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6 November 2006

Salzburg, Austria, lies just over the border beyond Munich, only four trains and five hours from here. They speak German there, too, so it made great sense to head toward the southeast this last weekend -- no new foreign phrase book to carry around, just the same old dog-eared German one that I refer to increasingly less and less. It had snowed in Austria on Thursday, and the dirty remnants of that first Neuschnee were still forcing pedestrians to walk circuitously when I left the city Sunday evening. Salzburg, like the rest of Austria, is celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday with overkill. Imagine celebrating the making of your favorite sweet port wine by drinking it three times a day, every day for a year. Can anything be that good? I caught a performance of Eine kleine Nachtmusik and a Divertimento by the young Meister, performed by a string quartet (plus one violin) in the same room in the Archbishop's Residence that once heard the young Mozart himself perform. The High Mass in the Dom on Sunday morning featured an early choral composition of Mozart's -- a Mass, complete with chorus and orchestra. Mozart's father's and widow's graves were hard to find in the cemetery behind St. Sebastian's Church because of the dusting of snow, but their headstone was the only one to highlight the engraved letters with gold. The warmest part of my stay were the several hours passed in Mozart's Growing-up House (as opposed to the nearby Birth House); the museum piped in relevant music to accompany the many instruments, scores and autographs of Wolfgang, his father, Leopold, and his sister, Nanle. Maybe this will inspire me to make the drive up to Bonn to see where Beethoven lived, or to make it as far as Leipzig, in eastern Germany, to hear Bach's organ in Leipzig. (tbc)

Tuesday, November 07, 2006