"I speak for all mediocrities."

The title of this blog entry is what I said after trying to conduct the Wiener Philharmoniker. Well, the virtual one, anyways. It's something I wanted to try as soon as I found out about it and it's location at the Haus der Musik. I thought that being a guy who pretends to conduct orchestras on his iPod would mean that I would be alright with leading a virtual orchestra but they all played "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" much slower than I was commanding. Oh well. I blame the electronic baton.

Certainly there were other great things to see at the Haus der Musik. The first floor, for instance, is devoted to the real Wiener Philharmoniker, and a small theatre there plays the latest of their famed New Year's Day concerts every hour. That was a good, relaxing forty minutes spent listening to some the best in Austrian classical music. Strauss's "Blue Danube" waltz was of course performed, as was his father's "Radetzky March" immediately afterward. Those two pieces are always played at every New Year's concert.

The second floor wasn't so much about music as it was about sound itself. It was bit strange and reminded me of the Discovery Science Center back in Santa Ana, California. The first room you walk in to on that floor is supposed to replicate the sound you hear as a baby in the womb! Interesting stuff, I guess, but the third floor was where the Haus der Musik really got good.

That floor focused entirely on Austrian composers, with most of them getting a single large room devoted to themselves. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss the younger, and Mahler all had such rooms, and then there was another room devoted to the likes of Schoenberg and Webern. This floor was very educational and I tried to take my time reading everything that was on display here. One thing that I learned in the Haydn room was that the Viennese classical works were innovative since they were the first works that were composed with the average listener in mind and not a learned expert. This era was also one of the first times that a composer's individual personality could prevent his music from being tampered with at all. I found this to be really interesting, and I really ought to listen to more Haydn and compare his work to earlier composers, maybe Bach. I'd like to be able to recognize someone's personality in a piece of music I'm listening to. I'm fairly good at figuring out when something was composed, just not by who. Oh, and I also found out that Gustav Mahler had therapy sessions with Sigmund Freud! He's another composer I wish I knew more about. Ah, there's just too much to listen to in this city!

At the end of the pathway on this floor was the virtual conducting session that I described previously. If there wasn't a line I would have tried it again and again and again. But at least I can say I did it, and the virtual players didn't stop to grumpily point out the flaws in my technique, but nevertheless...I was but a mediocrity among geniuses in this place. (And I am indeed deliberately referencing Amadeus here.)

The German word of the day is "schmecken," meaning "to taste."