Guten morgen, Wien!

I’m not much for social media but I still maintain a Facebook account, primarily to announce new posts from this journal, and this morning I was glad to do so. Marion Eigl, the morning host on radio klassik Stephansdom, walked us through her arrival at the station in the wee small hours of the day — just as the sun is rising above the Stephansdom, in the shadow of which the station broadcasts — and it reminded me of just how beautiful the city is in those very early daylight hours, when the streets are nearly deserted and the sky brightens through a series of glorious blues. One of the great pleasures of listening to the radio is the knowledge that, at the other end of the connection, there’s another human being sharing in the music with you from the broadcast booth, something that isn’t the case with streaming music services. So guten morgen, Marion. The city looks lovely at that time of day.

The programming at rkS also caters to my increasingly eccentric taste in music (though I should also mention here that rkS broadcasts high mass at the Stephansdom a few times a week, which also caters to my increasing eccentricity). When I was younger I used to enjoy orchestral music much more, but now, at 62, I’m drawn more to vocal and chamber music, especially medieval and renaissance composers like Hildegard von Bingen and Heinrich Schütz, then skipping over a few centuries to the Second Viennese School, with a brief but significant sidetrack to the classical era of Mozart and Beethoven. There is a spiritual aspect to this as well, which may also be tied to aging. As we get older, it is said, we grow more into our more mature selves. My mature self finds more affinity in this music than it used to. Don’t get me wrong — I’m as prone to slip on an album by Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley as the next Joe, when the time seems right. Still, it seems to be that the music of hundreds of years ago pleases my ear and my meditations more than most.

The geographical basis of these meditations are more centered in Vienna and environs than anywhere else. There is something about the Danube, I suppose, and Central Europe as I’ve mentioned here before was after all the original home of my ancestors. My recent listening is paralleled by my recent reading, too — the contemporaneous Nibelungenlied and Hildegard again, and the literature of Musil, Doderer, and Kraus, all writers contemporaneous with Schönberg, Webern, and Berg. The spiritual center of all this work seems to be the Austrian capital, itself an architectural museum with exhibits spanning from Fischer von Erlach to Adolf Loos. I don’t believe that I’ll ever be able to spend an extended amount of time there to probe these meditations in situ, as it were. But I will make do with what I have, even as I continue my studies in the German language; as Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” and fortunately I can still broaden those limits and maybe broaden my meditations through an assiduous attention to my language lessons.

At the moment, I’m turning my attention to radio klassik Stephansdom, though — right now host Eva Reinold is treating me to a few Beethoven bagatelles, and I think I’ll have a listen to those. I do want to note that rkS is continuing its fundraising drive, and if rkS suits your streaming fancy you should make a donation here. And turn up the volume.

A toast to …

Nibelungenlied Manuscript C, Folio 1r, about 1220-1250. Owned by Landesbank Baden-Württemberg and Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Permanent loan to the Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe (Codex Donaueschingen 63).

Reflecting the increasingly Austria-centric concentration of this journal, I posted items this week about the late Professor Marjorie Perloff and the holiday offerings of radio klassik Stephansdom.

In addition, I raise my glass today to the Nibelungenlied; as part of my continuing education and immersion in all things German and Central European, I’m reading the Penguin Classics translation by A.T. Hatto, a rather interesting fellow himself. A page of the manuscript, from a 13th century codex, is above. I’m just past the midpoint now, as Kriemhild  stopped at Melk and then proceeded to Vienna for her marriage to Hungary’s King Etzel. As it happens my family and I were in both Melk and Vienna just a few months ago; no sign of Kriemhild, but that was some time ago.

Compared to the much older epics of the Mediterranean Sea — the Iliad and the Odyssey for starters — the Nibelungenlied is far sparer and relatively god- and goddess-free, with more of an emphasis on the internal lives of its characters; apart from Siegfried’s cloak of invisibility, there’s very little supernatural about it. I suppose you could say that, like the climate from which it emerged, it’s much colder than Homer’s poems, but I rather like that; although of course there’s considerably more Christian and chivalrous material, there’s also an awareness that paganism was still an element in social, cultural, and religious life (indeed, a Christian Kriemhild marries a pagan Etzel, a point made by the anonymous Nibelungenlied poet). In addition, both Brunhilde and Kriemhild possess much more agency and are far more energetic than Homer’s female characters — the Nibelungenlied is much sexier and erotic, for want of better words, than the earlier epics. Wagner’s Ring operas have a rather scant resemblance to this poem, relying more on the Volsung Saga, but the Nibelungenlied itself is still quite a wonderful read.

Reading the rest of it is how I’ll be spending much of this weekend.

Streaming Easter from the Stephansdom

Easter is the most important holiday of the Christian year, and those with a taste for Viennese culture may wish to take advantage of the program offerings from radio klassik Stephansdom this weekend, even if German is not their first language. The station will be presenting a variety of events, including a Pontifical Mass on Easter Sunday with Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and a Vespers Service later that day, both live from the Stephansdom in Vienna, as well as a Good Friday service and other holiday related programming and music through the weekend. You can read about all of the special programming and stream everything through the web site here.

Radio klassik Stephansdom continues its fundraising drive; I encourage you to donate. I recorded a message of support that was broadcast on the Austrian station on March 11; you can listen to that message below.

Marjorie Perloff (1931-2024)

Marjorie Perloff. Photo by Alan Thomas (2016).

Marilyn and I will be raising our glasses tonight to the memory of critic, translator, and memoirist Marjorie Perloff, who cast off this mortal coil last Sunday at the age of 92.

Professor Perloff was a staunch champion of the American avant-garde, especially its poets (Frank O’Hara and Charles Bernstein) and its musicians and choreographers (John Cage and Merce Cunningham). But more recently she had turned her attention to the Vienna of her youth; her 2004 memoir The Vienna Paradox is a moving, beautifully written but typically intellectually uncompromising examination of her youth and early career as an emigre from Austria, and I’ve written about her 2016 Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire — a book that deeply affected me when I read it — here. In 2022 she published a fine translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Notebooks: 1914-1916 (noted here), and her introduction graces a new translation of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, published just last month and on my next-to-read list.

Clay Risen wrote the obituary for the New York Times, and an “In memoriam” written by Alan Thomas with the collaboration of Perloff’s family, the poet Charles Bernstein, and the University of Chicago Press appears here.