Piano Sonata No. 17

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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How We Did It

We visited the Beethoven Museum, Mozart's Apartment at the Mozarthaus and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. We also attended a recital by the Mozart Ensemble Vienna at the Mozarthaus; saw an opera at the Staatsoper; and shivered through a concert at the Stephensdom. With the exception of the Beethoven Museum, all of these attractions are inside the Ringstrasse and easily accessible if you are staying in or near the city center of Vienna. To get to the Beethoven Museum, we took the number 37 tram from the Schottentor U stop. Get off at the Hohe Varta stop and walk about a block or so north from there. The trams in Vienna are awesome. They run frequently and on time.

The two Beethoven museums are both owned by the City of Vienna, as are the four museums about Haydn, Strauss and Schubert that I mentioned in this post. If you have the time and inclination to be a completist on the history of music in Vienna, there is a combination ticket for all six properties. 

We found all the concerts (an opera is a concert for the purposes of this section of this post) we attended to be reasonably priced and the quality of the sound and the performers at both the Staatsoper and the Mozarthaus to be excellent. You can spend a lot of money on a ticket at the Staatsoper. We sat in the upper deck and thought the view and the sound was just great from up there. Of course, we are not fanatical about opera. 

Concerts at the Stephensdom are not restricted to the Christmas season. We got our tickets from the Kunst & Kultur website, which seems to have programs throughout the year, although certainly not as many as there were before Christmas.

We spent a lot of time looking at various venues before picking our three concerts. There's a lot to look at honestly but we found a good starting place was the Vienna tourism website's page about music in the city. 

Also, there are plenty of statues of composers around the city if you are into that sort of thing. I am, although the only one we sought out was the status of Beethoven on the Beethovenplatz.

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The Sachertorte

If you are remotely fanatical about dessert at all and happen to travel to Europe more than once every five years, I would think that at some point you would make your way to Vienna. The array of sweet treats there is truly astounding, from juicy and crispy apple strudel to the slightly less famous topfenstrudel (made with cheese) to nutty, fruity Linzertorte to nockerl to the horseshoe-shaped cookies called vanillekipferl and much more. Way more, in fact, than we could reasonably go through in a week in the city.

Look, sometimes life comes at you fast. All those delicious pastries named in the previous paragraph? We didn't eat any in our week in Austria. Does that sound astounding? Actually I'm pretty shocked, too, and I planned the whole thing. But we did eat the one cake or pie or pastry that was on the top of our list before we landed in Vienna: the Sachertorte. If there was just one we planned to eat while in country, it had to be this one. It is truly a Vienna original. Skipping this would be like going to the Florida Keys and not trying at least a couple of pieces of Key lime pie. Couldn't visit Vienna without eating some Sachertorte. 

Now, there are two places in Vienna which claim to sell the "original" Sachertorte. And by "original", I guess there's an implication of authenticity, ownership and best in the city or country or world. 

These two places are the Hotel Sacher and a cafe named Demel. Both are located right in the heart of Vienna and there's no other business out there that's claiming to have ownership over this cake in any way, so we decided we'd do our authentic Sachertorte tasting at those two establishments and these two alone. After all, there is only so much Sachertorte we can eat in one week. We did have a lot of other dishes on our food agenda, even if we never got to the full array of desserts.

This would be our Pat's or Geno's test of the trip. And in case you are wondering, it's Pat's hands down, no question, any day!

The line outside Demel. We waited here.

If it seems to defy logic that a place other than the Hotel Sacher would have invented the Sachertorte, consider this: the dish was not created in either the hotel of the same name nor was it created at Demel. In fact, neither place even existed when the first Sachertorte was baked. Neither place, by the way, is claiming original authorship.

So how did it get created in the first place? Well, according to legend or family folklore (because this origin story is likely closer to one of those two than to actual fact), the original Sachertorte was created in 1832 at the request of the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire. The Chancellor sent a request to the kitchen for a special dessert for an upcoming dinner. His request happened to be issued on a night when the chef was unavailable due to illness. Not wanting to disappoint the dinner host, the task of answering the challenge here fell to 16 year-old Franz Sacher, who whipped up a chocolate cake in two layers with apricot jam between the top and bottom and a dark chocolate icing covering the entire creation. Boom! The Sachertorte was born!

That story, by the way, is based on the telling by Fritz Sacher's son, Eduard. Choosing to believe it, I guess, is your choice. But there's no other story out there.

The line outside Cafe Sacher. We did not wait here. Reservations, baby!

In 1876, Eduard Sacher decided to open a hotel, which naturally was (and still is) called the Hotel Sacher. Of course, they had a kitchen which started making Sachertortes for the hotel to sell to guests and to whomever else wanted to buy one. 20 years earlier than that, a cafe called Demel opened in Vienna and they too had decided to sell the Sachertorte as created by Eduard Sacher (and made slightly differently than his father had made) who had spent some time working there before he opened his namesake hotel. Demel called their version of the Sachertorte the "original". The Hotel Sacher didn't seem to dispute this label.

Things operated this way with both Demel and the Hotel Sacher selling Sachertorte and only Demel calling it "original" until 1938, when possession of the Hotel Sacher transitioned out of the hands of the Sacher family and into new ownership. When it did, the new owners decided to start selling their Sachertortes with an "original" label on them just like Demel, setting up a situation where two spots in the same city are claiming ownership of the exact same cake. Trouble was brewing.

Demel's Eduard Sacher Torte.

But a full-blown dispute would have to wait for the Second World War to pass. As soon as it did, Hotel Sacher sued Demel for use of the term "original" in the selling of their Sachertortes. Just to be clear here, what we have is a hotel founded by a baker's son suing a cafe where the same baker's son used to work over the rights to call their cake the "original" when clearly the thing wasn't invented by either business. Lawsuits make so much sense, don't they?

Hotel Sacher won. After nine years of legal dispute, the two parties agreed that the Hotel Sacher could call their Sachertorte the "original" and Demel could decorate their version with a triangular seal with the words "Eduard Sacher Torte". Personally, it seems to me that Demel got hosed a bit here. They were using the "original" moniker first and they didn't start the dispute in any way. Life's not fair, I guess.

Enough history for this post, I think. Honestly, that part of this post was way longer than I thought it would be.

The interior of Demel.

We hit the Hotel Sacher (actually the Cafe Sacher inside the hotel) on a Wednesday for lunch. Two days later, we did the same thing at Demel. When we got to both places, there was a line of people standing in line to get inside maybe 12-20 people deep. We made a reservation at Cafe Sacher and passed by everyone in the line and sat down immediately (actually, 15 minutes before our reservation because we were early). Demel doesn't accept reservations so we waited. Point one to Cafe Sacher.

There's a definite difference in attitude in the two establishments. Cafe Sacher is posh, posh, posh all the way. It's brightly lit; there are white tablecloths placed on the tables when you order food (real food, not just cake); the menus hang on a special stand on the tables; and the waitstaff is formal and to the point. Demel feels more like an informal, neighborhood spot that has grown over time. It is cluttered; you can see the various pastries and cakes being made; and there is variety in the types of tables and seating available. In spots, Demel is cozy, although that totally depends on where you get seated. Point two to Cafe Sacher. 

I know, that last point may be a shocker after what I have written but we were not seated in the best spot at Demel. It almost felt like we placed at a tiny table that had been hurriedly added between two real and comfortable tables. That may, in fact, be exactly what happened. Cafe Sacher spoiled us. There's no bad spot in the place (we actually got a corner couch table which may be the best in the place), and the staff makes you feel like the center of attention. To reiterate, point two to Cafe Sacher.

But it's all about the cake, right? Waiting or not waiting and great table or not doesn't matter if the food isn't exceptional. Honestly, Cafe Sacher wins here too. It's a clean sweep.

Our plates at both places ultimately ended up like this.

Here's the deal: both Sachertortes feature a double layer of chocolate sponge separated by a shmear of apricot jam (I graciously waived my no stone fruit in any form rule to eat these cakes...) covered by a coating of chocolate icing that envelops both the top and sides. I thought both were chocolatey and both were sweet cakes. Like sweeter than I usually find cakes to be in Europe (i.e. not American sweet). I also thought the apricot jam came through loud and clear and the unsweetened whipped cream on the side cut the sweetness to a perfect balance.

But the cake at Demel was dry and at Cafe Sacher it was perfectly moist. And that, as simple as that is, was the difference. Nothing more and nothing less. Cafe Sacher gets point three, which is really the only point that mattered. Maybe we got an old or a bad piece of Sachertorte at Demel, but their cake was dry. Nothing more to it than that. Cafe Sacher wins! Hands down!

Before we set foot in either restaurant, I have to say I would have been predisposed to Demel in every way except the no reservations thing. They were the first to sell an "original" Sachertorte; they seem less pompous (or even un-pompous); and the dim atmosphere (dim is positive for me in restaurants and bars) is just my kind of place. But ultimately their cake wasn't as good. If I ever go back to Vienna, I'd consider a return trip to Cafe Sacher, but not to Demel. And particularly not for Sachertorte. I'm a Cafe Sacher guy. What else can I say?

I will say one more thing. One more tipping point for Cafe Sacher: Vienna sausages with mustard and grated horseradish. Four for four. Cafe Sacher cleans up in this battle.

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How We Did It

Nothing complicated here: show up at either Cafe Sacher or Demel and wait to get a table. Or, you know, if it's Cafe Sacher you can always make a reservation. I have to tell you that walking to the front of the line and sitting down at a table while everyone in the line watched was pretty satisfying.

Both places are open daily. Cafe Sacher is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Demel opens a couple of hours later and closes an hour earlier. We visited each at about noon, which I think is on the early side for lunch in Europe, and we found lines that were about a dozen or maybe 20 people deep. I assume the people queuing up are all tourists clamoring to get into one of Vienna's most famous coffee houses and I'm suggesting here that the lines might be longer if you go later in the day, although I'm basing this solely on supposition after seeing the giant lines at Cafe Central every time we passed by that restaurant (we didn't visit Cafe Central).

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Jugendstil

In 1994, I took my first trip to Paris and fell in love with something I never would have thought I would have fallen for: Art Nouveau architecture. This flowery, individualistic, nature-based, romantic style (I really dislike using that word...) of design and creation of buildings seemed completely at odds with everything I considered to be sacred and truthful about architecture. That is, rational, ornament-free, minimalist design. Modernism with a capital M. And maybe what came right before it.

That 1994 Paris trip emphasized to me something I already suspected, that in the history of architecture, the period that I am most fascinated with is the late 19th and early 20th century, a time when architects were trying to figure out what new materials and new methods of production (in addition to the re-discovery of reinforced concrete) meant to their expression in the building arts. Art Nouveau didn't fit into my definition of that struggle to come to terms with change brought about by the Industrial Revolution even though it really is in every way, from the timeline to the materials to the unique-ness in breaking from historical precedent. Paris corrected my definition. And Paris of course was right. Paris is always right.

Since 1994, I have tried to cover all the bases Art Nouveau-wise by visiting the cities that I considered to be the hotbeds of this movement. Paris in 1994 was followed by Glasgow in 1997 (and 2007) and Brussels in 2000 and Helsinki in 2002 and Barcelona in 2014. The last place I had on my list was Vienna. After a mis-fire in 2021, 2022 turned out to be the year I made it to Vienna. So Vienna wasn't JUST about the Christmas markets. It was also about Art Nouveau.

One of Otto Wagner's U stations on the Karlsplatz.

In Vienna, Art Nouveau was not called Art Nouveau. In Vienna, Art Nouveau falls under the umbrella of what was regionally (along with artists and architects working in Germany) called Jugendstil. More specifically, in Vienna, it was called the Vienna Secession movement. Is it really that fundamentally different from Art Nouveau in other places? Well...yes and no. Fundamentally different? Not so much. There are shades of grey that make Jugendstil different at least stylistically (there's that word again...) from its Art Nouveau cousins in other places, but at its core Jugendstil places value on nature-based (or perhaps arts and crafts influence) design that bucks traditional stylistic norms while also focusing on the design of not just the building but most of the contents of the building as well. In some cases, right down to the silverware on the dining table (which is probably also designed by the architect or designer). 

This wholistic design approach, while used in other countries and cities where Art Nouveau flourished, was probably taken to a new level of obsessiveness under Jugendstil. In Germany and Vienna, the architect or designer (or designers) were striving to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art". Others around the world may have been doing something close to the same thing, but they didn't have a special name for it. Jugendstil (which means "young style") did.

So what are these shades of grey I mentioned a couple of paragraphs back? Well, look, I'm no art or architectural historian, but it seems to me that while all forms of Art Nouveau draw inspiration from nature, Jugendstil draws decidedly more from human forms than any other manifestation of the movement. Go to Glasgow and you'll find flowers as decorative elements in the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Visit Paris or Brussels and you'll find columns or handrails designed by Hector Guimard or Victor Horta that look decidedly like lilies or the stems of some other elegant plant. And stand on the roof of the Casa Batllo in Barcelona and you'll swear Antoni Gaudí clad the roof in dragon scales. But you won't find any people to speak of.

The Ankeruhr Clock, on Bauernmarkt near Hoher Markt, Vienna. Franz Matsch, designer.

Take a look at the roof of the Post Office Savings Bank in Vienna and you'll find a couple of what can only really be described as some sort of mythological gods or goddesses. You'll find something similar in the murals on the outside of the Vienna Secession Building or in the center of the Ankeruhr Clock. I'm not sure if these are manifestations of deities or sprites or just regular everyday humans but there is (for me at least) a fantastical quality to the way these people are represented. They seem otherworldly, like something out of a Tolkien novel.

I'm sure that is dumbing down the difference between Jugendstil and what was going on in France, Belgium, Spain, Scotland and elsewhere throughout the continent to an almost offensive level but that's how I see it. I also see decoration that is far more geometrical in a very German way. In case labeling something "German" doesn't adequately convey an immediate and specific reaction, I see motifs that are rigid, regular, repeated, formal and imperial.

Otto Wagner designed apartment block on the Linke Wienzeile (top) and the Wagner Villa II (bottom).

Most architectural or art movements or styles (it's the last time I'll do that, I promise) have some key or defining figures that dominate or guide or define the movement. Jugendstil in Vienna is no exception. Architects Joseph Maria Olbrich was hugely important as a founding father and Josef Hoffman contributed as much (if not more) as a product designer than a designer of buildings and guiding light of the movement.

But from the architecture side of things, Otto Wagner was clearly the most important figure in the Vienna Secession. He may not have played as important a role as Olbrich or Hoffmann in getting things off the ground, but he was the most embraced by the city and empire (like literally in terms of commissions) and clearly was the most prolific designer who contributed lasting works that are still around today a century or more later.

If there is one other notable difference between the Vienna Secession and other similar movements in Europe, it's that at least one of the founders is an artist and one of the leading tourist draws to Vienna today. Gustav Klimt's works (including his most famous painting The Kiss) are some of the star attractions in Vienna's Belvedere Museum. I don't think you will find any other artist that is as aligned with an Art Nouveau movement that has the standing and stature of Klimt. Lalique doesn't count for me there.

Klimt's The Kiss at the Belvedere (top), with adoring throngs, and the Beethoven Frieze (bottom) at the Secession Building.

There are no shortage of Jugendstil works to visit in Vienna, including a number which you can actually walk into and around and linger a while. The Vienna Secession building is still in use as it was originally intended as an art display space 124 years (!!!) after it was completed and first opened. There are also a number of Otto Wagner buildings open to the public, although not all are in use as originally intended including the first house he built for himself and a number of the original U stations that he designed, some of which are now museums or exhibition spaces.

There are also a number of works in and around the city center of Vienna, including the Altmann and Kuehne chocolatier (facade designed by Josef Hoffmann), a few Wagner apartment buildings and the magnificent Ankeruhr Clock designed by Franz Matsch. I don't know how we missed Hoffmann's chocolate store. I had it on my list and we must have walked by it at least twice (and maybe more). Distracted, I guess. It happens. Too much Christmas.

Picture of a VW on the street with Otto Wagner's Kirche am Steinhof in the background.

Speaking of Christmas...maybe not the best time to go to see as much Jugendstil as you can handle. Otto Wagner's U Pavillion on the Karlsplatz is now a museum celebrating Wagner's life and work. But not in December. Or November, January, February or the first half of March. You'll find something similar (meaning a museum which is closed in late fall and winter) at the emperor's personal railway station, the Hofpavillion, at the Schönbrunn Palace. I assume that the deal here is that these structures are not insulated and therefore not suitable for use in cold weather, but that's pure speculation on my part.

Good luck getting to one of Wagner's masterpieces, the Kirche am Steinhof, in December also. You can get there and get inside, but only if you arrange a visit in advance, pony up more than 100 Euros as a flat fee and pay a per person fee on top of that. If you do decide to do that, plan your trip out there carefully and make sure you end up at the door of the church, not within sight of the church on the other side of the hospital grounds that the church sits on. 

Despite not being willing to pay the fee to visit the inside of the Kirche, I figured we should go out there anyway since it's one of Wagner's major works. We Ubered and got dropped off right in front of the main entrance to the hospital to the south of the church. Accessing the exterior of the building would be just a quick walk through the hospital property. Easy, right?

Not so easy, we were informed. Not at that entrance. You have to walk further down to the west, we were told. Next hospital entrance...same story. And at the next. And the next. Eventually we gave up. We were into the walk less than a mile probably with another couple to go on snowy sidewalks in the cold. We never made it to the Kirche. We Ubered out of there onto other things. 

Majolikahaus, Linke Wienzeile 40 (top) and the Wagner Villa I (bottom).

So after all that whining and complaining, I'll say that I actually did get a really good Jugendstil experience out of our week in Vienna. It ended up being shaped mostly by the Secession Building; Otto Wagner's first residence; the Post Office Savings Bank; and the MAK Vienna (or in English, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts).

If there's a classic, must-see Jugendstil building in Vienna, it's the Secession Building. It was literally the first place in Vienna we visited on our arrival after checking in at the hotel and getting some lunch at the nearby Nachsmarkt. Yes, this trip was about the Christmas markets but you can't see those in all their glory in the middle of the day. The Secession Building was the starting point of this trip.

When the artists who made up the membership of the Viennese Secession movement first got together as an organized bunch, the first thing they did was design and pay for their own building to be built. Must be nice, right? Nothing like announcing your presence as a group of artists by erecting a building just outside the historic center of Vienna. A poor group of starving artists, they were not, apparently.

I've been waiting decades to lay eyes on the Secession Building, with its stark white walls with cryptic messages in Latin and its "dome" made out of gold covered leaves. I expected it would be enormous to hold all the exhibit spaces that were the goal of the building and I imagined the famous Beethoven Frieze, one of Gustav Klimt's masterworks, ringing the rotunda at the top of the building formed by the gold leaf dome. 

Neither of those things are true. It is an efficiently compact building (I mean, it's in Europe; what did I really expect?) in the middle of a very old and historic city with its main gallery space in the rear of the building hidden from the front entrance side and precious little other gallery space elsewhere. And there is no gallery or rotunda in the leaf dome. Of course there isn't; you can actually see through the leaves to the sky above and beyond. It's a crown on the building, not the crowning space inside the building.

The Beethoven Frieze is in the basement. Really didn't expect that.

It is clear from visiting the Secession Building that the focus of the design inside was to display the art, and not the building. I guess that's smart. The building was not the point. The point was the gallery space and the forum for artists. Olbrich allowed his expression on the exterior of the building, from the various types of leaves of gold coated ornament, lines drawn on the building and actual trees planted in pots at the front door to a mural by Koloman Moser to a couple of trios of perched owls on the south facade. For a starting point to visit buildings executed by the Vienna Secession, the eponymous building is a great place to start in a number of ways.

I don't get Klimt, by the way. Just can't figure out the appeal. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand. Other than The Kiss and maybe one or two other pieces, I find his works to be strange. His renderings of almost lifelike women on flat canvasses which look like they are being consumed by gold reminds me of the graphics in Tron (the original 1980s version), although I guess Tron should really remind me of Klimt. And I really don't get the Beethoven Frieze. Yes, I read the accompanying brochure in the building but I really can't see how naked women, gold-clad knights, starving and grotesque references to mythology and a giant ape have anything to do with Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

The Secession Building from the northwest. Not the greatest pic but it was raining and I didn't get a good front view.

The Secession Building main exhibition space. 

A trio of owls on the south facade of the building.

For all its importance to the movement, the Secession Building is a public work for displaying art and it's restrained, if you can really use that term to describe anything Art Nouveau (I believe you can). To find Jugendstil in all its excess, we'd need to get a lot more private. Like private house type of private. Like one built for Otto Wagner BY Otto Wagner. His first house, or villa, is now a museum. Although it's not a museum to Wagner.

Wagner built his first self-designed house sometime in the 1880s. When he sold it and moved next door to his second self-designed house, the house ran through a series of owners (including the Nazis in World War II) until it was purchased by Ernst Fuchs, an artist who in my very limited experience seems to be fixated on the Bible, mythological creatures and the exaggerated female body in most all his works. If I don't understand Klimt much, I really don't understand the point of Fuchs at all. His works are completely in your face offensive to me. Maybe that's the point.

Most of Wagner's first Villa looks nothing like it did when Otto Wagner was in residence. It has definitely been very Fuchs-ified from my point of view, although he apparently likely saved it from complete ruin when he purchased it in the 1970s. But there is one room, the Adolf Böhm parlor, which is full-on Jugendstil as Wagner left it. And it's spectacular.

This room used to be Wagner's studio and it is the space where he produced some of his masterworks, including the very inaccessible-in-winter Kirche am Steinhof. Everything about the room drips with Jugendstil, from snakes on the floor to the art glass windows to the gold stucco piping on the walls and ceiling (the Secession definitely had a thing about gold). It's a true mix between nods to nature to images of pure fantasy. It's absolutely gorgeous in the most decadent way. It's nothing like Art Nouveau in Paris or Brussels but it's still amazing.

It's also a complete collaboration. The art glass was the work of the room's namesake, Adolf Böhm, and the stucco work was executed by Joseph Maria Olbrich (of the Secession Building fame). I can't recall other Art Nouveau works being executed in such a partnership fashion.

The Adolf Böhm parlor, Otto Wagner Villa I, Vienna.

We saved the best until last.

When I said the first place we went to when we got to Vienna was the Secession Building, I wasn't kidding. It perfectly kicked off our Jugendstil experience in the city. The last place we visited in the city closed it; Otto Wagner's masterwork, the Post Office Savings Bank. If there is one true mature public work of architecture in Vienna executed by a Jugendstil designer, it's the Post Office Savings Bank over on the east side of the city just inside the Ringstrasse.

Art Nouveau and Jugendstil are great. I love experiencing these works of architecture and imagining the struggles that their creators went through trying to reconcile new methods of artistic expression using new materials made available by the industrial revolution that swept Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. When it gets resolved by a great architect, the result is sublime.

Everything that we saw about the Post Office Savings Bank was worth waiting for but (and in the interest of making what is already a very long post just a little bit shorter than it absolutely could be) there were a few things that stood out. Starting with the way the exterior of the building fronts onto the Georg-Coch-Platz, a small square of space off the Ringstrasse on top of (of all things) an underground parking garage entrance. It's a simple thing, here, but the main entrance of the Bank perfectly stops the space off Vienna's most important road while also displaying Wagner's opus in an ideal frame.

Most of this building was designed to hold the offices of the staff that made the bank work every day so there are precious few spaces or details that excite. The exterior of the building, with its patterned facade and god or goddess or angelic forms heralding the arrival of something seemingly really worth heralding is restrained and well-conceived while also clearly still rooted in classicism. The interior is better.

The front of the Post Office Savings Bank (top). Looking up into a stairwell (bottom).

If the prior paragraph seems to contradict itself, I'll agree with that. Inside the building there is a small museum in the rear of the main banking hall detailing the history of the competition for the building's design. The exhibit is organized around a reconstruction of one of the small banking halls which appears to be faithfully recreated but otherwise not spectacular. I found the competition part of the exhibit interesting in two respects: (1) Wagner technically broke the rules of the competition brief by combining spaces which were previously thought of as separate and distinct; and (2) I have never heard of any of the other entrants. 

I'm not sure if we were supposed to wander around the building on our own after we finished in the museum but we did a bit anyway in search of details and other nuggets of interest. The stairs are pretty cool. The detailing on the railings is awesome. These days of great architects custom designing and fabricating railings must have been amazing. There were several railing designs that I thought were cool in Vienna (including those at Karl Ehn's Karl Marx Hof).

But the room that made me weak in the knees was the main banking hall. This was the main public space in the building and was clearly (unless we didn't discover something amazing elsewhere) the most important and carefully designed space in the whole place. It is grand, it is well organized, it is functional and it is full of diffuse light due to the laylight and skylights above the room itself. For the early 20th century in a society used to dark, poorly lit workspaces, it must have been a revelation. It must have blown away the employees and the customers with its quality. And I say this because it blew me away in 2022.

Today, the main banking hall is a cafe. Or it was when we were there, although I get the impression it's probably some kind of multipurpose space when they are not serving drinks and snacks in the middle of the day. The cafe is a great idea by the way. I don't know how many works of modern architecture that I've been to where I've stared at nothing going on in the spaces that were once buildings for people to BE in but which are now museums. Being able to sit for a while with a beer and take everything in was super valuable.

I know earlier in this post I complained about the number of buildings in Vienna that were closed when we visited last month. I've also complained in this blog a lot about how many trips COVID forced us to re-schedule over the last couple of years. But honestly, if COVID hadn't hit Vienna last fall, we wouldn't have been able to visit the Post Office Savings Bank because until a couple of months ago, it was closed for renovations for over a year. Sometimes, bad luck works out.

The small banking hall (top) and view of the main banking hall (bottom).

It seemed to me when I returned from Vienna that our Jugendstil journey there was full of closed buildings and failed attempts at making it to landmarks big and small for a variety of reasons. Looking back at the length of this post and the number of pictures posted here, I'm not sure that's true. It may have been not what I would have done when I was in my late 20s or early 30s and obsessed with architecture trips, but I think we got a pretty comprehensive look at what was going on Art Nouveau-wise in Vienna at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

I am positive we missed a lot. I'm also positive I really have no regrets about our overall experience here. I think our Jugendstil quest was really pretty solid.

One final note: there is one place we managed to visit to fill in some gaps, including what must have at one time filled the offices and public spaces at the Post Office Savings Bank. That would be the furniture, of course. Just a short walk around the Ringstrasse you will find the MAK, Vienna's (and indeed, Austria's) museum dedicated the applied arts, including furniture making. At one time, architects managed to find the time to design furniture to fill the buildings they designed as well as the actual buildings. If you are interested in that sort of stuff, the MAK has an incredible collection of furniture designed by Josef Hoffman, the Thonets and a lot of stuff that Otto Wagner created, including desks, wardrobes, chairs and tables for the Post Office Savings Bank. I thought it was worth a visit to complete our Post Office Saving Bank experience. 

Wow that was a long post! That's all I got on this one!

Otto Wagner: Furniture from the Post Office Savings Bank. At the MAK, Vienna.

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How We Did It

There's a lot I could write about here. I'll try to be brief and concentrate on the four main buildings we actually visited on our trip in addition to some other resources I used when planning our time seeking out architecture in Vienna.

The Vienna Secession Building is open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Like a lot of museums in Europe they are closed on Mondays but their late opening hours every other day of the week make up for it somewhat. I know I've plugged the Vienna City Card on my snow globe post but that card gets you a free audio guide tour of the building here. There are some holidays when the building is closed.

The Ernst Fuchs Museum is also open Tuesday through Sunday but 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Like the Secession Building they are also closed on certain holidays and like the Secession Building there is a benefit to flashing your Vienna City Card (3 Euro discount per person, here). Getting to the Ernst Fuchs Museum is not easy or convenient. We Ubered there (although we were asked by our driver if the museum was open...) and took the 52A or 52B (can't remember which; both run the same route) back to the U4 at the Hütteldorf station. The bus stop is right across the street from the Wagner Villa II, which is right next to the Fuchs Museum.

The Post Office Savings Bank Museum is open Monday through Friday 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. On Thursdays, they stay open an extra couple of hours until 8. The cafe in the main banking hall is on a similar schedule except they close at 6 on Thursdays and stay open until 8 on Fridays.

The MAK is open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with late opening (until 9) on Tuesday.

Finally, I found two websites essential to my research in getting to all these buildings: Vienna Unwrapped and Visiting Vienna. There are a number of posts on both websites related to architecture in general and Jugendstil in particular. I found both sites' articles particularly helpful in getting me to websites with opening hours.

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