Vienna’s House Museums: Intimate Moments with Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Haydn
Vienna’s house museums fly under the radar but for fans of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Haydn, they are not to be missed.
Vienna’s House Museums
Once home to a star-studded cast of composers – Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms – Vienna has always been a magnet for
classical music lovers. But as we were to find out, the definite highlight of one’s pilgrimage to the city is the exquisite delight of meeting each composer in their own home. While the lines to buy tickets for concerts are long, the seats costly and overbooked concert halls a tad claustrophobic, you can sail into the charmingly maintained precincts of the former residences of Mozart, Haydn, Schubert and Beethoven with the good chance that your communion with these heroes will be private and unhurried. And will likely reveal something that never makes it on a published score, a concert program, or a museum wall.
Vienna’s House Museums: W.A. Mozart
I should like to have everything that is good and genuine, and beautiful. W.A. Mozart
Our house calls on the famous names in classical music began with Vienna’s most celebrated son: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In 1781, Mozart’s music was increasingly in demand, and a move from Salzburg to a commodious, well-situated apartment in Vienna announced to European society that W.A. Mozart had ‘arrived’.
Occupying ½ block of prime downtown Vienna real estate (within the cathedral precincts and a short walk from the opera house), the first story
walkup whisked clients, students, colleagues, impressarios and reps from European publishing houses from the carriages in the busy streets below into the epicentre of Viennese musical life above. The quarters are modest – just 5 or 6 rooms – and undoubtedly served dual purposes in order to accommodate Mozart’s business and family needs. 
Each sitting room likely doubled as a rehearsal space by day. Considering that Mozart’s earnings were comparable to the physician’s during this period in Vienna (1781-1791), Mozart’s family was well compensated for the inconveniences endured on Schulerstrasse.
I have more honour in my body than any count. W.A. Mozart
Beautifully maintained and curated by Vienna Museum, we trace the musical curve of Mozart’s life in rooms that had reputedly housed his happiest and most prolific years as a composer. Being able to meander through furnished salons in an Arcadian theme, most with claviers perched in the centre, all with a selection of his diaries, programs, correspondence and artist rendered portraits, help to bring us a little closer to the soul of this creative genius.
Patience and tranquility of mind contribute more to the cure of our distempers than the whole art of our medicine. W.A. Mozart
In an alcove, stop for a comparative selection of singers cast in major roles of Mozart’s operas, and in another, examine a reconstruction of the Austrian capital circa 1786, and the reports of the municipality level politics that was Mozart’s world at the time of Don Giovanni‘s debut. And
you’ll likely do this unjostled by others trying to do the same. Off season, be welcomed by the gaggle of ticket booth, coat check, cafe and Bosendorfer Hall staff for a relaxed, but immensely enlightening journey through the Vienna-inspired period of Mozart’s life.
MozartHaus is situated at Domgasse 5 in central Vienna, accessed by U1, U3 or Busline to Stephensplatz. Open daily 10:00-19:00 p.m. Price for adults: 11 euros, with reduced rates for seniors, children and groups. www.mozarthausvienna.at
Vienna’s House Museums: Franz Schubert
While Mozart may have been Vienna’s celebrated son, Schubert had been its most devoted one, living in Vienna for the entirety of his short 
life. He had two residences here during his lifetime, one as a boy with his schoolmaster father (Geburtshaus) and, the other as a young adult (Schubert Sterbewohnung). Both residences are now open to the public and preserved as house museums.
Situated in a neighbourhood not far from the old Jewish quarter of Vienna, Schubert’s boyhood residence was primarily a school, with a small core area preserved for the family’s living quarters. A small entranceway from the street opens to a cavernous foyer and beyond, a courtyard flanked by two wings of what were the classrooms for the
neighborhood’s young primary-age boys. The fee charged would have covered the Schubert family’s household expenses, and enabled them to support their son’s obvious musical aptitude.
The much-loved keyboard from his early days as a composer is still in its nook in the sitting room, and numerous handwritten scores line the walls around it. You can make out a few bars of Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (Shepherd on the Rock), and a few more from the haunting Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel), penned in the room you are standing in. What an exquisite privilege to imagine the rain and wind straining against the windows, the
flicker of candlelight cast against the wall while these melodies flowed from Schubert’s pen. The knowledge gleaned and images inspired by a visit to Geburtshaus will keep you forever in the following of this extraordinarily gifted composer.
Geburtshaus is located at Nussdorfer 54. It is open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-1:00, 2:00-6:00 pm. Closed Monday and public holidays. Admission is 5 euros for adults, reduced rate for children and groups.
Vienna’s House Museums: Ludwig Van Beethoven
Beethoven had a number of residences, both in Bonn and Vienna. The one he was happiest to secure in Vienna was a fourth floor apartment in
a building that towered above a secluded park-like section of the city. Finding the setting ideal for his work, in the two periods in which he was in this apt – 1804-08 and 1810-1814 – he wrote the 5th, 7th and 8th symphonies and his only opera, Fidelio.
Access to Pasqualatihaus (named after the owner of the building) is via a modest stone set of steps that tunnels up to Bethoven’s one-time aerie on the fourth floor. The three rooms are stark and austere and easily imagined as a writer’s retreat. A replica of
Beethoven’s Broadway piano dominates the main salon, and as you wander through the rooms, you are quite certain the pesante theme from the pastoral symphony wants to gently synchronize with your footsteps. Manuscripts displayed throughout the apartment attest to the painstaking process that was behind this genius’s work. Pages and and pages written, then scratched out and rewritten again, sometimes duplicated 28 times – for each instrument in the orchestra.
Recordings of the works that did make it past the cutting table are available in an audio corner. If you’re like me, hearing Wilhelm Kempf with the Esterhazy Trio in a piano trio, or The Overture to Fidelio with the Vienna State Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein in what was likely the composer’s dining room, will prove an unforgettable ‘tasting’ experience.
Your communion with the edifice that was Beethoven will be 
heightened immeasurably should you have the the museum to yourself when visiting, and, off-season (Oct-May), chances are good.
Pasqualatihaus is located at Molki Bastei 8, Vienna. Open Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-1:00 & 2:00-6:00 pm. Closed Mondays and public holidays. Admission is 5 euros for adults, reduced rates for children and groups.
Vienna’s House Museums: Joseph Haydn
Papa Haydn, trailblazer of the classical form and style in music, spent most of his career as the director of music in the court of the Princes of
Esterhazy. He was to enjoy the final 13 years of his life in Vienna (1795-1809) when his duties in Esterhazy were winding down, and his popularity with audiences in London and Vienna was dialing up.
Haydnhaus, in Haydn’s day, was considered to be in an outlying village of Vienna, and today is found tucked away in the busy Mariahilferstrasse district of Vienna. A large house for its time – Haydn had a second floor added to it – but certainly due a man of Haydn’s stature and reputation as the most famous composer in all of Europe at that time. It was here that Haydn experienced the most creative, fruitful years of his career, claiming that “My imagination plays on me as if I were a piano.” Both of his
oratorios – The Seasons, and The Creation – and the last nine of his string quartets were written in Haydnhaus. And it was here that Haydn was able to enjoy colleagueship of his contemporaries, including that of young Mozart and Beethoven.
The spaciousness of Haydnhaus allows a wide and varied display of Haydn’s life and work. Wrapped around an inner courtyard which now doubles as a tea garden for visitors, the two story building features carefully restored living quarters, and the rooms in which Haydn would
have composed, rehearsed, taught and meet with fellow musicians and business associates. One room is entirely devoted to Brahms, who was an ardent admirer of Haydn, and was instrumental in preserving Haydn’s artifacts and legacy.
Haydn’s daily life is well documented, and idiosyncracies of his daily habits such as ‘fantasizing’ (improvising) on the keyboard 3.5 hours a day (which would form the basis of his compositional sketches) and not breaking until 10:00 at night for an evening meal of milk and bread, informs us of his highly disciplined regimen.
The generous stipends he was now receiving as a composer (for instance, at its first performance, The Creation earned 8,000 florins – about 120,000 euros in today’s currency!) must have seemed a trifling extravagant to a man accustomed in such an ascetic lifestyle. Indeed, Haydn did become known for his philanthropy, with many of the proceeds of concerts going to 
charities such as the St. Marx Poor Relief House. Likewise, letters and gifts and thank you notes and ‘visiting cards’ that were a regular part of Haydn’s epistolary life show a tender regard for his servants, many of whom he regarded as family.
If you are lucky enough to visit between busloads of tourists (yes, even a full-sized bus can find their way down these narrow cobblestoned streets), the Haydnhaus, like all the other house museums in Vienna, is a jewel
Haydnhaus is located at Haydngasse 19. Opening hours are Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-1:00 pm & 2:00-6:00 pm. Closed on Mondays and public holidays. Admission is 5 euros for adults, reduced rates for children and groups.
