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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Philharmonic Holiday Vienna, Leipzig And Hamburg Celebrate Their Musical Hstories

Helena Zukowski Special To Travel

After the funeral of Franz Schubert in Vienna in 1828, an inventory of his possessions fit on a single page. Included were three pairs of trousers, one hat, five pairs of shoes, two pairs of boots, one bed, one blanket and old music sheets.

No one identified what the “old music sheets” were, but they well may have been transcriptions of the great Symphony in C Major, the String Quartet, the Trout Quintet or possibly “Ave Maria,” only one of hundreds of songs this brilliant composer left to posterity.

Schubert died at 31, leaving more than 1,200 works, including nine symphonies, 450 piano pieces and some 600 songs. Despite this productivity, he lived in Beethoven’s shadow, and not one of his symphonies was performed or published during his lifetime. Like Vincent van Gogh, it was not until almost 50 years after his death that Schubert’s genius was recognized.

All over the world this year, orchestras are tuning up tributes to Schubert for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Coincidentally, it’s also the 100th anniversary of the death of Johannes Brahms and the 150th anniversary of the death of Felix Mendelssohn.

With three great names to honor, the hills, dales and hamlets are alive with the sound of music - but especially in Vienna, birthplace of Schubert; in Leipzig where Mendelssohn lived and taught; and in Hamburg, birthplace of both Brahms and Mendelssohn.

There are probably no two countries in the world like Austria and Germany where music is so much a part of the history and the national character. According to Dresden musicologist Christoph Munch, there are good reasons why Germanic ground was so fertile for composers and musicians.

“Germany had 350 independent states from medieval times until Napoleon,” Munch explains. “After that there were 35 states, and each of those competed to have the most famous painters and musicians in their courts.”

In both countries, a growing middle class had the leisure and money to hire musicians and composers, and good instruments were available. Each prince and nobleman had his own orchestra, and even the emperors dabbled in musical composition.

Vienna was to the Golden Age of Music what Paris was to art in the l9th century, and it seems everyone was there at one time or another: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Liszt, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler … the list goes on. Everywhere you go in Vienna this year you see something scheduled to pay tribute to Schubert and the other great names of the Golden Age of Music.

Schubert was born in what was then a suburb of Vienna, the 12th child of an elementary school teacher. The home at 54 Nussdorfer St. where he was born is now the best-known Schubert Museum. Here you can find everything from cups he used to a lock of his hair. A grand piano identical to the one he would have used occupies one of the rooms, and nearby a plastic case holds the wire-rimmed glasses so much identified with the composer.

It’s said that Schubert was so poor that he didn’t have his own piano until one year before he died. The only public concert of his works took place just seven months before his death.

At Kettenbruckengasse 6, the apartment of Schubert’s brother (and the apartment in which Franz died Nov. 19, 1828) has also been preserved as a museum. In one case here, a poignant letter to a friend says: “I am so sick and haven’t eaten for 11 days …. Could you send me some books? I’ve read of Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. Could you send it and my brother who is honest will bring it to me ….” He died seven days later.

The homes of other “greats” have also been preserved as museums. Beethoven lived in 88 different places, but the one he loved best is called the Pasqualati House at Molkerbastei 8. He rented this apartment several times between 1804 and 1815 and lived on the fourth floor. Part of the city wall is below the house, so Beethoven looked out over green fields that inspired him to write the Symphony No. 4, “Fidelio” and many other works.

The Mozart House at Domgasse 5 is just down the street from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and it was here that Mozart spend some of his best years, from 1784 to 1787. No furniture remains in the l7th-century house because after Mozart’s death, his wife Constanze remarried and sold everything. “But the floor boards are authentic,” a guide points out. “These are the same boards Mozart paced on when he composed ‘The Marriage of Figaro.”’

A huge memorial to Mozart sits in Vienna’s Volksgarten, and in the City Park (Stadtpark) a marble Schubert sits contemplatively surrounded by flowers, Bruckner looks skyward for inspiration and a large golden statue of Johann Strauss poises with his violin playing an eternal waltz.

Schubert admired Beethoven so much that the last request on his lips was to be buried next to Beethoven. And so he is. In Vienna’s City Cemetary (the Zentralfriedhof), a whole immaculately groomed section known as the Music Section is devoted to the great composers who made Vienna their home. There’s a memorial here to Mozart as well, even though the composer’s grave is actually in St. Mark’s cemetery.

While Leipzig may be familiar from newspapers as the tinderbox where thousands of East Germans disobeyed laws forbidding unauthorized assembly in 1989 and sparked the downfall of communism, the city also has a rich musical history. At the Thomaskirche (Church of St. Thomas), you can listen to a Bach fugue played on an organ similar to the one Johann Sebastian would have used, or at the other end of the church hear Mendelssohn played on a larger organ suitable for romantic pieces.

Bach was the organist here from 1723 to 1750 and composed his greatest works while in Leipzig - the masses, the passions and the church cantatas. A larger-than-life statue sits outside the church, and Bach himself is buried here.

The Thomaskirche is the oldest church in the city, built originally in 1212 by Augustinian monks, and is perhaps most famous for its Thomanerchor, or boys choir, which dates back to 1254. Nearby is a museum to Bach, and the city has a superb Museum for Musical Instruments.

(Bach has many associations with nearby Dresden, a city with such magnificent baroque architecture it has been called “frozen music.” As a longstanding cultural center, Dresden was home to composers such as Wagner, Vop Weber and Schumann.)

In Leipzig, an impressionistic statue of Felix Mendelssohn stands beside the door of the Gewandhaus, Leipzig’s grand concert hall which has almost perfect acoustics and is considered one of the best in Europe.

Before WWII, there was a huge traditional statue of the Jewish composer in the city, but it was taken by the Nazis in 1936 and melted down. The current version gives a sense of the delicate romantic nature of Mendelssohn, who died mourning the death of his beloved sister.

At Mendelssohn House, the current museum, paintings and sketches trace the life of the composer from his beginnings as a brilliant child prodigy who not only wrote music but also painted with skill, wrote excellent poetry, spoke several languages, played numerous instruments and was an exceptional athlete. The actual house in which Mendelssohn lived is under reconstruction and will be reopened Nov. 4, his birthday.

Both Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms were born in the port city of Hamburg, even then a steamy metropolis of commerce with an affluent merchant class. Nurtured by his father, a double-bass player, young Johannes learned the piano at six and earned money at 13 playing for prostitutes and sailors on the Hamburg docks.

He wrote a wealth of music in his long career - everything from the familiar “Brahms Lullaby” to symphonies and demanding piano concertos.

Hamburg is full of sites associated with Brahms, starting with “Michael,” as the much beloved baroque Church of St. Michael is called locally. Destroyed many times, the church has always been rebuilt and is considered the “trademark” of Hamburg. Brahms was baptized here.

The house in which he grew up was destroyed, so a similar 18th-century house on Peterstrasse 39 was chosen to house the Brahms Memorial collection, an excellent display that spells out his life in music.

There are seven memorials to Brahms in Hamburg, but to catch a whiff of what life was like in his youth, pay a trip to the docks which have modernized but still have a steamy flavor. Hamburg is Germany’s largest port city, with a history that stretches back to 831 AD.

The city’s notorious Reeperbahn, with its infamous “mile of sin,” has a multitude of bars, cabarets and a regulated red-light district. On a Sunday morning, a lively fish and produce market opens on the docks early, with everything under the sun for sale by merchants known as much for their humor as their goods.

Revellers will stay up all Saturday night and then head over to the docks for breakfast. Inside the old fish market building, lively bands play everything from old Beattle songs to hard rock while visitors dance, drink beer or sample freshly made waffles.

Of all the reasons why Germany and Austria fostered so many great musicians, perhaps the most important is that, despite sometimes odd and quirky personalities, the composers helped one another. Brahms supported young musicians such as Dvorak, and he was helped by Robert Schumann. Mendelssohn was responsible for renewing interest in J.S. Bach, who had been totally forgotten, and Schubert was guided by Salieri who ironically (and most likely erroneously) has gone down in history for destroying Mozart.

Most of all, they set standards for each other. As Brahms once said of Beethoven, “You don’t know what it’s like hearing that giant marching behind me.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO: Lufthansa German Airines has daily flights to Frankfurt from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and Houston, with easy connections from there to Leipzig and Hamburg. Accommodation: There are a wide range of pensions and hotels, but the Steigenberger Hotel in Hamburg is particularly recommended. Located on one of the city’s canals (Hamburg is often compared to Venice), the new Steigenberger combines traditional German excellence in service and style with cosmopolitan flair in its restaurants. (Heiligengeistbrucke 4, D-20459 Hamburg, telephone 011-40-368060.) In Vienna, don’t miss the Cafe zum alten Blumenstock on Ballgasse 6, which was a hangout for the musicians, or the Restaurant Grieschenbeisl on Fleischmarkt 11, where you can see a wall adorned by the signatures of musicians and other “greats.” For more information on Germany and Austria contact: the German National Tourist Office, Chanin Bldg., 122 E. 42nd St., 52nd Floor, New York, NY 10168-0072, phone (212) 661-7200, fax (212) 661-7174; the Austria National Tourist Office, Box 1142, Times Square, New York, NY 10108, (212) 944-6880; fax (212) 730-4568.

This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO: Lufthansa German Airines has daily flights to Frankfurt from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and Houston, with easy connections from there to Leipzig and Hamburg. Accommodation: There are a wide range of pensions and hotels, but the Steigenberger Hotel in Hamburg is particularly recommended. Located on one of the city’s canals (Hamburg is often compared to Venice), the new Steigenberger combines traditional German excellence in service and style with cosmopolitan flair in its restaurants. (Heiligengeistbrucke 4, D-20459 Hamburg, telephone 011-40-368060.) In Vienna, don’t miss the Cafe zum alten Blumenstock on Ballgasse 6, which was a hangout for the musicians, or the Restaurant Grieschenbeisl on Fleischmarkt 11, where you can see a wall adorned by the signatures of musicians and other “greats.” For more information on Germany and Austria contact: the German National Tourist Office, Chanin Bldg., 122 E. 42nd St., 52nd Floor, New York, NY 10168-0072, phone (212) 661-7200, fax (212) 661-7174; the Austria National Tourist Office, Box 1142, Times Square, New York, NY 10108, (212) 944-6880; fax (212) 730-4568.