The title of Halm's first, best-known, and most-cited monograph, Von zwei Kulturen der Musik (Of Two Cultures of Music, 1913), likely struck readers initially as unusual, even puzzling. What is a “culture” of music, they may have wondered, and what might such a book be about? To Halm, however, for whom the study's leading ideas had been germinating for more than a decade—going back to around 1900—the notion of a culture of music and of distinguishing two of them was clear. The central themes had crystallized conceptually and music-analytically in several articles from 1902 onward and had been applied compositionally in a large work in concerto-grosso style. By mid-1910, when he began assembling old and formulating new materials for what he at first called “the Beethoven book,” Von zwei Kulturen (VzK) was well on its way.

The origin and publication of VzK marked a turning point in Halm's career. Following Gustav Wyneken's forced withdrawal as director of the Freie Schulgemeinde in April 1910—as a result of his liberal views on teaching religion and, possibly, inappropriate behavior with young boys—Halm abruptly resigned his post at the school in loyalty to Wyneken, left Wickersdorf, and for a time lived and worked in Ulm. Ten years of daily teaching, the last four of which featured the inspiring evening talks (Abendsprachen) at Wickersdorf on Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner, had come to a sudden halt.