a dying art

at the risk of sounding like a victorian novelist, i spend an absolutely delightful day at the schönberg center, near karlsplatz. no, no, don't laugh....i mean it (fortunately or unfortunately). the exhibit they have set up is entertaining, informative, and engaging. they are currently running this multi-media event called "who i am" (or, if you feel like spanking yourself with some german, "wer ich bin"), and it's really great. they have set up schönberg's study the way he had it in los angeles, using all the real (!!) things, even though they are behind glass, and they have a video of his daughter walking you through everything....he was an incredible craftsman, and built most of his equipment himself, including devices that made it easier for him to navigate his tone rows, like a system of index cards labeled with the prime forms (he calls these the basic sets), and their inversions. they have a table in another room with reproductions of these things on them, and encourage you to handle them and figure them out. 

there are tons of devices like that...wheels, cylinders, charts...it actually makes it easy to see why someone could compose that way without LOSING THEIR MIND. i mean, he wrote an entire OPERA based on ONE TONE ROW. good god. i would have lept into the danube. or the pacific ocean, depending on if i were shönberg before or after the umlaut (sorry. bad music joke. schönberg himself anglicized the spelling of his name to schoenberg when he moved to the u.s....i'm never sure which spelling to use, but for now i like typing umlauts). 

they also have reproductions of materials from his teaching years...course rosters, exercises he'd corrected, notes he wrote about a student recital, and some final exams for his courses at ucla. it was way cool. they played some radio interviews he did, and showed the transcripts in german and english on a nearby tv screen. on the whole, schönberg was cool. 

but their library! it is really great. anybody can go in, grab a book off a shelf, sit at this huge communal table, and work for as long as they want (i sat down around 11, came up for lunch around 2, and then worked til 5....it was really engrossing). i swear, EVERY book their was interesting, and SO MANY were applicable to my project. there were books about the reaction of klimt, mahler, moser (yay!), schnitzler, schönberg, and loos to beethoven, musical symbols in schoenberg's pieces, i mean...everything. and the list of sources i got that i want to check out is like five pages long. i've learned that dissertations are a good place to go to get lists of primary sources, because i don't have the courage yet to attempt a full bibliographical book without a bottle of motrin and some antacid on hand. (oh, and ps: you can see the exhibit and spend the day in the library for a mere pittance of 2.50 Euros). 

they also have a shop, as all the museums and centers do, but this one is actually USEFUL. they have scores, recordings, books (in german and english translations), essays, pamphlets...i intend on picking some stuff up tomorrow, but i didn't want to lug it all around as i went shopping today. 

as i was walking back to the u-bahn to head back to the 7th district (that's where i'm staying), i started to wax philosophical about music in general, and what it means to me specifically. the times i've had conversations with people about why i'm here, they all tend to regard me as odd...that i would come to vienna not just to drink coffee and buy souveniers and take a river tour. but in reality, this is a vacation for me, of the very best kind. i think many people regard it as strange that i (and most of my musician friends) have decided to devote our lives to something so few people really understand or care about. 

but when i think about what music has done for me, (and i'm not talking about emotionally, although certainly there is that aspect, too. when have i not been lifted out of a foul mood by beethoven's 4th piano concerto? when has schubert's string quintet never made me marvel?), what it's meant to my life, i realize that there's nothing else i COULD do. i credit my summers at interlochen with helping me become who i am now. i think they changed me from a socially uncomfortable person to someone who knew who she was, what she stood for, and what she wanted to do. music has been responsible for so many of my very best decisions, living in baltimore, the friends i have now, trips around the world (with more to follow, i'm sure). 

i wonder sometimes why i've decided to devote myself to the minutia of an art form that seems to be dying, but then i think that if music continues to change people, to uplift them and show them something new, something beautiful, something painful, or something ugly--if it does for others what it's done for me, than there's no way it can ever possibly die.