Vienna's woods- Beethoven used to live in nearby Grinzing
Of Beethoven's many homes in Vienna
Beethoven died at about 5.45 pm on the
26th of March, 1827, as a violent snow storm battered Vienna. A
flourish that the genius would have loved. He had echoed it in several of his
creations - with aggressive exultation in his Fifth Symphony, and with
triumphant joy in the Ninth. Beethoven died in an apartment in
Schwarspannierhaus (House of the Black Robed Spaniards) in the heart of Vienna
behind the present day Votiv Church. The last of 65 homes he had lived in since
he arrived in Vienna in November 1792 from Bonn to be closer to the patronage
of the Court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Vienna, according to Mozart, was
"the best place in the world" for young musicians. After hearing
seventeen-year-old Beethoven perform, Mozart had said, "Keep an eye on
that one - some day he will give the world something to talk about!"
Vienna is too large for the diminutive
country it is the capital of now. Today, this capital of the once vast
Austro-Hungarian Empire, retains some of its importance as headquarters of many
international organizations. It remains an exceedingly attractive imperial
city. It has wide roads, magnificent churches, baroque buildings with statutes
bristling on top of them and their ornate and spacious entrances. Statues are
every where in Vienna even in their vast parks. Many of its monuments were
damaged seemingly hopelessly during the last minute spiteful and unnecessary
saturation bombing by the Allies just before World War II ended. Most of them,
including Stefi- the imposing, magnificent and spacious baroque 14th
C cathedral in the heart of Vienna, have been carefully and lovingly restored
and still reflect the glory of a grand and historic city. The Imperial Court
encouraged artists, architects, musicians and scholars. For the exceptionally
talented it was the most welcoming of all the cities of Europe. It is still the
music centre of Europe. All kinds of music. Rock, jazz, and classical. Vienna,
learning perhaps from its late recognition of Beethoven's immense genius, now
encourages and tolerates all kinds of ideas- in art, architecture and music.
Even in politics.
One visit is not enough to appreciate Vienna's old pubs and coffee
houses, its amazing variety of buildings, Gothic churches, its separate
theatres for aristocrats and commoners from Imperial times and the Red period
(1920s), its museums, including a butterfly, electricity and war museum, and
its quaint alleys and sylvan walks. Vienna has changed immensely since
Beethoven lived in most of its sections from time to time. At that time there
was a wide fortress wall enclosing the Stephansdom (Dom means Cathedral)
quarter- Vienna's ancient heart. It was replaced by a broad Ring Road
(Ringstrasse) finished in the 1860s. Most of the fine and old looking buildings
were not around during Beethoven's time. When he walked in Hofburg compound
there were no museums across the road and the statue of Marie Theresa did not
provide a perch for pigeons. The new and the most dominant wing of the Hofburg
had not been built. The twin-pinnacled Votive Church, behind which he died in
Schwarzpannierhaus, was not there. The Burggarten, Prater and the Schonbrun's
gardens where he liked to walk have their green spaciousness still intact.
Schonbrun Palace- Beethoven once lived near here as he found its gardens inspiring
A good way to understand Vienna's attractions could be to follow
Beethoven's tracks. It was from Vienna that in October 1802, thinking his end
was near, he wrote a letter to his brothers - the famous Heiligenstadt
Testament. His house in Heiligenstadt in the 19th District can still
be seen, but no longer stands alone. He blamed his approaching deafness on
Vienna, especially its water, which now is amongst the purest that one can get
in any large city any where in the world. He writes: "Ah, how could I
possible admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in
me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a
perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed." This
was the Vienna of which cynics still say, "People look back to its past
with hope."
Beethoven's conquest of the city has been more
permanent than Napoleon's. There are four memorials or statues to him. One, of
him sitting, is near the Concert House close to the Schwarznberg Platz and a
bust is near Nussdorf where he liked to go for walks and is called Beethoven
Ruhe (Peace). There is a street in this bustling village called Eroicgasse as
he had stayed nearby in No. 26 Kahlenberger Strasse. Close by are the woods
where he walked and the vast Danube that he loved to see in all its moods. The
Vienna, which he could see from the hills of the Viennese woods has changed
considerably.
During his stay in Vienna and its suburbs, Beethoven
shifted house sixty-five times. He would leave because he did not like being
stared at, he did not like people listening to him playing, for principles, or
in one case because he wanted to be close to his friends. Yet while hopping
from house to house he produced incomparable sonatas, concertos, marches, and
symphonies.
Some of his houses are marked with
plaques saying that Beethoven had lived there. A short stroll away from
Heligenstadt is a house, where he had stayed, in Grinzing (No.2 Pfarrplatz) in
the 19th district. It is now a Heuriger café where people drink
fresh wine, eat heartily and sing raucously. Here, in 1817, he had begun
working on his Ninth Symphony. The corner statue, embedded in its wall, of St.
Florian is still there as it had been in his time. Next door is St. James's
church rebuilt after it was destroyed by the Turks in the late seventeenth
century, this being almost the last point that the invaders had got to before
they were beaten back. Beethoven had come here to escape the rigours of Vienna,
a city that he could not adjust to for long stretches. He had tried to leave it
once, but didn't after three rich Viennese admirers in 1809 put together 4000
florins annually "to shelter Mr. Ludwig from need" for the rest of his
life. Without being wealthy he would never be in want.
His homes in
Dobling, Modling, Heiligenstadt, Eisenstadt and Baden, which stood in rural
isolation during his time, are now surrounded by rows of neat houses and shops.
At Baden he composed sections of Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. He
lived in Hetzendorf about 10 minutes walk from the Schonbrun (1750) Palace of
Maria Therese to be near its gardens. In them, sitting under a favourite oak
tree, he finished the opera Leonore (Fidelio).
A lot of his homes must be
still standing but it is difficult to trace them. House numbers and names of
streets have changed more than once. No. 45 Alsergasse, where Beethoven stayed
in 1792, became No. 125, Haupstrasse and then No. 30 Alserstrasse. Some don't
exist any longer, such as the Schwarzspannierstrasse, where Beethoven died,
near the newly named Beethovengasse,. It had been torn down in 1905.
Neverthless, a wide ornate entrance with a plaque and flags remind people in a
typically Viennese way that Beethoven lived here.
Beethoven
occasionally shifted house for interesting reasons. In October 1806, for
instance, his host and patron Prince Lichnowsky wanted Beethoven to play for
him and some of Napoleon's officers in his house in Troppau, whom he hid in an
adjoining room. Beethoven, when he found them, stormed out into the rain. From
Vienna, he wrote "Prince, what you are, you are by chance and by birth
There will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven."
Pro-Republican Beethoven had become very anti-Napoleon. By November 1803, he
had finished writing the notes for his third symphony, the Eroica, which
he completed by May 1804. It was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte,
but by the time the symphony was completed, Napoleon had crowned himself
emperor. A disgusted Beethoven, then living in Prince Esterhazy's house, 'das
rothe Haus' (now gone) and opposite the Schwarzpanierhaus (also gone), tore the
title page, raging, "Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being?
Now he too will trample on all the rights of man and ...become a tyrant."
Later, when Napoleon was defeated at Vittoria on 21 June 1813, Beethoven
celebrated Duke of Wellington by writing the very formal Battle Symphony
(Wellington's Victory), which he completed in 1814.
From 1804 to 1808
Beethoven had shifted eleven houses, fought off adoration even from Napoleon,
who had once sent troops to ensure that the composer was not troubled during
his invasion of Vienna, changed patrons to be financially secure. Yet he was
able to produce during this time the stirring Fifth, the Pastoral or the sixth
symphony, the Violin Concerto, the G Major Piano Concerto, and many other
lesser but brilliant works.
From 1822,
Beethoven began work on the moving choral movement (Ode to Joy by Schiller) of
the Ninth Symphony and within that year, he changed four homes. He began the
year in 61, Kothgasse, moved to 20 Pfarrgasse, then to a more spacious home at
62, Parkgasse across the Wien stream bridge. Beethoven used to shave by the
window in the morning, and when this became known, knots of people would stand
worshipfully to watch him work on his face. Naturally he moved. This time to 32
Hauptstrasse, a lively villa owned by Baron Pronay whose reverence irked him so
much that he shifted yet again, this time to 94, Rathausgasse in Baden to share
lodgings with a locksmith. By the time he had finished his breathtaking
Ninth Symphony in early 1824, he had lived in five houses.
The Ninth symphony was moulded at a time when the by
now stone deaf Beethoven was in torment. He was waiting for death again, and
yet was struggling to hope. In this magnificent symphony he introduced voices
for the first time, and the theme was deliverance through joy. His disability
would have crippled a lesser man. He overcame it resoundingly in the Ninth
Symphony even though his critics said he had defied all canons of composition.
An admiring Berlioz defended him, saying, "So much the worse for
Law." Yet Vienna accepted it hesitantly. Though immensely successful now,
the best works of Beethoven were not understood in his time. After one
performance in 1808 in Vienna where the thundering Fifth and pastoral Sixth
symphonies, the Mass in C, the Choral Fantasy, and the Piano Concerto No.4 were
performed with Beethoven himself playing, a music critic disdainfully described
it as "unsatisfactory." Much later, after another performance the
applause was so thunderous that his assistant conductor had to turn Beethoven
to face the rapturous audience.
Beethoven's earliest homes, especially
in old Vienna or in the Stephansdon Quarter - whose narrow alleys and ordinary
homes even today are crammed with beautiful historical surprises from about
five centuries ago, is a passage of discovery. Pasqualati's house in
Molkerbastei, the Esterhazy Palace, and the Prince Lobokowitz house are
well-known, but as with the homes in other places, the rest are extremely
difficult to track. Beethoven's longest stay, 1804-1808, 1810, and 1815, was at
Pasqualati Haus, which is opposite the Rathaus. Here he commenced composing the
Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, the opera Fidelio, the
string quartets and a piano concerto. His fourth floor apartment is a museum.
Next to the mid 19th
Century Greichische Kirche (Greek Church of Holy Trinity) in the old
Fleischmarkt, close to Stephansdom (Dom means Cathedral), is Griechenbeisl a
500 year old restaurant. Beethoven was amongst the many famous musicians,
scholars and artists who ate here. In Vienna, one of Beethoven's compulsory
haunts was the Graben in the Stephansdom Quarter. This is the area close to St.
Stephen's Cathedral Some of the shops from Beethoven's time still exist. Here
is still the office of Artaria- one of his publishers with whom he had several
legal fights.
He loved to walk in the Hofburg Complex,
which was a collection of palaces where the Hapsburgs lived, and since his time
expanded with dramatic and more imposing extensions. It now houses the
President of Austria, several museums, the famous Spanish Riding School, the
National Library and a few interesting churches of course. Another of his
favourite walks was the Prater, once an exclusive hunting forest for the
Emperors but given to the public in 1766. It is now one of the world's largest
amusement parks, and definitely the most varied.
Just before Beethoven died he said "Applaud, friends, the comedy is
over." Not quite. More than 30,000 mourning
Viennese turned out for Beethoven's funeral. In a fitting meeting of Vienna's
greatest musicians, Mozart's moving Requiem was sung in the Church of the
Augustinians in the Stephansdom Quarter. On the 5th of April, 1827 a
final tribute was given in the Karlskirche with a grand and exalted performance
of Cherubini’s Requiem in C Minor. After death Beethoven's body moved from
Wahring, a village near Vienna, to his final home in the musician's corner in
the picturesque Central Cemetery on Vienna's outskirts. Many of the graves here
are grandly embellished with expensive and ostentatious woe, but his is a simpler
one. It is the largest cemetery in Austria with more than two and a half
million graves. Viennese wickedly refer to it as being half the size of Berne
but twice as amusing. Beethoven's grave is marked by a plain obelix with just
one word- Beethoven. Next to his grave is a memorial to Mozart and Schubert’s
grave. Reports of relic hunters were so worrying that about in 1888 his body
was exhumed, examined and re-interred. Finally.
Perhaps, inspired by Beethoven's
iconoclastic ideas, young artists in Vienna concerned with creating new styles
at the end of the nineteenth century, made a strange windowless squat cube
topped by a dome encased in gold filigree, which they called The Secession.
Inside, Gustav Klimit's Beethoven Frieze - a thirty-four metre long decorative painting covering
three walls - is the best-known exhibit. It is believed to be a tribute to the
path breaking Ninth symphony. Beethoven's radically innovative talent lives on
in much of Vienna's breathtaking bold architecture. Among the wildest are Otto
Wagner's pavilions, and buildings like the opulent stained glass entrance of
the Steinhoff Church (1905) with its brazen and flashy yet attractive interior,
the Karl Marx Hof municipal council flats (1930), the glass fronted, but incredibly,
blending Haas Haus opposite the venerable Century St. Stephen's Cathedral, the
glittering mosaic that surrounds the golden globe shaped chimney of the
municipal incinerator, and the crazy, colourful, liveable municipal apartments
called Hundertwasser (1985).
