NYT: Stalking the Memory of Mozart in Vienna

[Frank Forman]

Stalking the Memory of Mozart in Vienna
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/travel/mozart-vienna.html

By LISA SCHWARZBAUM

Leopold Mozart would have admired the marketing skills of the
persistent young men in ratty wigs and fraying red waistcoats who
prowl Stephansplatz, Vienna's central square. Just as the elder
Mozart aggressively promoted the talents of his son Wolfgang
Amadeus, these costumed hawkers are on a similar promotional
mission: Their assignment is to drum up customers for the steady
output of ingratiatingly light, short-attention-span classical
performances programmed around town especially for tourists drawn to
one of the most famous cities in Western music history.

A visitor can't go terribly wrong following the touts of these
barkers in their cartoon costumes mimicking the great composer,
whose image graces the boxes of foil-wrapped, chocolate-and-marzipan
Mozartkugeln sold around town. After all, a bite-size portion of
"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" is better than no Little Night Music at
all. But on a November visit to Vienna, I waved off all enterprising
impostors, with their handbills and hustles.

I am a lapsed violist--impervious, I may add, to viola jokes--
and a serious practicing Mozartian. I may no longer have the chops
to play in a string quartet, but I retain my love of the man's
celestial music. It is because of him that I was in Stephansplatz in
the first place on a chilly pre-winter's day, looking for remnants
of the real man.

Inevitably, while I was at it, I walked in the footsteps of plenty
of other giants of the classical repertory who made Vienna their
home over the last three centuries. Celebrated resident musicians
have included Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner,
Franz Schubert, Antonio Vivaldi, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Arnold
Schoenberg, Hugo Wolf and a passel of Strausses, among them Johann
senior and junior, and the unrelated Richard.

The little pension in which I set up Mozart-stalking headquarters
was on an unprepossessing side street equidistant from the Vienna
State Opera and the Stadtpark. In one direction stood the imposing
opera house (rebuilt and restored after wartime destruction in
1945), where Mahler conducted at the turn of the century and
introduced the radical notion of dimming the theater lights during
performances. (A quick detour on a street behind the building leads
to a plaque noting where Vivaldi once lived.) In the other direction
lay the stately municipal park, with its sculpted monuments to
Bruckner, Schubert, Franz Lehar and Johann Strauss Jr. That last, an
ornate masterwork of selfie bait called the Johann Strauss Golden
Statue, features the waltz king poised with fiddle and bow as if to
strike up the "Blue Danube Waltz."

But with limited time available for exploration, I focused on one
man--not least because Mozart set some kind of record for changes
of Viennese address. Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756, he moved to
Vienna in 1781, when he was 25. And in the next 10 years, until his
death in 1791, Wolfgang (along with his wife, Constanze, and the two
of his six children who lived past infancy) occupied some dozen
apartments during his 35 short years on earth, all of them within
the city's inner District 1. Sometimes the tenancy lasted a matter
of weeks or months.

There are plaques, but no extant homes, to show for Mozart's first
two addresses, at Singerstrasse 7 and Milchgasse 1 beside St.
Peter's Church. There is no plaque at all at Graben 17. And to find
any commemorative notification of Mozart's last address, on
Rauhensteingasse 8, a pilgrim must head to the rear of the Steffl
department store, which occupies the footprint of an apartment
building, demolished in 1847, in which Mozart and his family were
living when he died.
On the other hand, one very solid edifice where the great man once
walked continues to do big business. After two years as husband and
wife, Wolfgang and Constanze moved in 1784 to fine digs at Domgasse
5, and they lived there for three years. (That was a record of
stability for the couple; pity the missus, forever packing the
family knickknacks and supervising 18th-^century moving vans.)

Music poured out of the artist in that happy, prosperous time--
concertos, chamber works, "The Marriage of Figaro." And drink
flowed, too, for guests including Haydn. Johann Nepomuk Hummel moved
in for a time as Mozart's student. (Beethoven intended to pop in for
lessons, too, and set out from Bonn, Germany, to do so, but had to
turn around and head home when his mother became ill.)

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Today the building is renamed Mozarthaus Vienna. Managed by the
city's Wien Museum, it was substantially renovated and spiffed up in
2006 (timed to the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth) to emulate a
model of modern exhibition showmanship: A relatively small nub of
historical authenticity is padded out with slick, somewhat
Disneyfied interpretive displays and audiovisual installations.
Above all, the gift shop looms large, hawking Mozart pencils, key
chains, perfumes, playing cards, paper napkins, thimbles, miniature
busts, chocolates, golf balls and snap-on cases for cellphones.

Leopold Mozart would have been so impressed. But all those gaudy
golf balls left me feeling vaguely bested by souvenirs. So much so
that I walked back to Stephansplatz and into St. Stephen's Cathedral
itself--called Stephansdom--to soothe my consternation and,
indeed, to contemplate life and death. After all, it was here that
Wolfgang Amadeus and Constanze were married in the cathedral, a
magnificent symbol of all Vienna, in 1782. Two of their children
were christened there. And an unspectacular requiem Mass (with none
of Mozart's music) was celebrated there after Mozart's death; a
plaque commemorates the event.

Haydn, once a Stephansdom choirboy, was married in the church in
1760, as was Johann Strauss Jr. At the other end of life's
procession, the names of Vivaldi, Antonio Salieri and Schubert
appear in the cathedral's death register.

Clearly, it was time for me to visit the final resting place of the
man whose music Albert Einstein described as "so pure that it seemed
to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered
by the master." But where exactly was he resting? I took a tram ride
away from the city bustle to the divinely quiet St. Marx Cemetery on
Leberstrasse 6-8 in the Third District where Mozart's coffin was
transported by coach. In contrast to legend and the Oscar-winning
1984 movie "Amadeus," the body was interred not as that of a
nameless pauper. Rather, adhering to a decree by the efficiency- and
sanitation-minded Emperor Joseph II, his burial, like all others,
took place in a communal, unmarked grave.

Unfortunately, without marking, Mozart's resting place could not be
found by the time his widow went looking for it years after his
death (ill from grief, she hadn't attended his funeral). In the
intervening years, the bones in his contingent of dead souls had
probably been dug up and reinterred to make room for the more
recently deceased. Not until 1855 was an approximation of the grave
site selected in a grassy stretch of those communal graves, and a
memorial built.

The cemetery stayed open for new business only another 19 years,
closing in 1874. No wonder it is such a satisfyingly moody,
atmospherically disheveled sanctuary, thick with vegetation and
mournful with pockets of disrepair. Lilacs bloom there in
springtime, but late November was a nicely raw time to walk among
the Biedermeier-period headstones.

And it was easy to find the romantically lachrymose memorial so
often photographed today; just enter the main gate and follow the
signs to Mozartgrab, where a grieving angel rests a right elbow,
heavy with sorrow, on the base of an artfully broken marble column,
and flowers are enhanced by offerings from reverent visitors.

Then again, this particular statuary has been around only since
1950, while the stone artwork installed in 1855 was moved to one
last, and lasting, Viennese site of Mozartean contemplation. And so
off I went by tram again, to the city's central cemetery, the
Zentralfriedhof. It is central, that is, to the history of the city:
One of the largest burial sites in the world, it is, in fact, on the
outskirts of town. Yet the founders were canny.

To draw visitors, Zentralfriedhof plans always included a selection
of "honorary" graves, or ehrengraber. And chief among the honored
are the city's musical greats, which is why the graves of Brahms and
Schoenberg receive such regular foot traffic. And why the remains of
Beethoven and Schubert were moved there in 1888, now flanking Mozart
in a place of honor.

A stiff wind picked up as I stood in front of the three. Bits of
Mozart's own transcendent Requiem played in my head. Far from the
concert carnies of Stephansplatz and the kitschy key chains of
Mozarthaus Vienna, I was refreshed, sated. As I took the No. 71 tram
back toward my pension, I experienced the fervor Schubert felt when
he wrote in his 1816 diary, "O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many,
how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life
you have left in our souls!"

WHERE TO EAT

Mozart loved a hearty meal. For three squares in the style of the
master, try these restaurants.

Breakfast at Café Mozart

Mozart didn't himself set foot here: The place opened in 1794, three
years after his death. But plenty of other musicians and writers
have made the place famous, including Graham Greene, who famously
hunkered down here to write "The Third Man." In his honor, order the
Third Man Breakfast. Albertinaplatz 2; 43-1-24-100-200;
cafe-mozart.at.

Lunch at Café Frauenhuber

Mozart loved the place, and reportedly made his last public
performance here at what is said to be Vienna's oldest coffeehouse,
steps from St. Stephen's Cathedral. Try a lunch of kaiserschmarrn, a
sweet shredded pancake, along with a dollop of the plum fruit
compote called zwetschkenröster.Himmelpfortgasse 6; 43-1-512-39-85;
cafefrauenhuber.at.

Dinner at Griechenbeisl

Serving carnivores since 1447, including Mozart, Beethoven, and
Schubert, and Mark Twain, too. Try the famous pork tenderloin,
ignoring one of the many theories about the cause of Mozart's death:
trichinosis. Fleischmarkt 11; 43-1-533-19-77; griechenbeisl.at.