In Salzburg, the Hills Are Alive--With Mozart

A ship in the throes of a mid-Atlantic gale--an old wooden ship, that is--could not unleash a more wrenching moan than the plank floors of Mozart’s birthplace. Fraught with basso snaps and rising creaks, they make a visitor jump, there in the tall, yellow house in old Salzburg.

The house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756 is a museum of scores, letters, paintings and musical instruments--including a tiny violin--on which the young genius composed. It must have been quieter then.

On the Sunday I walked through, a stern-faced woman was squinting at a mock-up of a stage set for his opera, “The Marriage of Figaro.” She stared at a sheaf of drawn notes and then, as if she were the only person in all of Salzburg, she began to hum loudly.

The melody was familiar, but not to Mozart. It was “The Sound of Music,” the song from the memorable hit that was filmed in this small city and its surrounding Austrian Alps more than 20 years ago. The movie still inspires tours to its filming sites: “See where Maria and the Trapp children danced around the Pegasus Fountain and sang ‘Do-Re-Mi.’ See the Abbey where Maria was a novice. See where Gretl dropped the big tomato on the pavement.”

By contrast, there is little talk of the wildly successful film “Amadeus.” Salzburgers tend to shrug by now, rather than quibble. As one said to me, “What an exaggeration. Mozart was spoiled, but not that spoiled.”

In this city of year-round festivals and concerts, of street musicians and choirs, it seems almost reasonable to find a traveler staring intently at the music of Mozart while humming, “The hills are alive. . . .”

Mozart’s home is easy to find at No. 9 Getreidegasse, a narrow pedestrian street between the Salzach River and the rocky cliffs called Monchsberg. Street artists are busy drawing chalk portraits of Mozart on the sidewalk out front as passers-by toss coins in a cup. Knots of tourists listen to guides who occasionally end their spiels by bursting into song and are rewarded with cheers.

It is hard to escape Mozart in Salzburg. Along the Getreidegasse are the Mozart pharmacy and the Mozart chocolate shop. The familiar young face in powdered wig beams from hundreds of red, foil-wrapped candies in a window display, and from squat, golden bottles of Mozart liqueur.

You stroll the Mirabell gardens and someone whispers that he did, too. You stop for an espresso at the town’s oldest coffeehouse, the Cafe Tomaselli in Old Market Square, and learn that young Mozart was frequently there.

You get tickets for a string quintet concert by teachers from the music academy called Mozarteum and it takes place in an ornate palace, the Residenz, where Mozart performed and conducted.

A tousled-haired pipsqueak in front of you keeps wriggling in his chair and tugging at the collar of his tux. He seems to be alone. You think of tapping him gently with your program and you wonder if he’s a prodigy, or just a pretty good student who may be spoiled--but not that spoiled.