 "Salzburg diaries")
It’s a blustery, drizzly morning in Salzburg. Tucking a wool scarf more securely around my neck, I shiver. It’s not the dank cold, however, that is making me tremble, but the music I’m listening to. It’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, an all-time favourite that seems strangely appropriate as I gaze upon the pretty yellow facade of Geburtshaus — the house where the musical prodigy was born in January 1756. It is not unlike other middle-class houses of its time, and I wonder how a place so ordinary could have produced a talent like his.
Inside, I gaze upon relics from the maestro’s childhood — the violin he played as a child, portraits and letters exchanged between him and his family. “Shall we go see the rest of Salzburg now,” asks my son for the nth time. It is, I realise, a place that only preaches to the pulpit, offering little to those who know little about Mozart. The children fidget as I stop to look wonderingly at the music sheets in the museum shop. They are facsimiles of Mozart’s original sheets, and I look at the incomprehensible hieroglyphics and dream of the melodies they hide.
We spend the day walking about in a city that so overtly celebrates Mozart’s memory that it seems as if wherever we go, we’re retracing his footsteps. “He’s everywhere,” announces my daughter despairingly. I grin, for my teenagers have long believed that the only string instrument worth its guts is the guitar.
This pretty alpine town has indulged in this not-so-subtle marketing since the late 1800s when Mozart’s birthplace was acquired by the International Mozart Foundation and converted into a museum. Today, however, the commerce seems crass — Mozart’s familiar face is emblazoned on everything from chocolates and porcelain plates to mugs and umbrellas made in China.
As the drizzle turns into a downpour, we shelter in one of the city’s numerous music shops, where I browse through some of the violin concertos that Mozart wrote while in Salzburg. A busking violinist rushes in, shaking off droplets of rain from his coat. I look at an old church facing the cobbled street outside, and although it is weathered by centuries of pedestrians, it is clear that the Salzburg the Mozart family lived in was a very different place from the town I’m seeing.
When the drizzle abates, we stroll through the romantic gardens of Schloss Mirabell, beautifully laid out and bursting with alpine blooms. The familiar notes of his violin concerto waft across the gardens from a string quartet playing nearby. In the distance, I see the baroque towers and gables of Altstadt, Old Town, with the Castle towering above them all. It is impossibly picturesque, and I’m not surprised to learn that the Hollywood classic The Sound of Music was partly shot here. An Indian family walks past me singing “These are a few of my favourite things”, planning a trip to the St Michael’s Church in Mondsee, where Maria and Colonel von Trapp were married in the movie.
We walk across the bridge on the river Salzach on another blustery day to see the larger apartment that the Mozart family moved into in 1773. The children have been lured with promises of sachertorte — the fabulously bittersweet Austrian delicacy of chocolate cake layered with apricot jam. It was here that Mozart composed music during his remaining years in Salzburg. On the first floor, there’s the inevitable museum that documents the life of the Mozart family. Other than Mozart, I learn, most of his family is buried in Salzburg. He died mysteriously in Vienna at the age of 35, and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Mozart died before, some say, he had completed his opus after an anonymous benefactor offered an impoverished Mozart a huge purse to write a requiem.
Inside, I gaze upon relics from the maestro’s childhood — the violin he played as a child, portraits and letters exchanged between him and his family. “Shall we go see the rest of Salzburg now,” asks my son for the nth time. It is, I realise, a place that only preaches to the pulpit, offering little to those who know little about Mozart. The children fidget as I stop to look wonderingly at the music sheets in the museum shop. They are facsimiles of Mozart’s original sheets, and I look at the incomprehensible hieroglyphics and dream of the melodies they hide.
We spend the day walking about in a city that so overtly celebrates Mozart’s memory that it seems as if wherever we go, we’re retracing his footsteps. “He’s everywhere,” announces my daughter despairingly. I grin, for my teenagers have long believed that the only string instrument worth its guts is the guitar.
This pretty alpine town has indulged in this not-so-subtle marketing since the late 1800s when Mozart’s birthplace was acquired by the International Mozart Foundation and converted into a museum. Today, however, the commerce seems crass — Mozart’s familiar face is emblazoned on everything from chocolates and porcelain plates to mugs and umbrellas made in China.
As the drizzle turns into a downpour, we shelter in one of the city’s numerous music shops, where I browse through some of the violin concertos that Mozart wrote while in Salzburg. A busking violinist rushes in, shaking off droplets of rain from his coat. I look at an old church facing the cobbled street outside, and although it is weathered by centuries of pedestrians, it is clear that the Salzburg the Mozart family lived in was a very different place from the town I’m seeing.
Mozart's birthplace
In Mozart’s time, Salzburg was an archbishopric, a state of the Holy Roman Empire and ruled by the bishop-king Sigmund Christoph von Schrattenbach. Mozart’s father was an employee of the court, upon whom the archbishop bestowed many favours — such as generous travel leaves that enabled him to take his prodigiously gifted son across Europe for education. At 17, Mozart joined the Salzburg court as a musician, but Schrattenbach was dead by then and his successor didn’t recognise the young man’s genius. So, after composing more than 150 musical works in Salzburg, Mozart moved to Vienna. When the drizzle abates, we stroll through the romantic gardens of Schloss Mirabell, beautifully laid out and bursting with alpine blooms. The familiar notes of his violin concerto waft across the gardens from a string quartet playing nearby. In the distance, I see the baroque towers and gables of Altstadt, Old Town, with the Castle towering above them all. It is impossibly picturesque, and I’m not surprised to learn that the Hollywood classic The Sound of Music was partly shot here. An Indian family walks past me singing “These are a few of my favourite things”, planning a trip to the St Michael’s Church in Mondsee, where Maria and Colonel von Trapp were married in the movie.
We walk across the bridge on the river Salzach on another blustery day to see the larger apartment that the Mozart family moved into in 1773. The children have been lured with promises of sachertorte — the fabulously bittersweet Austrian delicacy of chocolate cake layered with apricot jam. It was here that Mozart composed music during his remaining years in Salzburg. On the first floor, there’s the inevitable museum that documents the life of the Mozart family. Other than Mozart, I learn, most of his family is buried in Salzburg. He died mysteriously in Vienna at the age of 35, and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Mozart died before, some say, he had completed his opus after an anonymous benefactor offered an impoverished Mozart a huge purse to write a requiem.
Old town with castle
As the wild lament of the Requiem’s Lacrimosa washes over us, my daughter says, “Even though it is sad, it sounds strangely peaceful.” We gaze into the clouds reflected in the waters of the Salzach as I realise that Mozart’s music still has the almost magical power to build bridges — centuries after he wrote it.