“I hope your health wins. I think you should do more exercise on foot.” This tip can be found in any fitness guide or pop-up in your fitness app – 10,000 steps a day! – But it comes from none other than Ludwig van Beethoven. A transcript of a letter the composer wrote to a friend from Baden in September 1824. He, Beethoven reported, was still taking advantage of “the already shorter days here in the mountains, where one would like to fortify oneself by walking and enjoying the open air and the beautiful surroundings before the forthcoming hardships in the city”. Beethoven took exercise on foot – and how! He was “a perfect walker”. He loved “hour-long walks, especially through wild and romantic areas”, reported a witness who walked with him through the Helenental valley. Another witness saw how Beethoven took off his tailcoat, hung it on his walking stick and walked bare-armed along the narrow promenade, passing finely dressed gentlemen. He not only swung the cane but also made the most exuberant speeches.
This walking stick can be found today in the collections of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. What could be more tempting than to pick it up and take it for a walk? The Musikverein is doing just that in 2026. With its “Beethoven’s Walking Stick” festival, it invites you to set off on a journey to your heart’s content, to roam wild areas, to explore new spaces, to boldly set off, to let yourself drift with relish or even to live through a drifting experience in which a walking stick can only provide symbolic support.
Once again, it is an object from the rich collections of the Musikverein that sets the flow of ideas in motion. To be historically correct, we do not know whether it was precisely this walking stick on which Beethoven dangled his tailcoat on the promenade in Baden. Several canes are said to have been helpful to the briskly walking Beethoven. The impeccably documented course of history distinguishes the walking stick in Musikverein’s collection: this walking stick was demonstrably in Beethoven’s hand. In 1827, a few weeks after his death, it came under the hammer at the auction of his estate. Anna von Gleichenstein, the sister of Therese Malfatti, to whom Beethoven once felt so strongly attracted that his thoughts even wandered towards marriage, won the bid. The precious walking aid moved on and ended up in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien in 1906. Alongside valuable documents of his work – autographs, sketches, performance material corrected by his hand – it is an authentic object that tells the story of Beethoven’s life. But wait! You can’t separate one from the other.
Regarding the walking sticks, we know that Beethoven often found ideas for his work while walking. Stubborn sitting leads to sensory numbness, “when we walk”, says Thomas Bernhard, “the movement of the mind comes with the movement of the body”. This is also one of the many appealing aspects explored in this festival.
