I understand why so much beautiful music was made in Salzburg. This place exudes culture and class, but not snobbery. I went to see a violin/piano concert tonight held at the Mozart University. Just like at the Opera in Berlin, I started out feeling very out of place and underdressed - like a lost, dirty hippie backpacker who accidentally wandered in to a classical concert thinking it was some sort of outdoor folk music festival. Of course my self-consciousness was heightened by the fact that every place of exposed skin on me looks like a road map of red dots. Buying the ticket, I felt like I should apologize. "I´m sorry I´m wearing green camo pants and birks. I´m sorry I have a giant tattoo of a tree on my back. I´m sorry I´m covered in inflamed red spots, but don´t worry, they´re not contagious." Of course I didn´t say those things, and I´m sure no one was thinking them either. We are always our own worst critics, right? Well, they might have been a little afraid of all the spots. . .
But once the music began, my fears slipped right through the frayed bottom of my dirty camo pants and out of my itchy body. Let me explain the setting. The concert hall is located in the famous Mozart Conservatory, which flanks the Mirabella Gardens (well-known for the "do a deer a female deer" scene in The Sound of Music). This concert hall was on the second floor. The entire back wall behind the stage was windows, with a breathtaking view of the gardens, opening up to the Austrian Alps behind, complete with a view of the distant castle jutting into the horizon line. As the concert progressed over 2 hours, the sun set behind the music, filling the room with a warm, pink glow.
Now I know about as much about classical music as I know about Opera - which is about as much as I know about the chemical makeup of Neptune´s atmosphere. But I didn´t need to know a thing to know that what my ears were taking in were some of the most flawless sounds this earth has ever heard. What an amazing thing music is. These pieces of music exist only in the realm of sound. True, you can see the composition on a score sheet, but it doesn´t live until it is played. So unlike a book which is printed in multiple copies and circulated around bookstores and passed between friends for years, or a painting which is hung in a museum you have to travel to to view, a piece of music only exists in the exact moment it is being played. It is different every time it is performed. Each musician who takes it on infuses their own energies to the music and gives it a new feeling. I felt like I was watching history happen. But not the kind of history written in books or taught in schools. There would have been no point to taking photos of the concert. How would that help you all understand what it felt like to be there? I had to sit in the moment, taste it, feel it, let it become a part of me, and then let it go.
I think Salzburg is going to be a lovely break for my party-weary soul.
But once the music began, my fears slipped right through the frayed bottom of my dirty camo pants and out of my itchy body. Let me explain the setting. The concert hall is located in the famous Mozart Conservatory, which flanks the Mirabella Gardens (well-known for the "do a deer a female deer" scene in The Sound of Music). This concert hall was on the second floor. The entire back wall behind the stage was windows, with a breathtaking view of the gardens, opening up to the Austrian Alps behind, complete with a view of the distant castle jutting into the horizon line. As the concert progressed over 2 hours, the sun set behind the music, filling the room with a warm, pink glow.
Now I know about as much about classical music as I know about Opera - which is about as much as I know about the chemical makeup of Neptune´s atmosphere. But I didn´t need to know a thing to know that what my ears were taking in were some of the most flawless sounds this earth has ever heard. What an amazing thing music is. These pieces of music exist only in the realm of sound. True, you can see the composition on a score sheet, but it doesn´t live until it is played. So unlike a book which is printed in multiple copies and circulated around bookstores and passed between friends for years, or a painting which is hung in a museum you have to travel to to view, a piece of music only exists in the exact moment it is being played. It is different every time it is performed. Each musician who takes it on infuses their own energies to the music and gives it a new feeling. I felt like I was watching history happen. But not the kind of history written in books or taught in schools. There would have been no point to taking photos of the concert. How would that help you all understand what it felt like to be there? I had to sit in the moment, taste it, feel it, let it become a part of me, and then let it go.
I think Salzburg is going to be a lovely break for my party-weary soul.
1 comment:
Love this post, Melanie. Wish I could have listened with you but your description alone made me imagine it quite well and it did my soul good, too. :)
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