The Demons by Heimito von Doderer

A symphonic chronicle of a declining Viennese society entangled in ideologies

Symphonic in structure, Heimito von Doderer’s sprawling chronicle The Demons portrays the deeply entangled, ideologically fractured world of Vienna, in which no single sonorous note can be isolated without losing the harmonious rhythm of the whole. In fact, this universality is alluded to early on in the Overture: “For the whole is contained in the smal…