A Music Lover’s Guide to Enjoying Vienna–The City of Music

Last updated on October 17th, 2024 at 02:20 am

Vienna and Music

Hang out in the central square (Stephansplatz) near the imposing St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Within minutes, a young person dressed in 18^th-century garb will hand you a flyer advertising classical music concerts. 

Go for a walk in any park and you’ll soon be snapping selfies in front of statues of composers. 

In the evening, wander the cobbled streets in central Vienna to hear snatches of music wafting into the soft air from several concert venues specializing in tourist-oriented programs usually dominated by the music of Mozart and Strauss.

A Map of Musical Vienna

The map below shows the location of all the music sites mentioned in this post. Vienna is a very walkable city. You can easily walk between most of the sites and still have energy left to enjoy a cafe, a slice of torte, and a spot of people watching. I recommend starting at the House of Music (#1) and venturing out from there to visit the museums dedicated to your fave composers.

Music Museums in Vienna

Vienna is chock-a-block with excellent museums. I’m a bit of a museum fangirl, so for me, Vienna ranks as one of Europe’s top museum cities. You could easily spend a week in Vienna and not run out of world-class museums to visit. Read my post about Best Vienna Museum Experiences that Appeal to the Artsy Traveler to find out about some of the top art museums.

In this post, I focus on two of my favorite music museums in Vienna: the House of Music and the Musical Instrument Museum, which is part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

House of Music

Make time in your Musical Vienna Itinerary for a visit to the House of Music, (#1 on the map above) also known as Vienna’s Museum of Sound.

Housed in the historical palace of Archduke Karl in the old city center, this museum is a must-see for everyone. And it is absolute heaven for music lovers.

On a recent trip to Vienna, I spent half a day there enjoying its five floors (yes, five!) of installations and displays celebrating music and sound. Trust me, you won’t want to miss this place.

Highlights of the House of Music

Here are some highlights:

• The virtostage—a multimedia and interactive production. When you move in front of the screen, you become part of the 15-minute opera “zeitperlen”. Members of the Vienna Philharmonic recorded the music with vocals by opera star Natalia Ushakova. Technically and musically, the production is a remarkable achievement.

• NAMADEUS—an installation created after Mozart’s musical game KV 516f. Included are the interactive Waltz Dice Game and an interactive application called Facing Mozart that lets you bring a Mozart portrait to life by controlling his head movements and facial expressions. Hours of fun!

• The virtual conductor installation allows you to “conduct” a video projection of the Vienna Philharmonic that responds to your conducting commands. If you conduct poorly, the musicians respond with criticism, so you need to keep time correctly!

Sound installations using state-of-the-art technology, including opportunities to visualize sound as waves, swirls, and grids.

Exhibits at the House of Music

Comprehensive exhibits of composers including Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Strauss, and Mahler. I spent at least an hour in this section of the museum. Plenty of life-size figures and original musical instruments bring the subjects to life. I especially enjoyed the Haydn portion of the exhibition.

During his long life, Papa Haydn exerted enormous influence on music in Vienna. He even counted Beethoven and Mozart among his many pupils. Haydn and Beethoven had a complicated relationship. Beethoven criticized his teacher by saying “I never learned anything from Haydn” and then dedicated his set of three Piano Sonatas Opus 2 to Haydn. (reference: Beethoven and Haydn: their relationship)

The House of Music is located at Seilerstätte 30 in Vienna and you can get a discount with the Vienna City Card. The museum is open daily from 10 am to 10 pm.

Musical Instrument Museum

I always enjoy touring a good musical instrument museum, and Vienna’s is first-rate. Housed in the Hofburg Palace and part of the masive Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Musical Instrument Museum (#2 on the map above) exhibits five centuries of historical musical instruments. Its collection of renaissance and baroque instruments is considered one of the most important in the world.

You’ll see a particularly awesome collection of clavichords and Viennese fortepianos. A highlight for me was seeing pianos once played by Mozart, Liszt, Mahler, and Clara Schumann, who is the inspiration for my second novel, A Woman of Note.

The museum also includes replicas of historical instruments that visitors may play and regularly holds concerts at which master interpreters of their professions play the original instruments.

The Musical Instrument Museum is located at Heldenplatz and is open daily except Wednesday from 10 am to 6 pm.

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Composer Houses

Many of the apartments lived in by Vienna’s famous composers have been converted into museums. Download a map of Musician Walks from the excellent Wien Info website.

Here is information (in alphabetical order!) about the museums dedicated to individual composers including Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schönberg, Schubert, and Strauss. Some composers are celebrated in more than one museum!

You can visit the six apartments of Beethoven, Strauss, Schubert, and Haydn with a special combination ticket from the Wien Museum website. Note that most of the composer museums close on Mondays.

Ludwig von Beethoven

Beethoven House

I’ve made two pilgrimages to the Pasqualati House (#3 on the map above), one of the many houses in which Beethoven lived. Built in the 18^th century adjacent to the city walls, the house is named after its owner (Pasqualati). Beethoven lived for eight years, off and on, in the 4th floor apartment at the top of a series of old stone staircases.

During my second visit to the apartment, I was writing A Woman of Note about a woman composer in 1830s Vienna. The novel starts with the funeral of Beethoven, and his influence is felt by the characters throughout the novel. As I mounted the old staircase to Beethoven’s apartment, I imagined my characters mounting similar staircases in buildings of the same vintage. 

When I visited, the rooms of Beethoven’s apartment were virtually bare and contained little in the way of exhibits. Two listening desks are set up for listening to various Beethoven pieces on headphones. I indulged myself with the second movement of Symphony No. 7 for a while. The place was empty, so it was just me and Beethoven’s soaring melodies and the temptation to burst into tears.

Musical tourism doesn’t get any better.

Beethoven Museum

Want more Beethoven? Visit the Beethoven Museum (#4). In 2017, the original 40-square-meter apartment at Probusgasse 6 in Heiligenstadt in Vienna’s 19^th district where Beethoven lived was extended to create a spacious, 14-room museum. Here you’ll find exhibits chronicling the history of the house, Beethoven’s move from Bonn to Vienna, his stay in Heiligenstadt, and many more related to the maestro.

Pasqualati House (or Pasqualatihaus) is located at Mölker Bastei 8 in Vienna and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays. The Beethoven Museum is located at Probusgasse 6 and is also open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays.

Joseph Haydn

Haydnhaus

Managed by the Wien Museum (as are most of the composer houses), Haydnhaus (#5) is the location where Joseph Haydn spent the last twelve years of his life and where he died on May 31, 1809. The museum includes the rooms of Haydn’s flat on the first floor, recently restored so that the rooms are divided in the same way they were when Haydn lived there. Haydn was extremely famous during his lifetime, and exhibits at the museum reflect the esteem in which he was held both then and now.

The museum also has a room dedicated to Brahms. Here’s a detailed post about the Haydnhaus on the Visiting Vienna website.

Haydnhaus is located at Haydngasse 19 and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozarthaus Museum

Mozart lived in several houses in Vienna during his short and tumultuous life. The only one that survives is the Mozarthaus Museum (#6) at Domgasse #5, where Mozart lived from 1784 to 1787.

Occupying 1,000 square meters on six levels, the  Mozarthaus Museum is the premier pilgrimage site for Mozart fans.

And seriously, who isn’t a Mozart fan?

The museum immerses you in Mozart’s world. Exhibits celebrate his remarkable genius and creativity and feature his family, friends, and foes in the heady world of late-Baroque Vienna. Get tickets to Mozarthaus.

Mozarthaus is located in St. Stephansplatz at Domgasse 5 and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm except for public holidays.

Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schönberg Center

Established in 1998, the Arnold Schönberg Center (#7) celebrates and life and work of one of the 20th century’s most notable composers (and also a painter, teacher, theoretician, and innovator!). If you’re a music history buff, you’ll know that Schönberg is associated with the method of composing with the 12-tone scale.

The museum includes exhibitions about Schönberg’s life, a gallery of his paintings, a replica of his study in Los Angeles, the city in which he died in 1951, and lots of concerts, lectures, and other events aimed at helping people understand and enjoy Schönberg’s music.

The Arnold Schönberg Center is located at St. Stephansplatz at Schwarzenbergplatz 6 and is open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 5 pm except for holidays.

Franz Schubert

Schubert makes a cameo appearance in A Woman of Note. I’m very fond of Schubert who, like Mozart, died very young (he was just 31). He managed to compose an amazing amount of music in his short lifetime, much of it lived in poverty. Two museums are devoted to Schubert in Vienna.

Schubert Geburtshaus

The Schubert Geburtshaus (#8) is the house where Schubert was born on January 31, 1797. He came from a large family that shared one room and a kitchen with an open fire. The exhibits include a pair of spectacles that belonged to Schubert that has apparently become quite an object of veneration for Schubert fans.

Schubert Sterbewohnung

Schubert died here at the Schubert Sterbewohnung (#9) on November 19, 1828. Although he lived in the small apartment for only a few weeks, he composed several works including the song “The Shepherd on the Rock.” Exhibits document the last weeks of his life, his death, and his funeral.

Schubert Geburtshaus is located at Nußdorfer Straße 54 and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays and Schubert Sterbewohnung is located at Kettenbrückengasse 6 and is open Tuesday to Sunday from to 10 am to pm and 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays.

Johann Strauss

Johann Strauss Wohnung

The Johann Strauss Wohnung museum (#10) is the apartment where Strauss composed “The Blue Danube” waltz which has become Austria’s unofficial national anthem. Strauss lived in the apartment for even years in what was a fashionable and elegant Viennese neighborhood. The museum includes Strauss’s instruments along with furniture and paintings from his life, and references to the other musical members of the Strauss dynasty.

Strauss Museum

This new museum (it opened in 2015) is dedicated to the lives and work of the Strauss composers–the Strauss Dynasty! It’s a must-see for Strauss fans. Find pictures and documents from the period and listen to music at the various audio stations arranged in 15 themed areas. Here’s a detailed post about the Strauss Museum on the Visiting Vienna website.

Johann Strauss Wohnung is located at Praterstraße 54 and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am 1 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm except for public holidays. The Strauss Museum is to remain closed through 2021 and will reopen in 2022 at a new location.

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Vienna Concerts

You can’t walk far in Vienna without seeing ads for music concerts, particularly those organized for tourists and featuring Mozart and Strauss (and occasionally Beethoven, Schubert, and Haydn). When I go to Vienna, I check the current concert listings. If I’m lucky, I might get to catch a performance by the Vienna Boys Choir or the Vienna Philharmonic. Following are descriptions of two concerts I enjoyed during a recent trip to Vienna.

Find concert listings on the Vienna Sightseeing website.

Concert at the Sala Terrena

The Sala Terrena (#11) is a lovely old and rather small room next to a monastery in the centre of Vienna. Mozart lived in the building for about two months when he first came to the city as a young man. The room is frescoed from floor to ceiling with a cacophony of Italian Baroque splendor. You’ll see lots of fruit, cherubs, roses, urns, and even a leopard.

I chose the Sala Terrena concert rather than one of the flashier Mozart-Strauss concerts because Schubert was on the programme. Schubert makes a guest appearance in A Woman of Note, so I owed it to my imagination to hear his music played at least once in Vienna.

Alas, ‘twas not to be. The programme was changed to include the American Quartet by Dvorak and string quartets by Mozart and Haydn. The performances were fantastic, so I had no complaints.

Sala Terrena Concert Experience

Four musicians dressed in 18^th-century garb (someone in this city must do a roaring trade in producing period costumes) entered the tiny salon and settled in to play. Unfortunately, as so often happens when I attend concerts soon after landing in Europe, jet lag hit me with a vengeance. I was seated in the front row, directly in the line of sight of the first violinist.

Despite my best efforts, my eyelids drooped, and my head started that awful bobbing thing that happens when you desperately fight falling asleep. What if I pitched face-first into the violinist’s lap? She might not appreciate the interruption.

In my defense, I defy any jet-lagged music lover to sit through a Mozart adagio without succumbing to the temptation to close one’s eyes and drift. In the interval, I chatted with a young woman from Japan who was studying art in Florence. I love traveling!

The concert was a success, and I drifted out into the heaving mass of tourists and locals thronging the Stephansplatz. If I hadn’t been alone, I would have hung around for awhile to enjoy a slice of strudel and a glass of wine in the shadow of the floodlit cathedral. Instead, I let the atmosphere wash over me for about ten minutes and then caught the tram back to my apartment.

Concert at the Schloss Laudon

While I was in Vienna, I was determined to see a “real” concert. By real, I mean a concert that does not feature costumed musicians and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But I wanted to attend a concert with local people.

Fortunately, I discovered that the five-day Schloss Laudon festival—a yearly event held in the salon at the Schloss Laudon (#12), also known as the Water Palace about an hour outside of Vienna—was on during my visit.

Getting to Schloss Laudon

With e-ticket in hand, I boarded the metro for a ride to the last stop. For forty minutes, the bus wound through a maze of suburban streets toward what I hoped would be the palace.

I had absolutely no clue where I was and what I’d do if I was on the wrong bus. What if there was no concert at the end of the ride and no bus back? I’d be stranded miles from nowhere with only 60 euros in my wallet and a pathological fear of incurring data roaming charges on my phone because on that trip I hadn’t had the foresight to buy a European SIM card.

But isn’t living dangerously the stuff of great travel?

Fortunately, I heard a couple on the bus mention Schloss Laudon, and minutes later the bus stopped and they got off.

I followed.

Exploring Schloss Laudon

The Schloss Laudon and its stylishly landscaped grounds were exquisite. I was extremely early for the concert but not for the bar, fortunately. I sipped a glass of wine while wandering the sylvan pathways and making friends with the swans.

Experiencing the Concert at Schloss Laudon

The concert featured a trio – piano, violin, and cello—in the large salon in the Schloss Laudon. A Schloss is basically a palace or a castle, and this place certainly qualified. The salon was frescoed floor to ceiling with exotic animals (tigers, rhinos, elephants, etc.) and exotic scenes of idealized, vaguely New World native-looking people in turbans. Evidently, historical accuracy was not a priority.

I snagged a seat in the second row, in direct line of sight of the keyboard (a pianist’s favorite place!).

Almost everyone around me was dressed to the nines. Most of the men wore suits and ties, and the women wore cocktail dresses and lots of jewelry and perfume. I might as well have had a neon sign on my head – turista. But whatever.

No one paid any attention to me—not even a wee smile of musical comradeship.  I felt a tad isolated, but what could I expect? Solitary travel can sometimes be a bit, ah, solitary.

A drawback of sitting in the second row quickly became apparent. The large spotlight caught me in its glare, and soon I was sweating. The heat would have been tolerable if indeed there had been music to listen to. However, to my dismay, the festival director and an expert on the modern composer featured on the program both shuffled to the front and faced the audience.

The Pre-Concert Talk

Festival-Director Guy talked for about five minutes–a bearable length of time to listen to German and pretend to understand. Then, Composer-Expert Guy took over and talked for at least thirty minutes. He stood directly in front of me, even making eye contact occasionally, so I had to look as if I was hanging on his every German syllable. I caught a few words—Mexico, Nazis, Anschluss, Franco. I snuck a peek at the concert notes–in German, of course and managed to decipher that the composer of the modern piece had left Vienna in 1938 and settled in Mexico by way of Spain. That was not a whole lot of information to get from a thirty-minute lecture.

Haydn & Tchaikovsky

Finally, the three musicians entered and performed an early Beethoven piano trio in the style of Haydn. The heat, the somnolence engendered by Composer-Expert Guy’s talk, and those darned slow movements marred my enjoyment of the piece.

Again, I experienced more than a few head bobs along with the terror that someone might notice. What if I snored or drooled? After the Beethoven came the modern composer’s piece, which was actually pretty good in a dissonant, modern music kind of way.

At the break, I thought about giving in to jet lag and catching the bus back to the metro. I even walked out to the bus stop and checked the times. Then I came to my senses and trudged back into the palace for the second half—the piano trio by Tchaikovsky.

Holy Russian romantic! It was stunning—no danger of head-bobbing for this one. I cheerfully bought the CD.

More Vienna

Vienna is worth a good chunk of your tourism budget, particularly if you love music. Visit the House of Music, pay tribute to Vienna’s composers at one or more of their houses, and splash out for a concert or two.

For more information about what to see and do in Vienna and Austria, check out Visiting Austria: My Best Tips for Enjoying an Artsy Trip and these posts:

Have you visited any of the music sites in Vienna described in this post? Share your thoughts about music and Vienna with other artsy travelers in the Comments section below.

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