Art, Music, and Darkness in Vienna

A trip to Vienna in July to celebrate a special anniversary, revealed wonders not previously seen.
 
The exhibition of ‘New Objectivity’, German art in the Weimar Republic, (1918 – 1933), at the Leopold Museum was the most disturbing. To quote from the catalogue: “The physical and psychological injuries and abysmal experiences of World War I, which claimed the lives of more than nine million people and left over twenty million wounded, called for new depictions of reality in art.” Some of these ‘new depictions' really were quite unsettling. 
 
Far less disquieting but fascinating nevertheless—in the top floor of the Vienna Museum—was another art exhibition, this was of the Successionists. They were the new art movement dating from around 1900 in Germany and Austria, which numbered Gustav Klimt as a central figure. For the most part these were somewhat more naturalistic than the art from the time of the Weimar Republic, but immensely compelling.
 
The Vienna Museum charts the history of the city over the ages, and most interesting is how it deals with the dark period, 1938 – 1945. There were ghastly antisemitic posters—apparently even the NAZIs were surprised at the vehemence of the Austrians against their own Jews. There were photographs of Hitler addressing the masses after his troops marched into Austria in 1938. And then a glass-topped case caught my eye. It seemed to be haphazardly piled with junk; there was a framed picture leaning over against something almost hidden—it was a bust of Hitler, on its back, heaved into a cupboard as it were and forgotten. An excellent way of dealing with a very painful period of history. 
 
Then there was the Museum of Music, original home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with a small cinema showing repeats of the New Year’s Day concerts at the Musikverein, as well as the open-air summer concerts from Schönbrunn. Each of the main Viennese composers had a room with memorabilia and artefacts. My favourites were Beethoven, Schubert, and Gustav Mahler.

After that we visited Sigmund Freud’s house which we have seen before but which has had a recent major makeover. Much fascinating material was on display but most poignant was Freud’s family tree. Freud left for England in 1938, but his four elderly sisters stayed in Vienna. One died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto and the other three, in their late seventies and early eighties, were murdered by the NAZIs at Treblinka.
 
Walking to the Vienna Museum, my wife spotted that we were in Bösendorferstrasse, and there we came across the showrooms of that famous Viennese piano maker. Looking at some of the wonderful grand pianos on show, it became clear that each one is a work of art in itself. From the magnificent cast-iron frame, left for six months to fully anneal, finished to perfection, and strung with golden strings, to the beautiful polished wood case, and the tiers of wooden levers and hammers forming the action. Of the latter there was a model on show, and I spent ages pressing the key and trying to understand how it all worked.
 
The action of a grand piano is a minor miracle of mechanical engineering, albeit mostly in wood and felt. An amplifying linkage of several levers from the piano key causes the hammer to strike the strings and immediately fall back to avoid damping, while being able to repeat the note around ten times per second. The low inertia of the wooden linkages allows this high speed. While all of this is going on, other linkages operate the dampers, either from the individual key being pressed, or from the foot pedals. And these structures are replicated, side by side, eighty-eight times in a modern grand... There are many diagrams and explanations online, but the best animation I have seen is here: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steinway-sons-grand-piano-action-model-a1637020eeea4033a5ec611b50cbf045
 
This was a most stimulating visit to the old imperial capital of Austria-Hungary and the catalogues of those two art exhibitions provide much to study and ponder. The memory is somewhat overshadowed though by knowledge of the fate of Sigmund Freud’s sisters. I will never understand how any political philosophy can be satisfied by the cold-blooded State murder of several harmless and respectable elderly ladies.