Inside The Beethoven House in Heiligenstad, a beethoven head sculpture that is larger than a real person is shocking.
Beethoven, 250, was "quarantined"
Text, photo/Zhang Lushi
Listening to music can be done in the morning and evening, but travel is often driven by special days. December 17, 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. In early March 2020, on the eve of the pandemic ravaging Europe, I revisited Vienna and Bonn to the two cities where the composer grew up and matured, refreshing my memories and impressions from several Beethoven biographies.
For the past decade, I've been to Vienna every year, and I've visited a few Of Beethoven's houses when I think about it, but I never seem to be able to finish. After all, according to my Austrian friend Aisha, who studied art history, there are as many as 67 Beethoven houses in Vienna! Beethoven's hometown is in Bonn, but most of his works since he moved to the Austrian capital at the age of 22 have premiered in Vienna.
This time, I chose four former homes. The first place to visit is the Pasquaratti House in Vienna's 1st district. Going up the stairs to the fourth floor, I found a pink heart-shaped lock hanging from the handrail, which was engraved "Beethoven will be back." "At the beginning of the 19th century, the buildings in front of me did not exist at that time. Beethoven looked out of his fourth-floor window and could see a green forest. Part of his Sixth Symphony (Pastoral Symphony) is written here.
After leaving the 1st arrondissement, I arrived at the Beethoven House in Vienna's 19th arrondissement, which is adjacent to a mountain forest with a large vineyard. I've been here several times, and each time I've tasted local wine and sat in the courtyard eating some meat while imagining that Beethoven had written the Third Symphony (Symphony of Heroes) here. A famous history is that when Beethoven first dedicated the title of the Third Symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, he considered him to be the embodiment of the democratic and anti-authoritarian ideals of the French Revolution. However, in the autumn of 1804, Napoleon declared himself emperor in France, and Beethoven withdrew the inscription after hearing the news. But the work was, after all, funded by the nobility, and the composer changed the Third Symphony to Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkovic: hereditary prince of the Bohemian nobility of the Holy Roman Empire.
Inside the Beethoven House on the outskirts of Vienna, the interior of the theater from the premiere of the composer's conducting work is recreated. In fact, most of Vienna's theaters today still retain their original appearance from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Then I took a tram to the small town of Heiligenstadt on the outskirts of Vienna. In 1802, when Beethoven was suffering from deafness, he moved here for recuperation, lived halfway through, and at one point had suicidal thoughts, leaving the famous Heiligenstadt suicide note for the two younger brothers in the family. In today's House Museum, every room shows Beethoven's life in his later years. What impressed me most in the house was a beethoven head that was larger than a real person, and the craggy edges and corners of the statue carved out the composer's animalistic depression. Next to it was a bottle of jam. It was as if You could hear Beethoven on his sickbed shouting to the maid, "Pickled cherry sauce without lemon, wine!" ”
At lunchtime, I returned to downtown Vienna and came to a restaurant named after "Ludwig Van". Oliver, who took over the restaurant four years ago, took me up to the second floor of this 18th-century courtyard and pointed to a door that I fixed my eyes on, and it was engraved with "Beethoven's Room." It turned out that this was another former residence! Anyone who came to dinner, at the request of oliver, the owner of the restaurant, would be taken upstairs to have a look. Today this building is still an ordinary house. Not only did the restaurant bear the name "Ludwig Van", Oliver also asked the chef to study the old recipes of 18th-century Vienna, and then asked a Beethoven scholar to confirm which dishes Beethoven loved to eat. Old recipes record that Austrians ate a lot of food at that time, and turtle meat and some game meat that is no longer on the table today are common. In the year of Beethoven's 250th birthday, Oliver decided to launch the "Ludwig van Beethoven 1820 Menu" one night at each of the four seasons of the year. The menu features beef brain soup, beef salad, smoked trout, pike, stewed radish beans and vegetables. Now it seems that I guess this plan can only be shelved.
When art lovers come to Vienna, they visit the "Secession Guild Hall" founded by a group of painters who challenged traditional academic art, centered on Klimt, more than a hundred years ago. As the world's oldest independent contemporary art exhibition space today, more than 3,000 gold-plated iron laurel leaves on the roof are still shining with pioneer light after more than a century of standing. The guild hall was restored and reopened. I entered the door after ten years, and the aesthetic expression above the door: "Every era has its art, art has its freedom", which is still thought-provoking.
The Klimt mural "The Long Scroll of Beethoven" on the basement floor is the only permanent exhibition of the "Secession Hall" and the treasure of the town hall. In 1902, Klimt was inspired by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Another German composer, Wagner's interpretation of the symphony: a group of flying people moving horizontally, leaving blank space below until the rhythm was interrupted by the "Seven Deadly Sins" picture. The appearance of images such as "Giant Tis" and "Serpent-haired Banshee" symbolizes the threat that human beings face under the temptation of low-level tastes; the "poetry" of the muse is transformed into a muse, leading mankind to a noble pursuit, a country of artistic ideals. The happy moment that finally appears at the same time of the sun and the moon is the "kiss of the world" between a man and a woman. The long scroll was purchased by industrialist Augustine Raeder in 1915, and before World War II the Raeder family's property was confiscated by the Nazis, but the mural remained in Austria. After the confiscation of the murals in 1973, the Vienna Federal Antiquities Office spent ten years restoring the long scrolls, and in 1986, the Austrian National Gallery announced that the Long Scrolls of Beethoven would be "borrowed" indefinitely in the Secession Guildhall.
The day before I left Vienna, I had arranged to see a concert of Beethoven's works. But that afternoon, while watching the exhibition at the Belvedere Palace, I suddenly received a phone call saying that the concert that night had just been canceled. Check the news immediately, it turns out that Austria has just announced the cancellation of all performances and concerts. The next day, just after boarding the train leaving Vienna, I received a message from my friend Elsa: the Belvedere Palace has also been closed. The libraries and museums I visited two days ago have also closed their doors. Looking out the window at the moving scenery, it feels like you've just finished your journey to Vienna, like catching the last subway before midnight.
The Austrian National Library has curated a special exhibition for the "Year of Beethoven", but unfortunately it has to end early due to the epidemic.
After leaving Vienna, the train heads in the direction of Bonn. The trip was all about concerts and operas there. Shortly after boarding the bus, an e-mail was received informing germany that it had just cancelled all gatherings and events for more than a thousand people, but that the opera seats for that night were less than a thousand people and that it would be held as planned. I was slightly relieved, but the train pulled near Nuremberg and received an email: "Unfortunately, Germany has just announced that all concerts have been cancelled. When I went to visit the Bonn Orchestra, the first thing Dirk said when the music director met was: "Sorry, now we don't shake hands." Delk said the German government began making the concerts canceled. Bonn's planned Beethoven Year event until December 2020 has now been postponed to September this year due to the epidemic. The Beethoven Birthday Concert in mid-December 2020 was moved online for live broadcasting.
At the "Beethoven House" at 20 Bonn Street, I stepped on the creaking wooden floor and read some of the details of the year: Beethoven got up at 6 o'clock in the morning at the latest, focused on creating for a while, went out for a walk, and in the afternoon dealt with the affairs related to publishing contracts, royalties and commissioned creations. Go to a café in the afternoon, go to a show in the evening, and then go to a tavern. Every time he walked out of the house, Beethoven would always bring a pencil, pocket shorthand book and notebook. In a small sketch of "Beethoven in a Café," the relaxed composer is holding a long pipe.
The commemoration of Bonn was originally a vivid part: Delk collaborated with Vienna to plan a cruise ship, which was designed according to the route that Beethoven left his hometown for Vienna when he was young. We talked for a while and walked together to the cruise ship on the Rhine – today is the launch of the cruise ship. Twenty or thirty people, including the mayor of Bonn, entered the cabin at the same time, the ceremony went as usual, the champagne was illuminated, and there was a pop band performing live on the small stage. But everyone estimated that there were also numbers in their hearts, and sure enough, the news came the next day that the cruise ship project had been canceled.
When I first came to this town 11 years ago, I was most impressed by a huge head sculpture near The Beethoven Concert Hall. It was during the Beethoven Festival in 1986, when Klaus Kamlix from Düsseldorf created it out of concrete, based on the famous portrait of Beethoven painted by the painter Joseph Carl Stiller in 1819. Unfortunately, this time, the sculpture is located on the large construction site of the concert hall that was torn down and rebuilt, and it was "isolated" together. Art is so lifelike.