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Austria, Mozart, Music, Salzburg, Salzburg Austria, travel, travel essay
The Mozart House in Salzburg, Austria
When Alan, our tour guide, pointed out the unassuming house of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, I suddenly felt tears prick my eyes. In the middle of a busy thoroughfare in Salzburg, Austria, I was transported back to a time in my life when emotions were so much more accessible than they are now.
As a college sophomore, I sang the role of Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. I fell in love with his music when we began to rehearse the end of Act IV. This video from the film, Amadeus, depicts the scene, in which the Count begs the Countess for forgiveness, and all is resolved. As I stood on stage during the first performance, I remember thinking about how each of the characters had a different motivation in this scene, yet each character played an important role in the ensemble that created this majestic work of art. It was an incandescent moment, one in which I felt everything was right with my life. I had tears in my eyes at the end of that performance, and Mozart had put them there.
Notice how the characters stand still, facing stage front. In this scene, it’s all about the music, and the music is just glorious.
I don’t know if Mozart was the first to layer characterizations through music this way, but it was certainly my first experience in which characters, singing from different perspectives, for different reasons, captured musical lightning. I don’t know much about music history, but I can see this layering of characters in many contemporary musicals. Here is a scene from Les Miserables that demonstrates the way many characters with many different motifs come together to form a whole.
See how the art form has evolved? The characters move. They all have different things to say. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be to write a scene such as this.
Why did I cry when I heard that I was standing on the same street where Mozart had once stood? Why did I pay ten euros to go into his birthplace to view his child-sized violin and examine a tiny lock of his hair?
It wasn’t because he changed the world, although it could be argued that he had a profound effect on the music and musicians that came after him. I didn’t cry because it surprised me to learn about him during our trip to Salzburg. I knew he had lived there and had expected to hear about him.
I cried because of how Mozart had once made me feel on a day long ago. I cried because I hear his influence in other beautiful music, like the Prima Donna scene from Phantom of the Opera. I cried because the city was stretched before us in all its alabaster glory,and I was with the person I loved the most in the whole world. I cried because I was overwhelmed with beauty.
The Alabaster City
Music is where my beautiful tears originate. What about you? What beautiful thing can reduce you to tears?
thepauser 
This is beautiful and it’s amazing you got to feel Mozart so closely
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Thank you. It was an amazing experience. Have a great evening.
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I love opera and I went to the Arena in Verona to see Aida because that was where Verdi premiered that opera and because the march was used as the entrance march in my lodge when I was a Rainbow Girl. I felt that moment all the way through me. I felt the 12-13-14 year old I was in Bellevue Nebraska hearing that march (which I liked) and I felt the woman I was at 52 sitting in an old Roman amphitheater in Verona hearing it “for real” not on a record player. There is other music — the theme from Lawrence of Arabia is beautiful by itself, but because the film meant so much to me when I was 10, if I happen to hear the music in some random place (car radio, for example) I can’t help but feel it’s a good sign. I love Wagner, but I hadn’t really heard his music until the summer before last. There’s a bit from Seigfried’s Rhine Journey as the theme for “Young Goethe in Love.” I was driving home from school and I heard it (car radio) and then all the music that goes around it. My first meeting of Wagner. I immediately watched the New York Met version of Seigfried and loved it. Beethoven’s “Fidelio” is also very beautiful, very moving. I’m afraid my list of stuff that makes me cry “beautiful tears” is pretty long and I’m grateful it is. Pavarotti singing ANYTHING…
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P.S. I was in Verona because that was the first place my hero, Goethe, saw classical buildings — he wrote beautifully about the amphitheater and that was where I first learned of it. 🙂 That Longfellow poem, “A Psalm of Life”
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
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What a beautiful poem. I had never heard it. Now I must add Verona to my bucket list.
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Here’s the whole poem. Longfellow wrote it when he was 19. 🙂
A Psalm of Life
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
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What an encouraging poem. Thank you so much for sharing the whole thing with me. Have a wonderful evening!
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Yes to Pavarotti! Nesse Un Dorme. Isn’t it great how some things are just too wonderful? My son loved Lawrence of Arabia as a boy, but I don’t think I’ve watched the whole thing. I’ll definitely have to now.
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This is not the first Pauser entry that has brought a tear to my eye. They are all so beautifully written.
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Thank you, Ward. You are always so kind. I hope everyone fares well at your house.
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Such a lovely, lovely post as you explore the reason for your tears. For me, it’s books, not always, but sometimes: they make me cry with the beauty of their words, the sadness of their characters, and my sorrow at finishing the book and leaving people and places that have brought me such pleasure.
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Yes, books can turn me into a watering pot as well. Did you ever read Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse? It’s a children’s book that I definitely reacted to with tears. But they were the salty kind, like the ones you need but can only shed in an indirect way. I’d rather have the beautiful kind.
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This post is beautiful, I can tear up when I’m singing a beautiful piece and really connect with it or watching others who truly believe their characterisation. Or listen to a beautiful concerto which incidently I’ve only had the opportunity to do since I started at my conservatoire I love that’s it’s opened doors to me to experience so much beautiful music.
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That’s the thing about music, isn’t it? I know it’s not true for everyone, but music definitely does this for me. It must be amazing to be at the hub of all that wonderful music you are experiencing.
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