Ils viennent a Vienne

The first weekend of March we flew off to Vienna to visit E's mom, who had been speaking and consulting at a nearby conference in Hungary. It was great to get to spend some time with her. Never having been to Vienna, we didn't know what to expect, except good art, good music, and good coffee and cake. We weren't disappointed! It was so nice for me to be back in a place where people speak German after my long and painful exile in French-speaking... France. And to have brötchen and döner again!

E's mom kindly arranged for us to stay together in an apartment in the very heart of town. The space was palatial by comparison to our Parisian digs and quite a change from the one-room-fits-all way of life we've grown accustomed to. The extra space made it a nice place to relax and talk in the evenings, since, unlike with E's dad's visit to Paris, in Vienna each of us had a seat to sit on with a back to lean on - wondrous strange. And as you would probably expect(?), the apartment came furnished with a nice sketch of Wagner(!).

And the couch featured some very nice people, too.

The place was just around the corner from the Karlskirche, a famous baroque church built by Emperor Karl VI in the eighteenth century in thanksgiving that his prayers had been answered when the last great plague epidemic subsided. Who knew the plague lasted so long? Among other things, the church features two enormous columns, remeniscent of Trajan's in Rome, and a dome fresco that seems to be the church's main attraction. On the first evening we made our visit.

Someone had the brilliant idea to set up scaffolding right in the middle of the church, with a lift to take visitors up into the dome to see the fresco up close. Apparently no one realized that being on a shaky platform 150 feet above ground is more fun for school children than the baroque. This helpful sign was addressed to them: "Running and jumping is life-dangerous! Screaming is uncool!" Note the rare occurrence of the German term 'uncool', from the middle-German root 'cool', meaning 'cool'.

We had a lot of fun together reading the dome's varied Christian iconography. Apparently heavenly blessings are best depicted by money literally being flung at you from on high.

The ecstatic effect of the baroque painting, or maybe just the dome's height, left us in a bit of a blur. 

That night we had tickets to the Wiener Musikverein(!). It turned out that while we were there the Vienna Philharmonic had gone looking for us back home at Carnegie Hall, so we heard a visiting orchestra instead. 

 

I was especially interested in that night's program, since it featured a piece for choir and orchestra by Arvo Pärt. Pärt is an interesting and now quite popular contemporary composer, in spite of his Catholic faith and his preoccupation with sacred texts and music. A monk-friend of mine first introduced me to some of his music a few years ago, but I hadn't heard anything more since then. As it turns out, I didn't know what I had gotten us into. Pärt's oeuvre divides starkly into two vastly different periods. He spent the early part of his career using the best of the contemporary techniques and styles (or anti-styles?), all of which he eventually came to find completely bankrupt in themselves and useless for his purposes, which were and are essentially spiritual. Pärt's struggle with the best of contemporary music eventually reached a crisis point, after which he wrote almost nothing for more than seven years, while he studied the roots of Western music, like chant and sacred polyphony. He emerged from this silence with a unique new style, which he calls tintinabuli, that characterizes his later period and for which he is now justly famous. But the piece we heard at the Musikverein, "Credo," was written on the verge of the crisis that ended his early period, and it terrifyingly communicates all the turmoil that Pärt must have been experiencing at the time. I have never before heard a piece of music that so effectively evoked fear. The experience was deeply disturbing. Fortunately Pärt's piece was preceded by Grieg and followed by Sibelius, which made for a balanced and rich evening of music.

We spent most of the next day together at the Kunsthistorische Museum, which featured a wide range of famous masterpieces, from Raphael to Vermeer, Caravaggio to Holbein, Bruegel to Rubens, not to mention many other interesting works by lesser known artists. The building itself was also grand and inspiring, and very well designed for displaying art.

That night we saw Don Giovanni, one of E's favorite operas, at the Wiener Staatsoper(!).

E and I had seats in one of the boxes, which really was a box and gave us the opportunity for a lot of fun imagining ourselves in another time.

We hung our coats in a small antechamber, covered all over in red satin and furnished with a mirror so that we could primp and press before seeing and being seen. We were in the very back of the box, which meant that we had to stand and lean for a decent view of the stage, but also that we were well positioned for hiding from prying eyes and sharing secrets about our fellow opera-goers. The production was mostly a flop, but the cast and orchestra were excellent. E can tell you more about it.

The next day we went to Sunday Mass at Vienna's great gothic cathedral, the Stephansdom. I had hoped we would get to see Cardinal Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna and editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. As an undergraduate I read and liked some of his works of theology, and followed an interesting debate he ignited with an opinion piece in the New York Times about evolution and intelligent design, so I was eager to hear him preach in person. Alas, he was already in Rome preparing for the conclave.

In the afternoon we met up with an old friend of E's parents who has been living and working in Vienna for over 25 years. We went for lunch at a local vineyard on the outskirts of town, where we each had our token Wiener schnitzel, which was as big as the plate and so delicious. We spent the rest of the day exploring the heart of the city, which is really charming and mostly full of nothing but art...
 

... and monuments to artists .... 

... and schools and libraries for art...

... and artists' associations.

We eventually ended up at Cafe Central, a beautiful and much recommended spot where we had traditional Viennese cake and coffee. E tried the Sachertorte, I had a truffle cake, and E's mom had the cake of the house, which was by far the best of them all.

On our last day we visited Schönbrunn palace, seat of the Hapsburgs since the reign of Maria Theresia in the eighteenth century, which offered a great view of the whole city beyond.

We all enjoyed the tour of the palace. It was the first time that E and I experienced for ourselves, and finally understood, what art historians have to say about the rococo; before that it just seemed like more of the baroque to us. I appreciated the window into the daily life of the Hapsburgs who lived there, and especially the signs of their faith, like the priedieu and crucifix next to the bed of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and the devotional closet in the family room (where, famously, the child prodigy Mozart played for Maria Theresia before jumping in her lap and kissing her!). Actually the last reigning Hapsburg Emperor, Karl I, is blessed and will likely be canonized in our lifetime.

And we all found the palace's surrounding gardens - how shall I say? - "most diverting."

Clearly the French were here. 

In all it was a great trip, and a great visit with E's mom. Thanks to her! We hope to make it back to Vienna eventually, since in spite of doing so much, there was still a lot we didn't get to see, like any Klimt. Actually we saw a ton of Klimt all over Vienna, but only on posters, and booklets, and pens, and pillows, and bags, and scarves, and umbrellas, and paperweights, and...

Our painfully early-morning flight back to Paris gave us a beautiful view of the sun coming up over the alps, which made the 4:00 a.m. wake-up call well worth it.