Music nerds in Vienna
After taking a picturesque train ride from Munich, we arrived in Vienna. On the to-do list, Mozarthaus and the Haus der Musik. But why Mozart? Well, as clarinet players, we are very fond of Mozart because he wrote arguably one of the most famous clarinet concertos, and everyone in our clarinet studio studied the piece during the spring of our junior year. Also, the very first duet Emma and I ever played together was written by Mozart.
We started the day with Mozarthaus, which included an exhibition on some of his greatest pieces of music (shoutout “The Magic Flute” and “Marriage of Figaro”) on the upper levels of the building and his actual apartment on the lower level.
The museum fee included an audioguide, and what I loved about it was that as you went from room to room, Mozart’s music was playing in the background of the audioguide. Emma and I were swaying and humming along all throughout!
The next stop was lunch, and placed conveniently near the museum was a tearoom called Haas &Haas Teehaus. It seemed to be a mixture between a classic English tearoom, a Japanese tearoom and a Viennese teehaus (It sounds crazy, but it really works). We had an amazing cake platter with slices of orange, lemon, chocolate and fruit cakes and two teas! The first one we had was an Assam Golden Melange, which was a perfect tea to warm us up after a chilly walk to the town center. The other tea that we tried was a traditional Viennese apricot black tea. If you’re not a tea lover, the aroma alone of this tea would be enough to convert you!
Feeling revived, we heading to the Haus der Musik, a big museum covering topics like the Vienna Philharmonic, prominent composers and the science behind sound. Our favorite rooms were on Mozart (no surprise there) and Mahler. We both got photos by their famous pianos, showing our inner music nerds once again.
By far the weirdest and simultaneously coolest part of this museum was a section called the Sonosphere. It dealt with the theory behind sound and how it applies to music, and it had interactive stations on things like imaginary overtones (so what we hear is not actually what we hear???) and the Sheperd scale. Essentially, the Shepard scale tricks your mind into thinking it is infinite by varying the intensities of the same notes in different octaves. So while the highest octaves of a note start to disappear into the background, the lower octaves come to the forefront, making your brain think the scale is continuous. I promise it makes sense, but you really have to hear it for yourself.
Other tidbits from today: Mozart loved to be super extra, conductor Hans Pfitzner used a really long baton (as Harry Potter nerds as well as music nerds, we call it the Elder Wand of batons) and Vienna is a fantastic city that we cannot wait to keep exploring.
