Wednesday, May 25

On Wednesday our classroom was not the traditional one, but instead was held in two important museums in Vienna.

In the morning we had scheduled a guided tour for our group through the Collection of Ancient Instruments. This is one of the most important historical instrument collections in the world. It is especially important in it's quantity and variety of Renaissance instruments.

Our guide for this tour was perhaps our best one so far. His name is Roman List, and he brought along a tray of copies of old instruments and played them as we progressed through the museum. His specialty is the lute, but he played most of the Renaissance instruments quite well.

He even let our students play on some of his instruments. Here is Anubis and Ryan trying out the Cittern, a Renaissance cousin of the mandolin.

Roman ended his tour with a nice demonstration of the bagpipes.

The wealth of important instruments in this collection is truly astounding. From pianos played by Chopin, to ones owned by Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Of course there are multitudes of woodwind, brass and percussion instruments from all periods. One of the prizes of the collection is the famous "pretzel trumpet" made by Schnitzer in 1581 (of course I would have to show a trumpet!).

After our tour of the musical instrument collection we broke for lunch, after which we met up for a tour of the Hofburg palace of the Austrian emperors. The musical instrument museum was also in a wing of the Hofburg palace so we all looked for suitable lunch places nearby. My family picnicked in the Volksgarten ("People's Garden"), which before it was opened to the public in the nineteenth century, it was a private garden of the emperors. Today there is a famous statue of Mozart there.

The tour of the Hofburg palace was certainly eye-opening for the students. Although the opulent lifestyle of the Austrian emperors is far-removed from our lives today, it was important for the students to see how they lived because now they can understand how these wealthy music lovers attracted such important musicians to this city.

Unfortunately there were no photos or video allowed at all inside the palace, but here I am explaining a couple of things to the group in one of the courtyards.

Here are a few of the students on the massive statue in the middle of the courtyard.

After the tour of the Hofburg, our official "classroom" part of the day was over. The students had free time to explore the city and attend concerts in the evening.