I had not been back to Vienna since the Austrian presidency of the EU. Then, I went back twice in the space of a few months for a general meeting about the Routes of Mozart and the creation of a network to take charge of the Central European iron route.
This chance left me a little time to go looking for things that were less than two years old and to go back in some past episodes of the city.
Back then, Parisian students were in the streets and the Italian elections were drawing near. Now, it’s the Parisian students who are protesting and the sixth form students who parade down the streets, whilst the Italian President has had to open a new electoral session which has just brought in a majority change. Facing these invariable factors, we can see that Vienna, even though it is part of the EU, has decided that from now on it will only look towards the countries that surround it, both West and East, with calmness and patience. To put it simple, Austria is only worried about Austria. And, I would say, Vienna only worries about Vienna. The city is sufficiently cosmopolitan to be enough on its own. It was for many years at the centre of an empire, and since 1989, this empire has to some extent been reformed. The city has also abandoned its status as a border town, of a ‘mafia’ city, of a city that welcomes both all the dissidents and all of the goods from the East that the families in need came to sell on a few square metres of pavement in a specialised market near to a bus station.
They have reached another kind of opening: Vienna airport has taken up a position over the last few years as a sorting station for the large and small towns of the Baltic, Caucasia, Russia, an and of east and south-east Europe and now as far as Pristina and Sarajevo, Iasi, Ostrava, Pecs or Baia Mare. The recent total opening of the borders makes eastern Austria, the Burgenland border land of three countries, seem a bit like Alsace. The multiculturalism of the spaces which have in the past shared a common destiny, take a new reality, even though the shopping centres and Hungarian dentists remain attractive and are alone a tourist attraction.
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Every time that I go back, I must state that I have layered memories. In fact, I only have snippets of memories. The first time, in 1961, the occupation by the victors was still in people’s minds and it was difficult to find somewhere to stay. In 1991, the Yugoslavian was still vividly remembered. Vienna, at that moment, looked to put on more Christmas markets than the other Eastern European towns that exploited this gap. More and better. But Vienna also had Hundertwasser and Sigmund Freud and a whole collection of museums, each one more striking than the next. And in the immense Héros square, the Heldenplatz caught between the Hofburg buildings, the applause still seems to resonate for Hitler’s arrival. A bit like in the play by Thomas Bernhard where an ironing lady- Annie Girardot played the role when I saw it at the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris – continues with her work whilst talking to her employers, behind the thick curtains of a vast apartment, near to the famous square and whilst anti-Semitism is taking root, the bourgeoisie is busy sorting out their family affairs. Noises, just noises and a kind of end of the world, an incurable illness which has taken hold at the heart of society.
It was actually Christmas and whilst Yugoslavia disintegrated, we did not really believe in 1991 that this immense square, designed for military marches and parades, would once again be invaded by crowds a few years later, this time to protest against the extremist principles supported by Heider, as if history, at the end of the 80s, suddenly went back on itself.
On the contrary to what I remember, the town centre has been repainted, restored, filled with luxury and fashion and glass-walled buildings, a little unbalanced as often happens with new architecture, dragging it towards modernity. The Hofburg and the Albertina always play the role of a lover, especially on a winter’s night, when the wind blows and history’s ghosts reappear. I have always taken pleasure in wandering once again through all these impressive buildings where the drama of kingdoms and alliances, with or against the French, Germanic or Russian troops, and against the big neighbour, the Ottoman Empire, was played out.
Sissi is not far away. She has recently acquired a museum, part history, part myth and the furnishings are being shown in films at the moment, between history and fiction. Her face always seems to look towards the knights of the Spanische Hofreitschule.
Mozart and Sissi have become symbols or brands for many people, kinds of time-delayed people and films have taken them as heroes, since Romy Schneider has erased the traces of the historical personality; like Elisabeth, recognised in Hungary as well as in Austria and, in the former, as a kind of lay saint, a kind of copy of the Princess of Thuringen who died when she was still young: Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
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The Hofburg: the Spanische Hofreitschule
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Close to Sant Stefan
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I like going back to the Ring and an Opera where the languidness of Vienna has come to create a rich zone in which to hold these sumptuous palaces and baroque churches.
The bourgeois style here called Bidermaier, the equivalent of the Napoleon III style in Paris, then Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) and the Secession, have turned the city centre into a tourist’s sweetshop.
Here they sell, as much as in the anniversary year of 2006, sweet pastries and Kugeln bearing the image of Mozart. The slogans ‘Mozart in Vienna’ on the other hand, have disappeared. However, it was enough to create a telephone number, the number of the slogan in front of which one finds ‘in the footsteps of Mozart’, and to follow the story of the composer’s journeys to the square and the palace, the symbol designated by the number.
The Vienna tourist office also has the composer in front of it: ‘Pop star between the baroque and the revolution, he is today the most illustrious musical genius of all time. And it is in Vienna where he had his most productive and prosperous years.’
The wording is audacious, but it is certainly what appeals to the international public of today.
Happily, the meeting of the Routes of Mozart offered me the opportunity to go further in a town where one of the foremost tourism attractions is music. This time I was given a more lively explanation from a guide who, in just about an hour, gives a tour of the places where Mozart lived, composed, directed and prayed.
Almost all of us have learnt that is was in the gothic cathedral of Saint-Etienne, today still the capital’s emblem, that Mozart married Constanze Weber in 1782. And that in the National Library (formerly, the Imperial Library) in the Schönbrunn château, we can find traces of his tumultuous relationship with Salieri that Forman pushed to the point of dramatic farce.
But on this winter Sunday it was more about a tour of the parishes; those where Mozart was a more or less exemplary husband and father and where he looked for the freedom that he had lacked in Salzburg. He lived in around a dozen apartments – twelve to be exact.
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Back side of Sant Stefan
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‘My very dear Father, I assure you that it is a splendid place, and the best place in the worked for my craft,’ wrote Mozart on 4th April 1781. Mozart was 25 years old and he had been travelling through Europe for almost all of those years, meeting emperors and kings. The town is large with around 50 000 people living within its walls and 150 000 on its outskirts. It can only really be compared with Paris and London, and Joseph II is comforted by the intense intellectual life.
St. Peter’s Church (where he played) marks the hours in front of the Wandl hotel, which I got used to, and St. Michael’s Church, one of its parishes has now been crushed by the sumptuousness of the imperial palaces which have taken over the space. A house, on the Graben still testifies to the influence of the 18th century, and we can draw on the ground, here and there the cafés that he frequented. Our guide takes us to St. Michael’s crypt to admire the quantity of coffins and the preservation of the bodies, in a well-aired space. Mozart played there. He could have been buried there. He is not, she adds, because a few years before his death, the Emperor decided that the dead would be buried outside of their church, on the periphery and that the coffins would be recovered in order to make more use of them. Mozart therefore suffered from this excess of imperial savings and was not abandoned by everyone. And although his body was mixed with others in a common grave, in the St. Marx cemetery, it was because that was what was usually done. At least we have sized up the importance of the memento mori.
However, there does exist a place of remembrance which has now become incontrovertible. The Mozarthaus Vienna, which makes up part of the network of the Routes of Mozart is the ‘only one of Mozart’s apartments that has been preserved, where he spent his most productive three years in Vienna, both from an artistic and financial point of view. In harder times, he had to content himself with the modest dwellings on the outskirts.’ We are at 8 Schulerstrasse, where Mozart lived from 29th April 1784 to 23rd April 1787. It was there where he wrote ‘A little night music’ and ‘Figaro’.
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In Mozart's footsteps
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Mozart's House
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In fact, for those who have not been to Vienna for a few years, Mozart’s house has benefited from the 2006 anniversary to become a site of interpretation, the word taking on the double meaning in this case of both the putting into perspective and presentation of his works.
With little importance in the background are the lines of tenants and landlords who have followed Mozart.
The history of this memorial really starts in 1941 when, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death, the Viennese authorities decided to make a real place of remembrance out of it. It does not add anything to state that it was opened by the national-socialist Baldur von Schirach as part of the ‘Mozart Week of the German Reich’, but that those in charge have tried to forget the instrumentalisation since 1951.
The changes took place in 1965 and the town was able to rent in 1976 the rooms of Mozart’s old apartment in order to give it an original feel. But a serious question has been asked for a long time: how can one create a museum when there is no authentic object that belonged to Mozart in the museums of Vienna ?
Since 1990, the view has been somewhat different. The option taken, which was chosen by Elsa Prochazka can be explained in a few words. It is about showing the ‘spirits of belongings’ which ‘take up the positions of the belongings of those days, notes and images, in order to evoke the sense of the people who lived, works, acted and evolved there’.
The reopening took place in 1995, but it was the investment that accompanied the 250th anniversary that gave a greater coherence to an area of some 1000m2 and is managed as a private company by Mozarthaus Vienna Errichtungs- une Betriebs GmbH.
Audiovisual materials, shadow games, light puzzles, were all installed and created in the spirit of the wonderful world of the theatrical devices of the time, whilst the objects and reproduction are combined with a ‘virtual opera in a mirror’, in a historical context which is always there without being overbearing, with the option to use and audio-guide.
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In the house: visuel puzzle
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Historical datas
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The image of Vienna is so inseparable from that of music, so much so that we can speak of the effect of an ‘image’ of the music.
I think that there it is about a persistent mental image that recent centuries have are shown chronologically by creating around this town an aura of the major figures: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, the Strauss family, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, without mentioning the Korngolds. And where the New Year’s concert, a little enclosed by its bouquets of red flowers, roses and mixed poinsettias, now constitutes a brand that all of the record labels reproduce. This world event is now worthy of a football world cup.
It does not therefore seem a great challenge to construct a tourism identity by simply creating such an aura. However, I do not believe that I really got this feeling during my previous visits. It is my love of music that won over in 1991 and I remember the Mass of a confessor on Christmas Eve in the St. Etienne Cathedral because I had sub-consciously chosen this musical context, nothing more, nothing less.
However, Mozart goes so well with the musical ambiance, the loden cloth, the hackney carriages, and classes of young Japanese people, who mass together and then go away, just to come back together at some other point, like all of the troops that explore the world.
I was also not surprised to hear Johann Strauss being sung on a still night two years ago. Behind a door, at the end of a corridor. I went closer. I was a dance lesson. A Viennese waltz class to be exact. I imagined the young women in crinoline. They and their partners must be numerous judging by the noise of the heels on the floor. The ball season is long, from February to April. The list fills four illustrated pages of the Wien Magazin that I carry with me. So many occasions to be fashionable, for the privileged ones of course.
But what to advice those who want to combine a weekend in Vienna with music?
I am able to answer that question a little from the inside because the meeting of the Routes of Mozart enabled me to visit two places that are members of the network, in privileged circumstances, because it was the directors who presented them to us.
In addition to the Mozart House already mentioned, the Haus der Musik Wien is another first class attraction, not to speak of the Staatoper, the Musikverein, the Konzerthaus or the Universität für Musik.
The Haus der Musik is in the Palais Erherzog Carl, one of the most famous Hapsburgs. In 1842, the composer Otto Nicolai, author of the comic opera ‘The crown jewels of Windsor’ took place here. After a series of concerts, the Philharmonischen Konzerte was founded. The celebrated orchestra Wiener Philharmoniker was thus created.
Today, the headquarters of the orchestra can be found there, as well as a museum dedicated to Nicolai, but the scenography used quickly plunges the visitor into the world of sounds in an instrumentarium which enables people to understand how plucked, struck and blown sounds are created, the role of the voice and of the musicians that listed above.
Every contribution has a real immersion in music where one can even virtually conduct an orchestra.
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And what about popular music?
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You will find a link on the right for some of the places cited, as well as good hotels and restaurants.
Other information will be linked to the second article, which proposes a weekend in Vienna linked to architecture and museums.
A combination ticket allows entry to the two places (Mozart Haus et Haus der Musik) for 15€. The boarding pass of Austrian Airlines gives the possibility of reduced fare
In the two places of the cafés and restaurants, they lend a friendly note and are perfectly integrated into the marketing policy.
The Network of the "Routes of Mozart" has been endorsed by the Council of Europe to put into place the Mozart Route.
Other musicians will certainly be the subject of activities created by the network. Hence, in 2009 the 200th anniversary of the death of Josef Haydn will be celebrated.
A further article will look at the demonstrations planned for a few kilometres outside Vienna, in the Burgenland of the Kingdom of the Princes Estherazy, in Austria as well as in Hungary.
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Mozart, still alive
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