Saturday the 2nd began with a trip to the Haus der Musik, a museum (sort of...) dedicated to several different aspects of music and music history. First of all, there were several exhibits on the history of classical music in Vienna, with a few cool pieces of memorabilia, such as Leonard Bernstein's tuxedo, Brahms's reading glasses, and an assortment of batons used by famous conductors. Next there was a huge section dedicated to the physics of sound, with several fascinating oddities to learn about. Probably the coolest of these was the Shepard scale, a special combination of sine waves that produces a seemingly "infinite" glissando; it goes up or down forever but never gets anywhere. Some of the other displays included an audio catalog of human sounds and a series of ambience-domes (you stick your head into them and hear, for example, the sounds of a square in Venice). After the physics stuff came the composer rooms. These were large exhibits dedicated to single composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, and others. There was so much to see and so little time that I didn't get to absorb all of the displays, but I did learn some cool facts. For example, there are 27 documented Beethoven residences in Vienna, but he may have had as many as 60 in the 35 years that he lived there. Other parts of the exhibits were just weird. For example, they had a door from one of Beethoven's apartments, and they had several silly things like matchboxes with Johann Strauss II's portrait on the front. That being said, I did enjoy most of the composer rooms, particularly the one dedicated to Gustav Mahler. It had a really unique setup, with trees protruding through the floor and ceiling and hung with letters, pictures, and other historical artifacts. It was definitely one of the most creative museum exhibits I had yet seen. Our last stop before the gift shop was a virtual conducting game, where you hold a wii-remote-esque baton and conduct a recorded orchestra performance in which the orchestra actually follows your motions. As you might expect, it was not entirely accurate, so my performance was really embarrassing. Nevertheless, it was a fun way to end the tour! After the Haus der Musik I went to the Café Salieri with a couple of my friends and had a delicious, if overpriced, Hawaiian pizza. Italian food was simply unavoidable in Vienna... After that we met up with the rest of our group at the Leopold Art Museum, another famous and fantastic assortment of works by Klimt, Schiele, and others. One cool special exhibit was "Klimt Persönlich," or "Klimt Up Close and Personal." In addition to his works, the exhibit had handwritten letters, postcards, notes... all kinds of things to provide insight into the mind of the famous artist. It was neat to see how things as simple as his handwriting and writing style progressed over the years. For example, his early letters were utilitarian, with only a few bare-bones words to get the message across and most of the paper taken up by his signature. As the years progressed, however, the letters became longer and more heartfelt. It was nice to appreciate these finer details of Klimt's life; it wasn't something I expected from an art museum! As for the rest of the museum, I really enjoyed it too, but I won't go into great detail here because there was such a variety of things to see. Instead I plan to post pictures (on all the posts) very soon. That will give you an idea of some of the other artists, the biggest of these being Egon Schiele, one of Klimt's contemporaries. His works were interesting, if a bit disturbing, because of a seemingly Freudian influence; he typically explored the darker, more primal aspects of nature and his paintings certainly reflect that. After the Leopold Museum, we headed back toward the Turkish neighborhood near our hotel, picked up some Russian beer that I had been wanting to try for some time—it was delicious—, and met up at Café Ando, a primarily Turkish restaurant. I had some curried chicken skewers that were pretty tasty. After that we headed ALL the way back to the Museumsquartier (right next to the Leopold Museum...), the huge young adult hangout, just to chill for a while. It was nice to just sit around and chat over some snacks and drinks after a long day (and a long trip at that!).
No comments:
Post a Comment