Ludwig van Beethoven | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts tagged ‘Ludwig van Beethoven’

24T51 Musical Mödling: Beethoven & Schönberg

E50 V17

Just south of Vienna’s city limits is Mödling which is easy to reach with S-Bahn or regional trains. Ludwig van Beethoven spent parts of 3 summers here in town. In the early 20th-century, Arnold Schönberg and his family lived in a house for a number of years, before moving to California.

Beethoven lived here

*This modest memorial to Beethoven is next to the building’s east wall.*

*On the building’s north side is a plaque: Beethoven spent 3 summers from 1818 to 1820.*

Schönberg was here

*Arnold Schönberg and his family lived here at Bernhardgasse 6 between 1918 and 1925.*

*Small exhibition- or performance space.*

*His typewriter, with a modern 1-Euro coin for size comparison.*

*“Peace on Earth”, op. 13; “Six Little Piano Pieces”, op. 19*.

*The eyes were always prominent in portrayals of Schönberg.*

*Death mask, made by Anna Mahler, after his passing in Los Angeles on 14 July 1951*.

I made the photos above with an iPhone15 on 27 Jun 2024. This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.

Vienna Heiligenstadt: Beethoven, despair, deafness, & his 6th Symphony

Above/featured: Memorial statue in Vienna’s Heiligenstadt Park; more details below.

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven spent a total of 35 years in Vienna, from 1792 with his arrival from Bonn until his death in 1827. Every summer, he would leave Vienna to stay in a country- or farm-house in Heiligenstadt which at the time was rural; a stagecoach trip from the inner city required several hours. Today, urban development and expansion have reached and overtaken the once verdant fields right up to the flanks of the city’s northern heights.

By 1802, Beethoven’s hearing loss was almost complete. With his doctor’s recommendation, Beethoven had hoped time away from the noisy city would help recover some of his healing, but after the summer had passed, his initial fears had come true: his hearing would not return. In desperation, Beethoven wrote to his brother a letter, known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament“. He never sent the letter to his brother; the letter would only be discovered 25 years later with Beethoven’s personal effects, shortly after his death in 1827.

I’m tracing out some of Beethoven’s footsteps in Heiligenstadt wrapped inside the present-day city’s 19th district of Döbling. All locations can be visited comfortably on foot in a single day. The following description is part of a larger overview of my search for Beethoven in the Austrian capital city.

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Vienna: Beethovenhaus Mayer am Pfarrplatz

Above/featured: “Beethovenhaus” Heuriger Mayer am Pfarrplatz. Pfarrplatz square in Vienna’s Heiligenstadt, Döbling distrct (19.)

It’s a nation-wide holiday on the 26th of May (2022): Ascension of Christ (Christi Himmelfahrt). On a bright and warm late-spring day, people are out and about, and very few shops are open.

I’m halfway through my month-long stay in Vienna, and today, I’m in the city’s 19th district, Döbling, where in his time Beethoven spent many summers resting, composing, and contemplating life with total hearing loss. I’ve spent the morning wandering through the Heiligenstadt neighbourhood, including a visit to one of his summer residences that’s now a museum dedicated to Beethoven. Not far down the street is another Beethoven summer house that’s now a wine tavern or “Heuriger“. A hanging bunch of pine branches at the front door means this tavern is open for service, with food and their own wine on offer.

The Austrian capital city is home to the world’s largest “urban vineyard” and is the world’s only capital city producing wine within its city limits. There are some 600 wine producers; 400 individual vineyards; over 7 million square metres (75 million square feet) of cultivation space producing both white and red wines in a 80/20 split, respectively; and an average annual yield of 2 million litres or over 2.5 million bottles of wine. Most of the wine is sold for immediate consumption at wine shops and grocery stores, and at the city’s many wine taverns. The Mayer family has been making wine here in Heiligenstadt since the late 17th-century after the combined European forces successfully repelled the (second) Ottoman siege of Vienna.

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Vienna Central Cemetery: a city of the dead

Above/featured: The cemetery’s gate 2. Photo, 20 May 2018.

Where: Vienna Central Cemetery (Wiener Zentralfriedhof).
Who: Beethoven, Boltzmann, Falco, Lamarr, Schütte-Lihotzky, Strauss I and II.
Why: Cross-section of cultural and economic history for capital city and nation.

In Vienna, tram 71 begins in the Old Town; goes around the western half of the inner ring past City Hall, national Parliament, and the Opera House; and heads southeast to the city’s main cemetery or the Zentralfriedhof. Because coffins to the cemetery were once transported on the tram, there’s a saying particular to the city’s residents, a phrase which means they’ve died by “going to the end of the line.”

“Sie haben den 71er genommen.”
(They took/rode the 71.)

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