The Sound Music Tour of Vienna
Tour Description
Composers and their music made Vienna world known. Theories, facts, romances and movies passed us stories to make us known how they lived and who they were. But of course, how far are we from the reality and from a possible fantasy. They changed forever our musical point of view. They went far enough to be respected but to be banned as well. So just follow me to see where they lived and who they were.
Music was made to be one of the most and wonderful ways of communication in a world of dreams and reality.
Composers like Beethoven and Mozart are today worldwide known as great composers. To know them in their world and how they lived in Vienna could be a very good way to understand them. Music was than a way of surviving in a city covered by ideas and ideals. Counterpoint and Harmony, composing and playing, to hear and sing, these are only a few of the central ideas in this tour. To live again the 18 th and 19 th centuries, to travel in time, to discover and to know the birth of classical music will be the idea of this tour.
Introduction (Prologue), Café Mozart, Albertina
The tour will start at Albertina square in front of Cafe Mozart. It is a wonderful place to start a visit in Vienna which main theme will be Music. The famous Mozart statue from Viktor Tilgner was on this same place until 1953, and was taken after to the imperial garden near the Ring where it stands today. One of the most remarkable sections of the imperial palace the Albertina, has today one of the most and huge collections left by the prince Albert from Saxony and each year new expositions from very famous artists specially painters. Princes, Counts, Dukes, Archdukes and Emperors who lived in this old part of the city liked to have artists and musicians who composed and played for them, leaving a unique tradition from the early middle ages to the twenty century, and so it was the capital of the German-Roman Empire also a capital of artists protected by their own Lords.
Walking 20 meters
Opera, Café Sacher, Palais Todesco
The Opera or Vienna Staatsoper is the so called first house on the ring and it is since the opening in 1869 one of the most important Operas in the world. The building in a neo renaissance style shows particularly the very conservative and majestic taste from the Emperor Francis Josef, who strong criticized the work comparing it to the lost battle of Königgrätz. None of both architects survived to take profit of their own creation. They were both deeply touched by those hard and severe words said by the emperor himself. Eduard van der Nüll killed himself living his wife pregnant and alone, and Sicard von Sicardsburg died of a heart attack. The Opera orchestra is one of the most known orchestras in the world capable of playing every day a new concert or Opera. It is also known since 1842 for being a part of the famous Vienna philharmonic!
On the same place where the Café Sacher stands today, was the old Imperial Opera; The Kärntner Hofteater. It was also called as the theater near the Kärntner Door. It was the old Opera where since 1810 all big composers protected by the Emperor played and showed their works. Ludwig van Beethoven debuted his ninth symphony here, one of the most wonderful and remarkable works of the classic. During the presentation the composer couldn´t hear anything because of his hilliness; it was the composer and director Michael Umlauf who conducted his work. At the end the success was immediately, and it was Caroline Unger (one of the soloist singers) who turned Beethoven to the euphoric public to make him see how happy they were!
Nearby was the house of the great composer Antonio Vivaldi, who came to Vienna to work for the Emperor Charles VI. His style changed enormous by that time from the baroque to the new Stile Gallant in order to fit into a new pre classical age. He died one year later living more than five hundred concerts, operas and sacral works.
The Palais Todesco was the place where Johann Strauss met his first wife, the singer Jetty Trefftz. She was a popular singer and lover of the count Todesco and had already with him six children by the time she met the very famous king of waltz. His life changed completely with this marriage. From a simple Viennese musician he was nominated court and ball composer by the emperor and it was during this first marriage that he composed the famous blue Danube.
Walking 150 meters
Haus der Musik (More than 4 persons the entrance will be included)
This will be one of the highlights of the tour, where everything about composers and compositions will be shown with original pictures, scores and sounds. The main entrance stairs imitate the keyboard of a piano, according to our movements we will climb to the first floor going from the lower to the highest sound of a scale. It was an idea of the famous pianist Lang Lang!
The history of the Vienna philharmonic since its foundation shows that musicians and composers were since the very beginning interested in satisfying the needs of the Viennese habitants as if music would be their own best entertainment, as today Hollywood for the film industry. Otto Nicolai a famous Berliner composer lived in this same house and had the magnificent idea of creating concert subscriptions for the new founded Philharmonic, making the music world in Vienna dynamical and vigorous. Great composers as Johannes Brahms, Hans von Bülow, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss increased the quality of the orchestra transmitting their knowledge to the musicians and creating a very powerful and intensive musical view continued today by a very strong tradition.
Walking to the second floor
Sounds and instruments were the basis for music in different times and ages. The importance of the instruments used in different epochs by different composers was enormous. They wrote music to be played with those particularly kind of sounds and acoustics. We know for instance Beethoven´s symphonies, but do we know how they sounded? Which instruments did he really use? And for which Acoustic were they made?
The history of the first Viennese school
Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were the most famous composers of the classic and also the main representants of the so called Viennese School. They met each other and they admired themselves as well. They worked with Musical Forms known as the Sonata Form or Rondo, or Theme and variations, or Minuet, or Scherzo. They wrote symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and operas. They lived in the same period and they inspired the next generations of composers until today. Mozart wrote more than six hundred pieces and lived only 35 years, his music changed history completely; his melodies, his harmonies were completely new and mostly advanced for his time. His friend Josef Haydn composed almost for his Lord Prince Esterhazy and made more than one hundred Symphonies. After his death his head was stolen from his body and was only returned to his tomb in Eisenstadt in the twenty century after Second World War. The secret was revealed, and it was his own master the Prince of Esterhazy who had the idea of keeping the head of his genius composer well guarded.
Ludwig van Beethoven was the third of this amazing generation. He came from Bonn sent by his Prince of Nord Rhine West-Phalia to learn with Mozart in Vienna. He was later pupil from Haydn and Salieri. Another composer and teacher called Albrechtsberger said once about Beethoven; “this young musician will never do something right”. That shows how teachers can be wrong sometimes about their pupils. Beethoven´s style was new, powerful and impulsive. The composer was inspired by revolutionary ideas and movements and changed the late classical form to a new romantic style. And tragically the composer who left us some of the most beautiful compositions in the world had never the pleasure to listen to what he made due to his hilliness.
Frauenhuber Café
Mozart and Beethoven were the first real independent musicians. By the time the court in Vienna was turning to be conservative again under the regency of Emperor Leopold II, concerts and operas were played outside the city walls. Cafes were places where people could discuss free from laws which didn´t leave much space for creativity and new creations.
Mozart met Beethoven in the year 1787 by the time he composed Figaro and D. Giovanni. Just imagine now how deeply moved was the young Beethoven listening to his master speaking and playing. If they were free to speak and to create, that could have been the real source of inspiration for a new era, the Romantic.
Rauhensteingasse, Mozart´s death
Mozart died on the 5 th December 1791 and the causes of his death remain until today a mystery. He was only 35 five years old and he left more compositions as any other living composer in history. Some of those are today Unesco world heritage and known all over the world. He was a virtuoso, a composer, married and father of two children who never turned to be great composers. Mozart died of Rheumatic fever, but one month before his death he said to his wife that he was poisoned…he had friends and enemies…and Antonio Salieri was the teacher of his two sons and a friend!
Deutscheordenshaus – Mozart´s last concert in Vienna for the Prince Archbishop from Salzburg
Mozart wrote to his Father Leopold that he had to leave Salzburg and the Prince Colloredo after being “kicked out” by the Count dell Arco. It was in the same house where 50 years later the young Johannes Brahms lived!
St. Stephen’s Cathedral – Stephansplatz
Emperors and archdukes married at the Augustins Church. An average Viennese citizen would have pay to marry in a Church outside the city walls. Mozart and Haydn married in the most important Cathedral of the Holy German Empire!
On the 6th December Mozart received his last Mass before being carried to the Cemetery of Saint Marx. None ever knew where he was buried. The person who buried him died one year later and Konstanze only came 10 years later to search the place where his beloved husband and composer remained.
Mozart´s House
Mozart was a great composer. As a person, was someone who liked to drink, to gamble and to spend his free time in parties and feasts. He worked more than any other composer from his time. After his death remained only Mozart the composer!
This is the only remaining house in Vienna where Mozart lived. In the Museum we will discover his true relationship to his colleages and friends, and of course to his friend Lorenzo da Ponte who wrote the libretto for the marriage of Figaro. It was an Opera with new musical ideas from the point of view of orchestration and music. The all story was a critic to the social political system of the ancient regime!
(After the visit of Mozart´s House, one hour will remain until the end of the walking Tour, and then I will see if they want or not to expand the visit 30 minutes more to visit Beethoven´s House)
Saint Michael square
Three days after Mozart´s death his friend, artist and manager Emanuel Schickaneder paid a Mass equivalent to 20.000 Euros today! It was the first step creating Mozart as a Legend, the composer and his surviving music.
Lobkowitz Palais
Franz Josef Maximilian Lobkowitz was a rich count who helped Ludwig van Beethoven to achieve and compose most of his work. In the year 1809 he succeeded to arrange together with the archduke Rudolph and the prince Kinsky a stipend to help the composer and to make him stay in Vienna. Beethoven was very thankful and dedicated Lobkowitz his famous Eroic symphony. It was a rupture to the tradition. The symphonic work was composed with new elements which later served as basis for the romantic music during the 19th century. The symphony originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte is today in the Haus der Musik.
The Feast Hall of the palace was than named has Eroica in honor of Beethoven´s first performance of his third Symphony.
Wiener Secession and Theater an der Wien
Conclusion (Epilog)
The visit will go on than to the Karls Platz passing by Brahms Statue, Vivaldi´s old cemetery and Wiener Musikverein.
The walking tour will end at the Hotel Imperial where Richard Wagner stayed during the first representation of his Ring of the Nibelungs.
Why was Vienna known as the capital of music and musicians? That is the main question! At the end they should know why.
