Wine, Women and Song

Vienna in 1839 lived under the censors and police of Chancellor Metternich, and its middle class kept its pleasures private, music at home or a family outing to the country. Josef Danhauser sets one such outing at a long table outside a farmhouse. A man in a red neckerchief sings with his glass raised, a violinist plays behind him, a young woman holds a guitar. The two ends of the table pull apart. In the shadow at one end sits a careworn bachelor in a top hat who, the Belvedere notes, takes only sugar water and stays out of the music. At the other, in full light, a family has piled hats, shawls and landscape paintings at its feet. By the doorway a painter is writing on the wall a saying long credited to Martin Luther: “Whoever loves not wine, women, and song remains a fool his whole life long.”