House of Music

For millions, Vienna is the music capital of the world. No other city evokes such immediate associations with the great classical composers and the king of waltz. The House of Music was opened in the First District, not far from the Opera, in 2000 as a museum of the 21st century. The building is a former Habsburg palace where Otto Nicolai (1810-1849), founder of the Vienna Philharmonic, once lived. The first floor is dedicated as a separate museum to the renowned orchestra. There are six other floors in the House of Music making up a total exhibition area of 2,000 square metres. The creative concept of the museum combines futuristic new media applications with a strong didactic element. Here visitors can learn how a musical instrument works and can try composition, conducting and playing. A big attraction is the virtual orchestra where anyone can take a baton and conduct the Vienna Phil on a large screen with the score of the Blue Danube or Radetzky March. If successful the orchestra will reward the newcomer with applause but if the tempo is wrong the players down instruments with cries of disapproval.

One floor of the museum is a "sonosphere" where sounds can be felt such as those experienced by an embryo in the womb. A "futuresphere" is concerned with electronic music. Here the "Brain Opera" presents the latest developments by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) exclusive to the House of Music. The Brain Opera was invented and composed by Tod Machover, Professor of composition at MIT, Media Lab, Boston, USA. On a more traditional note there is a floor for the great composers where visitors can learn with the aid of a computerised landscape more of their work and lives. A large map of Vienna from the beginning of the nineteenth century marks all 68 apartments where Beethoven once lived as well as the surrounding woods and spa resorts where he spent the summers. A "virtual Vienna" gives visitors the chance to savour the city's musical haunts. One section, "the Exodus", is an artistic reminder of the musicians who were forced into exile or murdered by the Nazis.

Labels throughout the House of Music are in German and English. Guides can be provided in many languages such as French, Japanese, Spanish, Hungarian, and Greek. An active House of Music community has been built up worldwide on its homepage under 3D Chat. In the future it is planned to support several research projects on music on the Internet as well as the development of respective software.