Think of a deaf man who changed music. Despite his disadvantage his work still lives today and we are all in great debt to his wonderful legacy played every day everywhere in the world! Now, let us give a short visit to his home in Vienna together.
The Beethoven Museum is a small treasure just outside the centre of Vienna where Beethoven moved to escape the hectic and noisy (still hearing!) city life in late 17 hundreds. The house he lived in, next to a church and the oldest Heurige in Vienna, was being renovated in Spring 2022 but the museum some 100 metres further west was open. Don’t bother to come in a wheelchair, no lifts in the 19th century! Keep tight to your walking stick in the stairs, too!
Beethoven moved from Vienna to Heiligenstadt (a small village just outside Vienna) as described below in the museum:
" Too much work, too little acknowledgment of his worth, worries about a decent livelihood, a lost or unrequited love, the increasingly worse state of his hearing, and a high level of pressure due to the expectations he placed on himself grounds for the 31-year-old Beethoven' deteriorating health in 1801. His doctor sent him far from the noise and bustle of the city to convalesce amid the natural surroundings of the countryside. Beethoven moved to Heiligenstadt (today a part of Vienna's Döbling district) on 23 April 1802, a small wine and hot-spring area with a sulfurous spring at the foot of the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg mountains. The village lay some five kilometers north of Vienna's center. At the time passengers could reach Heiligenstadt comfortably in less than an hour with the Zeiserlwagen, a horse-drawn "omnibus" coach that only operated outside the Linienwall fortifications. In addition to tons of his fabulous music, this is where Beethoven wrote his Heiligenstädter Testament, a philosophical review about being poor and sinful, going deaf and whatnot. "
The museum is definitely worth a visit, but, alas, no café - be prepared to take your wine glass at the Heurige next door. There is a museum shop at the ticket shop but it is not a music lover’s den at all, a few notes perhaps and an odd souvenir for the least-favoured cousin’s kid, maybe. There is a loo, a necessity after a good hour in the museum, tidy yes, but nothing much to write home about here - the usual chipboard partings and tired look. Instead, you can enjoy a small concert in the concert hall - they have put a brilliant miniature concert hall behind a video screen that makes it look and sound almost as a real concert!
Beethoven Museum, Probusgasse 6, 1190 Vienna