her childhood in castles on the outskirts of Vienna, life during wartime, and journeys abroad both real and imagined. Yet despite early promise, Bach spent much of her life fighting to be taken seriously. This post explores her story through documents, letters and photographs held in the Renner-Lanjus Collection archive.
Bach was born in 1896 into an affluent Viennese noble family. Her parents, Baron Robert and Baroness Lenore von Bach, both came from musical backgrounds – some even claimed descent from Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), though this remains disputed. Robert and Lenore were accomplished musicians and painters, and the arts formed an essential part of their daughters' education. Therese, Katharina, Maria and Henriette all attended private piano lessons; the two youngest also studied violin. In her memoirs, Blitzlichter aus meinem Leben, Bach paints an idyllic picture of her childhood in the castle Schloss Leesdorf:
Back then, in our big, beautiful park, where the old sandstone steps with the two stone figures led up to the castle from the parterre, back then, when we used to run about as children, accompanied by three large, long-haired St Bernards, who would take our schoolbags from us at the garden gate and carry them to the house, past the tall walnut trees, from which we would knock down the many large nuts with a long pole.
While this childhood may in many ways seem idyllic and privileged – the Bachs had a French governess, and a number of servants – it was also restrictive. The Bach sisters were not allowed to engage with other children in the town and they spent most of their time with their governess and with their parents’ social circle, who would make their way to Baden for the renowned musical Sunday Salons. Thus, from a very young age, the sisters were familiar with the avant-garde of the time, including the painters Ferdinand Hodler, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Elena and Richard Luksch-Makowsky, Carl Moll, Egon Schiele and Axeli Gallen-Kallela as well as the composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Gustav and Alma Mahler, Josef Marx, Johann Strauss, Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf.
Education and Early Work
Maria started taking private piano and violin lessons at the age of six at the Musikschule Grimm in Baden. She had her first public concert in 1906 at the age of 10 and received a favourable review in the local newspaper Badener Zeitung:
The first highlight was the Rondo in D major, performed by Marie Baronesse von Bach. The child masters the piece with astonishing confidence and performed this childlike, naive and deeply moving work in a truly exemplary manner!
She continued her musical education, studying the violin with Arnold Rosé and Jaroslav Suchy from the age of 14 and the piano with Paul de Conne from the age of 16. Bach recalls that even at this stage she was attempting composition, gifting her parents a new piece every Christmas. Between 1914 and 1918, she composed the preludes Warum (Why) and Desir, the piano grotesque Flohtanz (Flea Dance) as well as 14 Lieder. These early works were later published by Doblinger in the 1930s. Some pieces had already appeared in 1928 published by Edition Vienna, though all records of that publisher were destroyed during the Second World War.
In 1919, following the First World War, Bach started composition studies with Josef Marx at the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst (now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna). In 1924 she had her first public performance as a composer with Vier Narrenlieder (Four Fool’s Songs), composed in 1921, in the Kleiner Saal (now Schubertsaal) at the Wiener Konzerthaus. These were later orchestrated and performed in 1929, receiving praise from the family friend and renowned, and feared, critic Julius Korngold (1860–1945):
Maria Bach’s ‘Fools Song’ shows talent. The men’s guild would do well to watch out! [1]
The early 1930s saw many of Bach’s works being published and she was establishing herself as a composer. She created most of her pieces for orchestra and was inspired by far away places like Japan and by Middle Eastern literature such as The Thousand and One Nights and the poetry of Hafez. While such imaginings of 'the Orient' invite criticism today, they were typical of the period. Despite her works being performed internationally in Japan (1932/33) and France (1933) and Bach’s multiple Liederabende (Song Nights) in Austria and Germany, she was faced with prejudice. Misogyny towards women composers was rampant, as one unnamed critic made plain in the Neue Freie Presse in 1930:
[...] and the most dangerous thing of all! This young female creature is exceptionally gifted. True, she glows and storms. But knows not where she is going! Talent and childishness coexist. In the end, it becomes delightfully wild! But that, too, with talent. How little Marie envisions Stravinsky… Genius or philistine, saint or she-devil, you can still become anything – perhaps even a perfectly decent composer! [2]
Despite being the subject of such blatant misogyny, we have as of yet not found a single comment left behind by Bach concerning gender inequality or the difficult circumstances of female composers at the time. The same goes for Bach’s political opinions in the late 1930s, when Austria joined with Nazi Germany in the so-called Anschluss. Jewish musicians and artists had frequented the Sunday salons of her childhood, and her parents appear to have held no antisemitic views despite such views being widespread at the time. Bach did, however, publish the text Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald in the antisemitic journal Der Stürmer in 1938, and both her and Henriette were active supporters of the Heimwehr (Home Defense Force) [3]. She also dedicated the Lied Stratosfera, composed between 1939 and 1940, to “our heroes in the stratosphere”, Austrian military pilots, and Hopkins Porter suggests that Bach’s fascination with Japan may be connected to the fact that Japan was an ally of the Nazi regime. As a composer, Bach fared well under the regime, being one of the few whose music was not deemed degenerate and who was therefore permitted to keep working.
During the war, Bach withdrew to her estate Tulbinger Kogel in the forest outside Vienna and lived relatively undisturbed by the violent bombardments of the city. She describes this time in her memoirs as a time of solitude — working on her music, appreciating the nature around her and sewing handkerchiefs for the “brave [Austrian] soldiers”. She recalls how, on one occasion, an enemy soldier threatened to shoot her and her partner Arturo Ciacelli, but when he was offered a pouch of tobacco, let them go. While her descriptions of the war seem detached and naive, her admiration for Ciacelli is tangible. This relationship would come to shape her later life and artistic practice.
Later Years
Bach and Ciacelli travelled to Italy every year from 1951. There, Bach could perform her music and her visual art practice developed rapidly. As a child, she had been praised for her drawing abilities, and a few early oil paintings survive in the Renner-Lanjus Collection. She translated her impressions of everyday life in Italian cities, religious parades and music performances into a new medium: collage. In 1951, Bach exhibited her collages at the Galleria Schettini in Milan. She noted several other exhibitions in her CV and kept the exhibition flyers and advertisements, now held in the archive of the Renner-Lanjus Collection:
1951: Galleria Schettini, Milan, Italy
1954: Buchhandlung Kosmos, Vienna, Austria
1954: Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen, Vienna, Austria
1954: Union Pictures Gallery, Wisconsin, USA 1955: Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, Germany
1956: Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen, Vienna, Austria
1956: Galleria Schettini, Milan, Italy 1962/63: Galleria Schettini, Milan, Italy
1963: Galleria del Comune, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy
A selection of Maria Bachs collages in the Renner-Lanjus Collection.
Bach’s collages received favourable reviews and much attention, something she had long fought for regarding her compositions. Perhaps for this reason, she tried to incorporate musical performances into the exhibitions. In their shared Studio d’Arte in Vienna, Bach and Ciacelli developed the Teatro Sintetico during the 1950s, a concept for a new type of musical theatre combining music, song, dance, pantomime, melodrama and light — what Hopkins Porter describes as “1950s multimedia art”. Whether any of these works were ever performed is still unknown. In 1962, Bach entered the musical competition Concurso Internacional para Compositoras in Buenos Aires, Argentina, won the gold medal, and had her work published in Argentina and Latin America.
Following Ciacelli’s death in 1966, Bach did not compose anything for a year. She would continue to produce one or two works a year but devoted most of her energy into promoting performances of her work — often performed by herself in salons and the Wiener Frauenklub (Vienna Women’s Club). Bach, her eldest sister Therese and the youngest, Henriette, would often perform together: Maria playing her Lieder on the piano, Henriette accompanying on the cello and Therese reciting her poetry between songs. In 1976, Bach was rewarded an honorary professorship, the ORF (Austrian National Broadcasting) filmed footage for a TV-portrait of her, and she was featured in The International Who’s Who in Music 1976.
Maria Bach died in 1978, aged 82, following a presumed gas leak. For decades afterwards, her music and art fell into neglect – a fate shared by many women composers of her generation. She has since been rediscovered: two CDs of her music were released in 2022, her works have featured on German and Austrian radio, and in 2026 her Wolga Quintet was performed at La Folle Journée de Nantes and streamed on ARTE. Now, her visual work is receiving similar attention: her collages will be presented for the first time in a contemporary context in Echoes of Light – Friedrich Biedermann and Selected Works from the Renner-Lanjus Collection (17 April – 20 June 2026).
Footnotes: [1] Both Hopkins Porter and Eiselmair attribute the quote to Julius Korngold. Eislmair states that it was published in the newspaper Neue Freie Presse in 1929. We have not yet been able to confirm this.
[2] We have searched the digitised version of the paper, but were unable to find this quote in the edition from 19.02.1930. It is however quoted by both Hopkins Porter and Eiselmair as well as in Maria Bach’s personal notations.
[3] The Heimwehr consisted of distinct local paramilitary groups who drew on nationalistic and patriotic ideas and looked to Benito Mussolini for inspiration. Scholars do not agree on whether the Heimwehr was fascist.
Sources
Anonymous. (1930, February 19). No title. Neue Freie Presse.
Baronin Bach. (1938). Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald. Der Stürmer.
Die andere Bach. (2023, August 11). oe1.orf.at. Retrieved April 15, 2026, from https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20230811/729322/Die-andere-Bach
Eiselmair, G. M. (1996). Die männliche Gilde sehe sich vor! Die österreichische Komponistin Maria Bach. Löcker Verlag.
La Folle Journée de Nantes 2026 - Flüsse - Programm in voller Länge | ARTE Concert. (n.d.). ARTE. https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/130360-001-A/la-folle-journee-de-nantes-2026/
Lokalnachrichten. (1906, January 24). Badener Zeitung, 3.
Maria Bach – Piano Quintet “Wolga”; String Quintet, Cello Sonata. (2022). discogs.com. Retrieved April 15, 2026, from https://www.discogs.com/release/31418567-Maria-Bach-Piano-Quintet-Wolga-String-Quintet-Cello-Sonata
Maria Bach – Piano Quintet “Wolga-Quintet” / Cello Sonata / Suite For Cello Solo. (2022). discogs.com. Retrieved April 15, 2026, from https://www.discogs.com/release/23820689-Maria-Bach-Oliver-Triendl-Marina-Grauman-Nina-Karmon-%C3%96yk%C3%BC-Canpolat-Alexander-H%C3%BClshoff-Piano-Quint
ORF Ö1. (2022, April 12). Die Wiederentdeckte: Gezügelte Leidenschaft - die Kammermusik der Maria Bach wird virtuos neu entdeckt. oe1.orf.at. Retrieved April 15, 2026, from https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20220411/675311/Die-Wiederentdeckte
Porter, C. H. (2012). Five lives in music: Women Performers, Composers, and Impresarios from the Baroque to the Present. University of Illinois Press.
Ritterstaedt, J. (2025, December 15). Ein Gefühl von Weite: Maria Bach. Mediathek. https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/audio/wdr3/komponistinnen/audio-maria-bach-wuerzige-spaetromantik-100.html
Schreiber, S. (2024, March 11). Maria Bach wird geboren: Komponistin und Malerin. BR-Klassik. Retrieved April 15, 2026, from https://www.br-klassik.de/themen/klassik-entdecken/maria-bach-komponistin-oesterreich-geboren-1896-100.html
