We are learning about composers in school right now and this week we have been learning about Mozart! He is my kids’ favorite composer and they have been waiting to learn about him, so this was a very exciting week at our house. I love the walking tours I found online that are musician walks. We did the Mozart walking touring on Friday, and it is such a beautiful way to tour the city. You encounter places you have never seen, small out of the way historical treasures, and look at the city through a different lens.
On the Beethoven tour, there are a variety of places Beethoven lived that can still be visited. With Mozart, he only lived in Vienna 10 years. In those 10 years, he moved a dozen times and only one of his residences still exists today. Most of the tour consisted of finding plaques that showed where his apartment was. Our first stop was a building where Mozart stayed when he first came to live in Vienna. Here is the interesting story of this house:
“In 1781, the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg moved into the house as a visitor, and in his company was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The 25 year old Mozart worked as a composer and musician at the court of Salzburg; one night, he insisted in conducting a performance of his against the Archbishops wishes. For this impertinence, the Count of Arco, threw Mozart out: Or actually “kicked” him out, the famous kick in Mozart′s butt happened at the doorstep of the Deutschordenshaus on the 2nd of May, 1781.”
This is when Mozart officially resigned and became a freelance artist who stayed in Vienna. Also in the building is a beautiful 12th century theater where you can still go and see Mozart concerts. This was a gem I had not seen before, and I am glad the tour brought us to this easy to miss spot of the city!
The best part of this tour was walking in areas of the city where I normally would not go, that Mozart lived and walked around! These narrow side streets, beautiful courtyards, alleyways, and old buildings still feel like they are from another era, so it was easy to imagine Mozart living and working here. I have not previously explored many of these small, uncrowded side streets in the city. They have a very different feeling than the busy city center usually has, and the walking tour guide we used pointed out several small courtyards and walkways that made the tour very interesting.
The main attraction on the tour is of course the Mozart Haus museum, which is a museum about life in Vienna during Mozart’s lifetime with one floor of the museum being the only surviving residence of Mozart in the city. He lived here three years and created many memorable works in this home. Mozart composed “The Marriage of Figaro” here, as well as numerous other works. This was where he was visited by Haydn, where he met the young Beethoven, and lived happily with his wife, children, and also a young student who stayed with them for a year.
Oliver LOVED seeing the music that Mozart had actually written, and was excited to discover that Mozart had a pet dog. There was also a whole section on Freemasonry in Austria, because Mozart was a Mason. I never knew that or much about Masons, so I found that section interesting. There are very few items that actually belonged to Mozart, mostly just information about his life and paintings, replicas of his music, and some multimedia displays on his work.
One interested part was that the apartment was painted white everywhere (as is common here in the city), but one section had paint scraped away to show the beautiful murals that covered the walls when Mozart lived here. There are 90 layers of paint covering the murals that used to be on the walls. There was one room where a beautiful and ornate ceiling could be seen. This must have been a very beautiful apartment when Mozart was here, I wish all the murals had been restored.
Our next stop was St. Stephens Cathedral. This is where Mozart was married, and there is also a plaque stating that the remains of Mozart received their final blessing here. The kids liked the small skull with bat wings, and we usually don’t walk on this side of the cathedral, so it was neat to see the back of the church.
We stopped by another plaque showing where Mozart lived for a short time. Mozart rented a room from Frau Weber, and fell in love with her daughter Constanze. Once the neighbors began to gossip, he moved to a different apartment around the corner on the Graben. In that apartment he composed an opera which allowed him to finance his marriage to Constanze. Can I just mention that I love their love story? It has been so fun to learn about their sweet, loving relationship.
No Mozart tour would be complete without seeing a giant Mozartkugel!
We stopped by the Michaelerkirche, which is where Mozart’s final composition (which a student finished for him), Requiem was played a few days after his death in a requiem service for Mozart. Joseph Haydn also played the organ in this church and lived in an apartment next door. I don’t know why it surprised me, but I was amazed at how much the famous composers I am familiar with had interaction with each other. I never realized they all lived at similar times and therefore helped each other at times, inspired each others work, and taught each other.
We ended our tour at the Mozart Memorial in the Burggarten. We love this memorial and have taken pictures here many times, and yet we discovered so much about it on the tour! The large “blank” space near the bottom is not blank at all; there is a relief with scenes from “Don Giovanni” etched into it. The back of the memorial has a beautiful piece with Mozart, his sister, and his father! I have never looked at the back before. The kids also enjoyed examining the whole memorial and discovering bits that were meaningful to them, such as the basket that looks like the basket Papageno carries in “The Magic Flute”, or the variety of instruments shown. There were many parts of the tour that took us to familiar places that seemed new again because of a new discovery that the tour guide pointed out. It was a great day. There are a few more places we ran out of time to see, so we will have to finish up with a few more stops around the city next week.
We have really enjoyed learning about Mozart from multiple books from the library, we have listened to a lot of his music, enjoyed Oliver’s “Magic Flute” stuffed animal performances, and tonight we baked cookies shaped like Mozart! I found this awesome cookie cutter at a local souvenir shop. Marion said, “Mozart, you are so handsome! So sad I am going to eat you!” Oliver even dressed as Herr Mozart for the occasion. Afterwards we enjoyed reading the Magic Treehouse book, “Moonlight on the Magic Flute” before heading off to bed.
