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The Temple of Night at Schonau: Architecture, Music, and Theater in a Late Eighteenth-Century Viennese Garden.

Article Excerpt
The Temple of Night at Schonau: Architecture, Music, and Theater in a Late Eighteenth-Century Viennese Garden. By John A. Rice. (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, v. 254 [i.e., 258].) Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2006. [xv, 257 p. ISBN-10 0871692589; ISBN-13 9780871692580. $70.] Illustrations, maps, music examples, bibliographic references, index.

From 1796 to 1800, theater impresario and wealthy businessman Baron Peter von Braun constructed an elaborate garden whose main attraction was a "Temple of Night." After wandering through an artificially created grotto, visitors emerged in a magnificent rotunda presided over by the goddess Night; charming music emanated, as if by magic, into a dome that depicted a starlit sky. Braun's park was a prime tourist destination during the transition from the Enlightenment to the Biedermeier era; by the 1820s, however, it had fallen into disrepair. Drawing on written accounts, iconographic evidence, and the present day ruins of the temple, John A. Rice verbally reconstructs Braun's garden. He then uses it and its stunning Temple as a launching point to examine "related cultural phenomena" such as the influence of the English-style landscape park, changing perceptions of night, and "late eighteenth-century Vienna's fascination with mechanical instruments" (p. 4). Rice's reconstruction of the garden took quite a bit of detective work and obviously is thoroughly researched. The later...

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