Day #13: Salzburg

The St. Francis Church in Salzburg

Gruss Gott! I had a lovely weekend in Salzburg, Munich (yes, I decided to go), and the small Austrian town of Mondsee!  We left for Salzburg at about 8:00 on Friday morning. The drive there was positively stunning! It looked like a magical winter wonderland with the snow covered pines blanketing the mountainsides, with the snowy peaks of the Alps in the distance. I ended up sitting in front of a good friend of mine and we ended up discussing beauty and the liturgy for a good part of the trip.

A miniature of the St. Francis Church Organ

I had read an article for Art Appreciation titled, "On Beauty," written by a professor of Notre Dame University, in which he stated that beauty is objective, and compared it to the sweetness of sugar. Sugar has the objective property of sweetness, regardless of whether or not the person is able to taste it. The person may be sick so he tastes the sweet as sour, or he may have a poorly developed sense of taste, but that does not change the fact that the sugar is still sweet. Similarly, something can be beautiful and a person not appreciate the beauty of the object. He may need to develop a taste for beauty, or he may in fact have a liking or a tendency to like ugly things - that can happen, too, you know. I think that the tendency to like or appreciate ugly things is rampant in our culture these days. But it is such a controversial issue: some people think that beauty is subjective, while others believe that it doesn't matter. I'm not sure which is worse. So what happens when people like Beethoven, Mozart, Joshua Bell, Itzaak Perlmann have dedicated their lives to Beauty. What's the point? Are they wasting their time, their efforts? Hardly, I should think. Beauty is objective, like truth and goodness. Beauty clothes the truth and draws the heart to it. It is the beauty of the liturgy, of the truth that draws people to it. Sorry, some food for thought, I suppose.
When we arrived in Salzburg, we could see the castle overlooking the city, built on the hill, a vast white monument to the history and beauty of the city. I followed Sister Joan Paul to the Fransicanerkirche where we were supposed to have Mass. I had been told that I was going to have the opportunity to play the organ there before and after Mass, so I wanted to get there early enough to check it out and play around with the stops. When we arrived, the dulcet tones of the organ were sounding the last note. A model of the organ stood near the front of the church. Sister took me to the sacristy where there was a little German Franciscan friar. She asked him in German where the stairs to the organ were, and he pointed to a door at the other end of the sacristy leading to a long stairway. The sacristy was located all the way to the sanctuary, so the stairs reached all the way from near the sanctuary to the far back of the church. Through a hallway lay the magnificent instrument. It was a newer instrument and kept in good condition! We passed a small private chapel where an organist was seated at a smaller organ. I ended up having to ask a Franciscan friar to help me turn on the instrument, and the organist came in and kindly told me in German the different manuals and couplers. I nodded though I only understood only a few words, like Ruckpositif and Couplers. Then I sat down to play Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus (of course) with some flutes, and moved on to Bach's Prelude in E Minor (The Cathedral), when a bell rang right as I went to the second page. Mass was starting! And the Bishop of Salzburg was there! Our Music Ministry started singing Be Thou My Vision and their lovely voices reverberated through the church. I felt like I was stepping back in time to another century, with the Baroque elegance of the church and the sweet notes of the hymn.
It was the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, so after Fr. Brad gave the homily the bishop came up and said a few words on the importance of reason to the Catholic faith, which I felt was perfect as my friend and I had just talked about the necessity of reason to Catholicism today. He told a story from Chesterton's Fr. Brown anecdotes, where a man had pretended to be a priest and said Mass nearly perfectly, but Fr. Brown caught him. "How did you know? I thought I did it perfectly!" the man said. "You did," Fr. Brown responded, "But you preached against reason in your homily, and that is not Catholic."

The organ at St. Francis Church

After Mass, I let her fly, fifth gear full throttle! Started with a Baroque piano piece I had learned a long time ago - take it slow, build it up. Plus I knew I couldn't mess that one up too badly if the bishop was still listening... Then I did the Prelude in E Minor, which doesn't have too hard of a pedal part. (I haven't touched a real pedal board in weeks), and finished with the Fugue in C Major from BWV 545, one of my recital pieces. It was rough, but not too shabby, and by that point I didn't care, it was just fun to play that instrument! What a sound! Sister said having two organ majors here is certainly making it a memorable semester! *Sigh* I would love to get the music program over here. This would be such a unique opportunity for students to experience. Maybe some day.

The streets of Salzburg!

The Church where the bread turned to stone

The bread that turned to stone!

The cemetery which inspired the scene in The Sound of Music. They built the set in Hollywood.

The fountain from the Sound of Music, but it's all covered up. :-(

The oldest restaurant in Europe (381 AD), also where the Mozart family would come to dine.

After Mass was lunch and a tour of the city. We saw a statue of St. Florian one of the patron saints of the city, and visited a few churches. One of the churches had a loaf of bread that had been turned to stone when one of the parishoners decided to stay home and bake bread instead of go to Mass on Sunday.  then went to check in to our hostel. The hostel was super nice, def. not like the ones we'll be staying in on our own trips, I'm sure, so I enjoyed it while it lasted. The room was small, but clean and warm and bright. During our free time, a few friends and I went to the Mozart Museum. There are actually two, but we went to the one which was the birthplace of Mozart, No. 9 on the most famous street in Salzburg. It had an original manuscript of one of his Kyrie's ( I think from his Mass in Eb Major). I sight read the soprano part through the glass and Elizabeth laughed at me. "You can't keep it from me that easily!" We could only stay an hour there though, as I had a very important appointment at the Cathedral with my friend Annie.

The Mozart Museum + his birthplace

My organ professor Dr. Weber from school had put Annie and I in contact with an organist and teacher at the Mozarteum, one of the finest conservatories in Europe located here in Salzburg. (BTW, the von Trapp house used in the Sound of Music is actually one of the dormitories for the Conservatory). Thus, we were able to arrange a visit with the Professor to go and look at the different organs in the Salzburg cathedral. We met him in front of the Cathedral around 5 pm. He was a little man dressed in black with a cute German accent. At first I wasn't sure it was him, but we finally approached him and asked if he was Professor  Metzger, which he was, of course. He was happy to see us, although he had been expecting a whole group of students, not just the two of us. But he was happy to shepherd us into the cathedral. We walked to the center of the nave, near the sanctuary above the dome, where there were four organs on little balconies surrounding us, and then the big organ in the choir loft in the back. He asked us, "How many organs do you see?" We counted five. "There are actually seven," he said, and pointed to one of the balconies which had two little organs, and then there was a tuning organ near one of the side altars. The organs were all either well-tempered, mean-tempered, or equal temperament (FYI, there are different ways of tuning instruments. Most pianos are equal temperament). He gave us a brief history of the instruments and the cathedral, then, rubbing his hands together gleefully asked, "Now, where shall we start?"
We decided to start with the organ on the far right corner (in reference to the sanctuary). There were two organs there, a really small one and then a "less" smaller one, but still pretty tiny. It was well tempered, and get this, it had two different keys for the D# and the Eb, and a few other sharps and flats. I had never seen anything like it before in my life! The organ had a lot of Italian stops (not sure what makes an Italian stop, will find out). The last five notes on the left of the keyboard were arranged differently though to be five notes of a scale, so what normally would have been an F, F#, G, G# was actually a C, D, F, E, G. It's really bizarre but it's supposed to be for base note reasons, I think Professor Metzger said. The next organ we visited was a replica of the one that Mozart would have played during his years working at the cathedral. It was located on the right closest to the sanctuary, across from the one we had just visited. This one had two manuals and a pedal board, which was the same size as the one here in Gaming (only in tune, LOL, whatever that means). Then we got to see the king of the organs, the big one in the choir loft. The organ was magnificent! This one was tuned to equal temperament, too! I got to play my Prelude and Fugue in C Major BWV 545 on it. THAT was one of the most incredible experiences of my life! That instrument was so beautiful. When I finished the last chord, it drifted slowly, slowly into silence as it reverberated against the walls of the church.
Alas, after that we had to go to get dinner before the Mozart chamber music concert that evening. But it was such a great opportunity to get to meet Professor Metzger, he was so kind to show us around. I could tell he was enjoying it just as much as we were, though. You could see in his face how much he loved sharing the cathedral, its instruments, and its music with us.

The first organ we saw. Notice the extra key for the D#, Eb, and for the A#, Bb.

Annie playing the Mozart organ, w/ Professor Metzger

The big organ!

We got dinner at a little Italian cafe. It seemed like a popular hang out for musicians. There were so many different languages being spoken around us: Italian, German, British English, French. It was so interesting!

The Italian cafe. I like the Venetian touch: San Marco (the cathedral in Venice). Has a nice musical connection, no?

The concert was incredible, the performers were top-notch - of course, after all, it is Salzburg! They played a Mozart chamber piece, some selections from his operas Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, then transitioned to the Romantic Period with a Beethoven Concerto for piano and violin, and a Cesar Franck Concerto for the same instruments. The Cesar Franck concerto was definitely my favorite. It was a neat contrast to compare Beethoven, Mozart, and Franck's pieces in juxtaposition to each other.
After the concert we went to the Augustiner Keller, a famous brewery in Salzburg. You had to pick a half or full pint off of a huge shelf, pay for it, then rinse it out in this fountain and take it to the bar tender who filled it from a huge keg. It was pretty good, for my first beer! The brewery was interesting, too. It was kinda dark and smelly. It reminded me of what would happened if you took the Golden Hall of Theoden King in Rohan and transformed it into the Prancing Pony. Definitely a great day! No wonder Mozart and Bach wrote such good music, they had great music all around them, great landscapes for inspiration, and good brewed drinks to go along with it. ;-)