The Living Conditions of Great Composers — Music as Consolation

In the centre of Vienna, on Michaelerplatz, stands the Michaelerhaus. On the ground floor is the pharmacy “Zum goldenen Hirschen”, which has been in my family for generations. Under the roof of the same building there was once a small inn with many single rooms, frequently used by artists working at the Imperial Court in the nearby Hofburg. Among the best-known residents were Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pietro Metastasio, librettist of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. They lodged, in other words, above the rooms in which my family still runs the pharmacy today — a thought that moves me anew every time.

When I borrow the key and show this attic to guests and fellow musicians, we are all shaken by the conditions in which these artists lived. There was no fireplace, since the entire roof was made of wood and prone to fire. Eighteenth-century Vienna had neither a functioning sewer system nor running water in its houses. In the attic rooms there was scarcely any light; the only windows were small and dark. The conditions were not merely simple — they were wretched.

How could these artists create such joyful and positive music under such conditions? Haydn’s string quartets are full of vitality and wit; Mozart’s music radiates a lightness that makes one almost forget the difficult circumstances of his life. Perhaps this offers a clue to the true function of art: it offers beauty and consolation in an otherwise harsh life. For these artists music was not only a livelihood but a means of self-assertion, a space of hope in a world that was often merciless.

The music we hear today in the finest concert halls was often composed under the most adverse circumstances. Beethoven was already hard of hearing in his late twenties, suffered from depression and personal crises — and yet created some of the most sublime works in music history. His Ninth Symphony was written in complete deafness. Mozart struggled with money all his life, marked by uncertainty, illness and early death — and still such lightness flows from his music that one barely suspects the pain behind it.

This realisation is perhaps the most important lesson music history offers: music is more than entertainment. It is an expression of the human longing for beauty, consolation and meaning. When we stand on stage today we are part of a chain of musicians who have carried the works of the great composers forward for centuries.

The attic on Michaelerplatz is for me a living monument to that realisation. Standing there and imagining immortal melodies taking shape in that cramped, dark room, the significance of our work as musicians becomes clear in an entirely new way. We are not merely entertainers; we are guardians of a legacy — the legacy of beauty, consolation and hope.

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