City of Cakes and Culture
It’s exactly a week since I walked into the Stephansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral) in Vienna, thinking only to gaze at the magnificent building…….to be greeted, instead, by the most sublime music filling the soaring space. A Haydn mass was in progress, being offered up by the cathedral’s own orchestra and singers. Visitor after visitor was stopped in their tracks - not by some official, regulating the traffic flow; but by the sheer beauty of the sounds flowing up and around us.
Vienna is still every inch a city of music and of culture. It must also be one of the only cities in the world where no-one bats an eyelid if you walk down the street in 18th century costume. Take a stroll through Austria’s capital and music will greet you at every turn, drifting from churches or the opera house, advertised by posters and by bewigged musicians…….earning a living in the same streets where generations of their kind have before them.
Vienna is also a city of cakes. Exquisite, exquisite cakes. Austrians are famous for their tradition of Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cakes) and the patisserie in this grandest of cities is as much a work of art as the imposing and stately buildings are. Coffee houses abound; the too-good-to-eat cakes tempt continually.
But it’s the Haydn mass that arrested me last Sunday morning that will stay with me for the longest. Unexpected, unplanned for, yet touching my soul in a profound way. How incredible! - to write something that can go on moving people in such an extraordinary manner for so many years after you’ve departed this earth. I’m grateful to Herr Haydn and to the musicians of Vienna who keep his music alive. I’m grateful to the architects and builders and maintainers of the Stephansdom for creating a sanctuary where the music can take flight.