This is the story of a single piece of music and why travel is so valuable for me. Although it honestly might take me a few more stories than that one to get to the story that I really want to tell. Buckle up for this one!
We went to Vienna right before Christmas to visit their many, many world-famous Christmas markets. That was without a doubt the number one reason we hopped on a plane and flew across the Atlantic Ocean in December of last year. But I can't think of a single trip of even a few days that we've ever taken that is just focused on one thing. There are always usually a lot of sub-themes that fill out our time in between the main attraction or attractions. Vienna here was no exception.
One of our interests we had to explore in Vienna was music. Had to!
Now, I am no stranger to music trips. I've been to Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans and Los Angeles specifically to hang out in bars or clubs or concert halls or just outdoors listening to music. Music that I've loved for decades, music that I've never heard before, music that's stuck with me after the trips, music that I've forgotten about as soon as I've heard it. Rock, pop, blues, country. All of it.
Vienna was none of that. Vienna was all about classical music. Remember when classical music was dominant? Probably not, because pretty much nobody on this planet was alive back then.
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| Vienna's Staatsoper (or State Opera). |
I'd like to think on a typical music trip (especially one where I was staying in the same city for eight nights) that I could explore pretty much everything significant related to music while I was in town. I'd like to visit the major places to listen to live music. I'd like to see all the museums that the city offers about music. I'd like to see all the historical shrines and statues and whatever else there is to commemorate this place as a mover and/or shaker on the worldwide music scene.
It became pretty apparent pretty quickly when we started planning this trip that doing that in Vienna was just not going to work. Hitting every sight, every statue, every museum, every hall and salon and room and closet that is relevant to the history or the now of classical music in Vienna is impossible in a bit more than a week. It's completely infeasible to take in everything because it is absolutely everywhere. And I really do mean that. Everywhere.
I guess the logical question to address at this point is...why? Well quite simply, for a long time (and admittedly a long time ago), Vienna was the most important city in the world when it came to music. Combine a royal family interested in sponsoring and nurturing the arts with enough talent and a couple of superstars (either homegrown or imported from elsewhere) and Vienna from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century was exactly the right environment to create some of the best works of music ever.
So who are we talking about here? Well, briefly (and sticking with the undoubtedly great...), Haydn, Schubert, two Joseph Strausses, Beethoven and Mozart.
Now, I know...six major composers in about 150 years doesn't seem like a lot. Heck, I could easily identify more than six major bands or artists coming out of London in the 1960s or New York in the 1970s but we are talking about a totally different time here. There was no vinyl or cassettes or CDs or MTV or YouTube or any other quick way to get music out to enough people to sustain hundreds or thousands of artists. Not to mention the fact that most people spent all or almost all of their time trying to just survive. The only people who really had the time to listen to music as a hobby were the aristocracy. And there's only so much music they needed, I guess.
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| Beethovenplatz, Vienna. |
A quick look at what there was to see music-wise in Vienna got us a list of at least seven museums housed in spaces where some of Vienna's most famous composers once lived and probably way more spots than that where we could hear some music live and in person. There was no way we'd have time to get to all seven museums and we decided to settle for just three live music experiences. Since, you know, most of our nights were already booked at Christmas markets throughout the city.
Museum-wise, we decided to skip the former residences of Joseph Haydn and Johann Strauss along with the birth and death places of Franz Schubert and concentrate instead on Beethoven and Mozart (sticking with the most famous there). Performance-wise, we decided on a variety of experiences in places small and large with crowds small and large, from the very fanciest to the most intimate. We had to do a lot of editing here to get to those three.
I have to say it must be amazing for a classically trained musician to be in Vienna. I know my perspective is tainted by living in the United States on this issue but it must be incredible to have so many places to play and so many people (even if a lot of them are tourists in some spots) who appreciate what you are doing. I imagine the life of a musician playing in an orchestra in America is an underappreciated, underpaid profession. I imagine (with no real insight or knowledge here) that doing the same thing in Vienna is completely different as a career.
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| Beethoven Museum, Vienna. Yes, there's going to be a lot of Beethoven stuff here. |
All three museums that we had on our list (the Beethoven Museum, the Mozart's Apartment and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus) which we made it to were apartments that either Beethoven or Mozart definitely or probably lived in at one time in their lives. All three were filled with exhibits about the composers which were informative and gave us a lot of details about the composers. But they lacked something which I'll get to in a bit and unless the museums dedicated to Haydn, Strauss and Schubert are substantially different than the two former Beethoven and one former Mozart residences we visited, I'm probably pretty glad that we skipped those other four.
So what did we learn? Well, big picture it sounds to me like Mozart was kind of a spoiled brat who felt the rules just didn't apply to him while Beethoven was a demanding and frustrated perfectionist who had extreme difficulty dealing with his early deafness. Both were clearly geniuses who were able to channel their gifts into useful output that sticks with us gloriously today and both seemed to be well aware of their genius. That may be a little too simplistic and broad brush but that's what I got out of these three museums. I am sure I missed many subtleties about their lives. For me, by the way, Beethoven is way better than Mozart.
I really appreciated the light these museums shed on Beethoven's working methodology. He clearly started and stopped projects while he worked on other symphonies or concertos or sonatas as they came to him and he asked a ton of his musicians technically, including having them on standby while he finished composing so they could play the piece right after he was done. It actually reminded me of stories about Bob Dylan in the studio prepping his musicians to play with little direction and adjusting after each take. I think the comparison is potentially a pretty good one.
I also appreciated the information in the Beethoven Museum about the spaces where some of Beethoven's symphonies were played. They were tiny. Remember, there was no real commercial market and no real concert halls for regular people to go to listen to symphonies back then so these loud bombastic symphonies were rehearsed and played in spaces that were altogether too small. The volume must have been extreme. No wonder Beethoven went deaf.
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| Views of the outside of the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. |
But the real problem I had with these museums is that there was nothing about being in the former apartments that added anything to the experience, except for realizing where in the city of Vienna they used to live. None of the interior is restored to the appearance of when Mozart or Beethoven lived there and there were no real original objects or written music owned or produced by either man. In fact, historians don't even know which room in at least Mozart's former apartment was the dining room vs. the kitchen vs. a bedroom. It's just a series of empty rooms filled with exhibit after exhibit of non-original objects. There's no reflection of how they lived in the residences because nobody recorded it.
I think the only original items that were (or may have been) in the possession of either composer were the sugar canister and salt and pepper shakers and the music stand (but that's really sort of doubtful based on the display description) in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. I'm not knocking the alleged authenticity of these items (OK maybe I am just a bit...) but I'm not sure a salt shaker owned by Beethoven adds to the museum that much.
End of that rant, I promise.
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| Beethoven's sugar canister, salt and pepper shakers and music stand (maybe), Beethoven Pasqualithaus. |
We did find a surprise in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus that absolutely crushed us. I think it's worth spending a few minutes on that issue, if only to write down two names.
When you travel through Europe, eventually somehow when it is least expected, the Holocaust will pop up and jar you back to reality that the wonderful place you are visiting has a much darker piece in its history. And sure enough it did just that at the Pasqualithaus. This particular museum was established in 1941 and in 1941 the Nazi German army had taken control of the city of Vienna. In fact, it was the Nazis that founded the museum in the first place.
To make room for the museum, the Nazis had to expel the family living in the apartment which was thought to have been one of Beethoven's favorite places to live. Of course, the family was Jewish. In June of 1943, Josef and Josefine Eckstein were removed from the apartment and deported to Theresienstadt, a ghetto established by the Nazis in the town of Terezin, in what was then Czechoslovakia. Theresienstadt served as a way station to the various concentration camps the Nazis has set up across Europe.
On October 23, 1944, the Ecksteins were moved to Auschwitz. They never left. They were murdered along with about 1.1 million other innocent people in that death camp. It makes you really wonder whether that museum should really be in that building at all. Or if more than just a tiny bit of wall space should be dedicated to how the museum was first created.
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| The Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus. |
If there was a part of our Vienna music quest that was more successful (and there was), it was definitely the three performances we attended, primarily because (1) there was live music involved and (2) they didn't require extensive reading. After searching through various websites and our Lonely Planet Vienna guidebook, we eventually settled on something grand (Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Staatsoper), something seasonal (Christmas concert at the Stephensdom) and something intimate (the Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus).
I will say here that the Staatsoper is absolutely an amazing venue. It has to be one of the top few opera houses in the world. The hall is magnificent, the lobbies are breathtaking and the rooms where you can get a snack or a glass of grüner veltliner during the intermission are just gorgeous. You feel like you should be dressed in a suit or a tux for these performances just based on the place itself. I wore jeans, a sweater and boots. Hey, it was the winter. Or December, at least.
This was probably my second Mozart opera ever. I think I saw Don Giovanni years ago although I can remember very little about that experience. I don't know what Mozart was smoking or taking when he wrote The Magic Flute but it seemed shall we say not absolutely rooted in reality. Awesome music, the singing was terrific and the venue was perfect but I'd say I'm passing on future opportunities to see The Magic Flute.
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| Intermission time at The Magic Flute. Grüner veltliner, anyone? |
I'll also say that the Christmas concert in the Stephensdom (or St. Stephen's Cathedral) right in the city center was a great complement to the Christmas markets we went to Vienna to see. However, the Stephensdom is huge (I mean it is a Gothic cathedral after all...) and a small ensemble of musicians along with a couple of vocalists struggled to fill the space with music in a meaningful way. It's also really cold inside an uninsulated stone building when it's snowing outside.
So that leaves the Mozart Ensemble Vienna as the clear winners of our live music experience in Vienna. This night out was super intimate. It's you and four musicians in a tiny room inside an historic building just steps from the Stephensplatz. There is not a bad seat in the house, particularly considering there are only six rows of chairs in the place.
There were a couple of things that I really loved about this performance. First, there was a little historical context provided before each number which I appreciated. The comment that Schubert is probably the most important composer for string quartets is something that sticks with me above all others. It makes me want to explore that comment someday.
Second, they played the hell out of the music, particularly Schubert's Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2. I mean really nailed it. It was aggressive and passionate and dynamic. I loved it. It's incredible to hear musicians play this way, especially when it comes to classical music. We saw a Vivaldi concert in Venice years ago where the same thing happened. Just awesome stuff. We think of classical music sometimes as calm background music. It's not at all sometimes.
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| Christmas concert in the Stephensdom. |
But this post isn't really about any of that stuff I've just written. It's supposed to be about one piece of music. And that piece of music is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17.
In the first room of the Beethoven Museum, there is a story about Ludwig van Beethoven seeing a rider on a horse canter by his window while in his apartment at what is now the Museum. The Beethoven Museum today is surrounded by other buildings in a neighborhood but at the time he occupied it in 1802, it was in the middle of the country. That bucolic view and the horse's pace supposedly created a piece of music in his head that date which eventually became his 17th piano sonata.
The story of this inspiration is written on the wall next to a wheel with a handle. Turn the handle and the Sonata plays. We turned the handle as directed.
I have never listened to a piano sonata in my life. I have tried once or twice but it has historically been difficult for me to get into a solo piano track lacking any sort of external motivation or interest. But that piece of music in that museum was just incredible. It has pace, it has melody, it has passion, it has depth and tenderness and forcefulness. It's dynamic. I've never really heard a piece of music quite like it and I have listened to a lot of music. I mean I guess it should be all that because Beethoven wrote it but I'm sure he has some clunkers out there. All artists do, don't they? Even Beethoven?
I know if I had really wanted to I could have started going through Beethoven's piano sonatas systematically on my own. I know I didn't have to travel to Vienna and discover this piece of music. But in a way, there's no way I would have found this without traveling. Maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's inconsequential that I've discovered this one piece of music that I now love. I don't think that it is any of those things. I love this sonata. And I know I wouldn't have found it without traveling.
Don't get me wrong, here. I'm not saying that the rest of our music experience in Vienna outside of one room in a museum was a waste or wasn't an essential part of our trip to Austria. It was. I loved all the music we saw live (even shivering in the Stephensdom) and I got a ton out of the Beethoven and Mozart museums we visited. But without Vienna there would have been no discovery of that piano sonata. And I'm happier today for it.
As soon as we got back and home and I had the chance, I bought the complete set of Beethoven's sonatas (there are 32) on a nine CD set (yes, I still buy CDs...). I've listened to No. 17 I don't know how many times. I've dabbled in the others and have not played a single one twice. Travel...I'm telling you...it changes us.
That's the story. Apologies on the length.
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