Mystery and Intrigue on the Danube

I like to listen to our local cable music channel. It's a place to hear new selections, and then go get them for your collection. With a pending trip to Broadway, I recently tuned into the "Stage and Screen" channel, and heard the theme from "The Third Man", the classic British film noir of 1949, directed by Carol Reed, starring Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. This film is considered, like Citizen Kane (also with Welles), to be one of the best of the genre. The entire soundtrack is played on the zither, and the zither alone, played by Anton Karas, and it really sets the mood.

The Zither is part of the "kithara" (Greek) family of instruments, a forerunner of the guitar. It has a kind of haunting, twangy, bell-like quality, and sets the mood of post-war Vienna, with its dark, mysterious streets and the rubble left from the war.

Vienna is an old and extremely interesting place, the capital of Austria. The city has its light-hearted side especially where music is concerned (remember the Strauss waltzes), but it is also part of Eastern Europe. The word Austria has its roots in the German word "osterreich", or eastern realm. Eastern Europe is a world of its own, rather moody, with an underlying heavy atmosphere, with connections to the ottoman empire.

For our purposes here, I look at the 1700's, with Vienna becoming a baroque city, with significant achievements in architecture by Johann von Erlach and Johann von Hildebrandt. Opulent palaces like the Schwarzenberg and the Liechtenstein were built. Though the city suffered a plague in those years, by 1790, the population had reached 200,000. The city began industrialization with the first factory running in Leopoldstadt, Vienna's 2nd district.

In 1804, during the Napoleonic wars, Vienna was invaded twice during that time, when three French marshals crossed the Danube River and told the Austrian commander that the war was over. Vienna became the capital city, and played a major role in world politics, including the hosting of the Congress of Vienna, in 1814. The Congress included a series of international meetings to forge a peace and balance of powers in Europe. It served as a model for the League of Nations and the United Nations, much later. So, when you want to immerse yourself in a bit of mystery and intrigue, check out The Third Man. It makes me now want to take a trip on the Orient Express.