Music plays a big role in this city. Music has brought me here today.
I am in Vienna, the capital of Austria. The historic old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Its highlights include St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Imperial Palace.
I'm in Vienna today for a very special reason. In 2020, music lovers around the world
are celebrating the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth.
He was born in Bonn, but spent most of his life in Vienna.
He lived here for over three decades and wrote his masterpieces.Today I want to see:
how visible Ludwig van Beethoven still is in Vienna, what makes this city
so attractive to musicians, and why was Beethoven so restless. I mean, during his
time here he moved on average once a year! As you can see, I have a lot of
questions that need answering. One day in Vienna, following in the
footsteps of the great Beethoven.
One of the top addresses for music lovers in Vienna
is the sound museum, Haus der Musik. It’s all about sounds and noises…
And the exhibition starts in the stairwell.
Our sound staircase, which we call "Stairplay", can do more than make music.
I'll follow you.
Can you play a song?
If you can play one!
An entire floor of the sound museum is dedicated to the famous composers who worked in Vienna.
Now we're coming to the floor of the grand masters:
that is, the masters of Viennese classical music. Here we have holograms of the composers:
Josef Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Beethoven, Franz Schubert.
Many important composers came to Vienna over the centuries.
Beethoven also moved here when he was 22.
Why was he here in Vienna?
Why were so many musicians and composers attracted to Vienna?
For Beethoven, composers like Haydn and Mozart were role models.
After realizing just how great they were, he purposely chose to come to Vienna.
As I’ve already mentioned Beethoven was a rather restless guy. He often moved in Vienna,
and he even moved in and out of the apartment in the Mölker Bastei several times.
The house belonged to one of Beethoven’s patrons, Baron Pasqualati.
His landlord remained loyal to him. Even when Beethoven moved elsewhere,
the baron did not rent out the apartment, but kept it so that the musician could return.
Since Beethoven suffered from gastric complaints as well as from hearing loss,
he visited the spa town of Heiligenstadt on the outskirts of Vienna in hope of a cure.
He often went for a walk in this park.
The building in the nearby Probusgasse houses Vienna's Beethoven Museum.
Christian Buchner shows me around the rooms that Beethoven lived in in the summer of 1802.
He was quite unsettled, he often moved. Why was that?
He wasn't an easy tenant. As his deafness progressed, he composed louder and louder,
slamming the piano with his hands. He banged on the walls to beat time and sang loudly.
And whenever he got too hot while composing he had a funny habit of taking a pail of water and
dumping it over his head! Even with today's flooring that would be problematic.
But back then floor had even more cracks for the water to run down.
So his neighbours got moldy walls.
Didn’t word get around among landlords here in Vienna?
Absolutely. He always had problems finding lodgings.
Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament became famous. In it, the composer describes his desperate
situation, his fears about becoming deaf and his isolation.
His Heiligenstädter Testament is also a justification. He writes about the
incurable state of his ears, made worse by misguided doctors. He came here hoping
to be healed. He was also suffering from a broken heart, but in 1802 he came to
Heiligenstadt to be cured. So this letter is a justification of why he's so withdrawn,
doesn't socialize much anymore and has become such a loner. It's 'cause he's uncomfortable saying:
Speak up, I can't hear you. As a musician, he finds this unbearable.
He must also deal with jealous folks and enemies he's made due to his
diffcult temperament. So this letter attempts to correct his image a bit.
Back in Vienna's city center. Here Beethoven celebrated his first great
great successes as a composer. For example, in Lobkowitz Palace, where Beethoven's
third symphony, the Eroica, was heard for the first time. The Prince of Lobkowitz
was an important patron for Beethoven and for other composers.
Today his palace houses the theater museum.
What's so special about this hall?
It's simply part of musical history. World premieres took place here. So did debuts,
dress rehearsals in the presence of Beethoven and operas.
The Prince of Lobkowitz was crazy about music and theatre,
so he knew what kind of people to bring here and just what needed to be done.
Why did Beethoven perform the Eroica here for the first time?
In 1804 an opera by Salieri was performed here, and afterwards two rehearsals took place:
for the Eroica and the Triple Concerto.
The bills prove that. They show that, in addition to the musicians for the Salieri opera,
a third French horn player was needed. And only one Beethoven symphony
features a third French horn, so that's the indication.
Do you know how the people reacted to the Eroica?
Are there any records from the time?
There is evidence that the Eroica was considered a revolutionary work. People must have been
pretty astonished, because this symphony was something completely new in
terms of its instrumentation, power and vitality.
My next stop is the Central Cemetery. It is one of the largest cemeteries in Europe.
I have arranged to meet up with Gabriele Saeidi,
she knows her way around, does guided tours, even at night.
The Viennese have a really unique relationship to death and to cemeteries.
Georg Kreisler, a singer from Vienna, once sang that 'Death Must be Viennese' -
and he must have had his reasons.
You'll notice that the Viennese don't just visit the Central Cemetery during the day, but at night, too.
What is the classic here? What do visitors want to see?
It depends on where people come from and which VIPs they know.
Clearly international guests are all familiar with Beethoven.
Falco is big in Austria and the German-speaking world, but also internationally.
The grave of honor for Udo Jurgens is also popular with German-speaking visitors.
Of course, I want to know where Ludwig van Beethoven’s grave is.
He died at the age of 56 in 1827.
What would Beethoven’s funeral have been like?
Relatively pompous. Some 20-thousand people are said to have come to his funeral.
He was much loved at the time.
So 20-thousand people accompanied him on his final journey.
At the end of my journey in Beethoven’s footsteps in Vienna, I want to combine
something that is typical of Vienna and and that’s associated with Beethoven.
Here in Café Frauenhuber, one of Vienna’s oldest coffee houses, both Beethoven and Mozart
gave small concerts.There’s no music today, but I have a typical Austrian sweet dish,
the Kaiserschmarrn.
Beethoven certainly left his mark on Vienna. You can follow his footsteps from
his numerous apartments to the great concert halls where he was celebrated as a composer.
And if you do so, you will get an intimate look at who this man was as
as an artist, but also as a person. And, of course, you'll get a good impression of his
adopted hometown: Vienna. Bye, bye. See you soon!