In 1904 ALBAN BERG (1885–1935) became a pupil of Arnold Schönberg. At this time he had already composed around eighty songs. In the years 1905–1908, when he was already studying with Schönberg, he wrote other vocal pieces, among them songs that would later be included in the cycle Seven Early Songs. Berg's choice of poems to set to music in these songs clearly reflects the Late Romantic basis of his creative nature. To deeply emotional poetry he added a modern musical idiom distinctive for its free tonality, the dominance of dark tones and a slow tempo, frequent changes of rhythm within songs, and the attempt to capture moods.

The songs Ode to Love, The Nightingale and Crowned by Dream?  were first performed at a concert of Schönberg's pupils on the 7^th of November 1907. BY 1928, when the set of Seven Early Songs was furst printed, Berg was already in the avant garde of European modern music. In the same year he created the orchestral version of the song cycle, giving each song a different colouring: Night, Ode to Love and Summer Days uses the full orchestra, while Nightingale uses divided strings and In the Room by contrast is entrusted to wind, harp and percvussion. The premiere of the orchestral version took place on the 6^th of November 1928 in Vienna. In Prague the songs The Nightingale and Crowned by Dream were first performed at a concert of the Přítomnost/Presence Club where they were sung by Julie Nessa-Bächer accompanied on the piano by Hans Walter Süsskind.

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860–1911) left a personal commentary on all his symphonies, but in the case if the Symphony no. 7  this is very minimal. The symphony was completed in 1905 in Attersee, where Mahler, employed at the Vienna Court Opera in the ordinary season, spent the summer. Like the second and fifth symphonies the seventh has five movements, reflecting the five-act structure of classical drama. The first movement is long and built on the sonata principle, finding a counterpart in the final movement which is a finale in the form of a rondo. The three movements between them form a single whole in terms of mood, but with striking use of contrast. Mahler offered his Seventh Symphony to the Munich concert agent Emil Gutmann at the beginning of 1908 , but another opportunity presented itself before this bore fruit. In 1908 the Jubilee Exhibition of the Commercial and Trade Chamber was held at the exhibition centre in Prague.Part of the exhibition programme consisted of appearances by the Exhibition Orchestra, formed from the Czech Philharmonic and players from the New German Theatre orchestra. Gustav Mahler conducted it in a concert of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner and Bedřich  Smetana on the 23^rd of May.  It was probably on this spring visit to Prague that Mahler made an agreement with the then director of the Czech Philharmonic, Vilém Zemánek, to hold the world premiere of Mahler's Seventh Symphony in Prague. The premiere took place on the 19^th of September 1908  in the Industrial Palace at the Prague Exhibition Centre. According to Alma Mahler, the public response to the new work was reserved, but the reviewers spoke of an enthusiastic reception:  „Of the different movements the first seems to me the most colossal, the second the most akin to folk music, the fourth is a delicate treat and the fifth is the most moving. Nothing more fragrant and poetic than the second nocturno has blossomed from his imagination All the movements are interesting, just like their creator, in whose development this symphony indubitably means an important stage.  Mahler, whose creativity is so immense that it impresses even those who reject him as a composer, has entered on the years of his artistic maturity and found his own standard and  measure in himself [...] Fascinatingly conducted by the composer himself, the symphony was played with excellence, except only in the first and fifth movements where the wind was insufficiently robust and emphatic. The two night music sections won particularly strong applause – just a touch more and the second would have been repeated. At the end Mahler was given an enthusiastic ovation and was called back to the podium around twelve times, Everyone had the elevated feeling that they had witnessed to an extraordinary artistic event.