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A walk around Vienna’s inner city (Innere Stadt or first district) conjures up numerous ghosts, all of them friendly (and many musical). One can feel the presence of practically every major composer as so many had a strong association with the city, be it Beethoven (a German who made Vienna his home), Haydn (born in nearby Lower Austria), Mahler (born in Bohemia, then a part of the Austrian Empire), Mozart (born in Salzburg), or Schubert (the only one actually born in Vienna).

The city was truly a center of culture and modernism until the Anschluß (annexation of Austria by Germany) in 1938, as well as a magnet for artistic talent. Witness Brahms (born in Hamburg), Bruckner (born near Linz), and Richard Strauss (from Munich), and add in the Vienna Secession movement, psychoanalysis, the Second Viennese School, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein for good measure.

All of these great artists and movements notwithstanding, what I hear in my head when I stroll through the streets of Vienna is the three-quarter sound of music from Johann Strauß I and his son, Johann Strauß II, also known as the Waltz King. Both were born in Vienna and thrived in its culture....

<SNIP>

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