A baryton (that’s what they call it here, not sure if it has the same name in English) is… what. Like if you had a cello and a gambe? And they mated and the egg hatched? It might be a baryton? Lots of strings – maybe six in front, and more behind the neck to be plucked with the left thumb. The neck is 3 times as wide as normal, because it has what looks like a resonance thing alongside it, for those rear strings. Of which there must be a dozen, judging from all the tuning pegs.
And the whole thing is topped off with a carved head of a guy.
And it was built in 1651, approximately. Mid 17th century, anyway.
And it’s being played by an instrument geek, played well, in a trio (violin/viola and cello, 18th century instruments) in the Ruprechtskirche, Vienna’s oldest church.
Josef Haydn and Andreas Lidl.
Alpha and I were there last night, with Jessica and Brendan, the famous bloggers. You would think, with music that good, and company that interesting, and pews that uncomfortable, in a church that cold, it would be harder to fall asleep, but I managed. And I wasn’t the only one, people were nodding off all over.
Still, it was brilliant.
The whole day was.
Here, if a sausage isn’t unhealthy enough for you, they will wrap one in cheese and bacon and fry it if you want, and call it a Bernerwuersterl. I had one for lunch just to demonstrate it to our visitors. For dinner, we weren’t very hungry so we all had sausages standing up at a sausage stand prior to the concert (we were standing up, the sausages were lying down, sliced into pieces).
We did a lot of walking.
We looked at a courtyard.
We had coffee at the Hawelka coffee house, which is miraculously still run by the original owners, who were in their seventies twenty years ago when I first went there. They are still there, ancient and sweet and apparently in love.
