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... ... ... ...Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be still, stop chattering) (aka The Coffee Cantata) (BWV 211) is a secular cantata written by Johann Sebastian Bach between 1732 and 1734. Although classified as a cantata, it is essentially a miniature comic opera.
In a satirical commentary, the cantata amusingly tells of an addiction to coffee. The libretto suggests that some people in eighteenth-century Germany viewed coffee drinking as a bad habit. However, the work is likely to have been first performed at a coffee house in Leipzig. Bach regularly directed a musical ensemble based at Zimmermann's coffee house called the Collegium Musicum (founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1702).
The cantata's libretto (written by Christian Friedrich Henrici) features lines such as "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat"—a sentiment that would likely have been appreciated by the patrons of Zimmermann's Coffee House.
) , a rack full of newspapers from around the world , you will usually find some musicians playing their ! Viennese coffee house culture
Coffee house culture: the newspaper, the glass of water and the marble tabletop
The social practices, the rituals, the elegance create the very specific atmosphere of the Viennese café.[2] Coffee Houses entice with a wide variety of coffee drinks, international newspapers, and pastry creations. Typical for Viennese Coffee Houses are marble tabletops, Thonet chairs, newspaper tables and interior design details in the style of Historicism.[3] The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig described the Viennese Coffee House as an institution of a special kind, "actually a sort of democratic club, open to everyone for the price of a cheap cup of coffee, where every guest can sit for hours with this little offering, to talk, write, play cards, receive post, and above all consume an unlimited number of newspapers and journals."[4] Zweig in fact attributed a good measure of Vienna's cosmopolitan air to the rich daily diet of current and international information offered in the coffee houses.
In many classic cafés (for example Café Central and Café Prückel) piano music is played in the evening and social events like literary readings are held. In warmer months, customers can often sit outside in a Schanigarten. Almost all coffee houses provide small food dishes like sausages as well as desserts, cakes and tarts, like Apfelstrudel, Millirahmstrudel, Punschkrapfen and Linzer torte.
Unlike some other café traditions around the world, it is completely normal for a customer to linger alone for hours and study the omnipresent newspaper.
Along with coffee, the waiter will serve an obligatory glass of cold tap water and during a long stay will often bring additional water unrequested, with the idea to serve the guest with an exemplary sense of attention.
