—  Shaky Tour Europa (2016)  —

September 28, 2016 (Wednesday) - The Thayer Sarrano Experience visits the city of Salzburg, sadly the last of her three dates in Austria. Thayer Sarrano is joined, per usual, her stalwart rhythm-section, comprised of Ted Kuhn (bass) and Jason Nazary (drums). (If you don't recognize these names by now, you haven't been paying attention.) Together the Sarrano Three play Plan B -- a musikcafé situated on the edge of the Kapuzinerberg, a Capuchin cloister, whose grounds and surrounding area operate as a virtual nature preserve in the heart of the city itself. We would like to thank Herr Peter Kreyci for promoting this show locally, while stocking up the local Musikladen record store with Shaky CDs and vinyl LPs.

In case you don't know, Salzburg is the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He is, however, such a towering figure in music, we Guildwater Scribes are at loss as to what to say without sounding cliché. In case you don't know either, Salzburg is the setting for The Sound of Music. No matter how many times it is shown here in the United States on television every Christmas, we Guildwater monks occasionally watch it, and each time are mortally offended that Maria always chooses that rogue, Captain Georg von Trapp, over the wonders of the contemplative life of the convent / monastery. We watch on regardless, to the bitter end, hoping this time it will be different, that Maria will come to her senses, and become a nun. We are always disappointed. We can write no more about this film. Because, in addition to the offense of Maria's wayward ways, the mere mention of the film's title, and we get these Rodgers and Hammerstein songs stuck in our noggin. We then suddenly have an urge to flee our Scriptorium, run around on a mountaintop, sing, and pick daisies. It's terrible.

The Scribes of Guildwater would prefer to write about Hohensalzburg Castle. Construction began in the eleventh century under the guidance of Archbishop Gebhard von Helfenstein. In that era, the archbishopric of Salzburg was a self-sufficient if not practically sovereign state within the Holy Roman Empire. Despite that, Salzburg was long under the sway of the secular authority of the nearby dukes of Bavaria. A reform-minded pope of the period, Pope Gregory VII, sought to turn back such influence, the power that various emperors and local powers had gained over the church. This church-state struggle is known as the Investiture Controversy. Events were not always predictable. For instance, when, in 1076, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV selected his own chaplain, Tebald, as the Archbishop of Milan, over the appointee of Gregory VII, Tebald was all too happy to obey his emperor, and disobey his pope. Gregory responded by excommunicating Henry IV. This lead to that famous scene at Canossa, outside Rome, whereby Henry IV was compelled to seek forgiveness, kneeling outside the pope's castle for three days in the snow. This was a clear victory for the church in 1077. Coincidentally, Archbishop von Helfenstein's construction began on his own Hohensalzburg Castle that very same year. In the Investiture Controversy, Archbishop Helfenstein supported Pope Gregory, despite having worked closely with Henry IV on various occasions previously. Later, after Canossa, as Henry IV regained his authority, and returned to combatting the papacy, Archbishop Helfenstein was forced to flee Salzburg, owing to imperial pressures. He spent nine years in exile from Hohensalzburg Castle, then under construction. The initial structure was but a kernel of the magnificent edifice seen today. It would be completed and enlarged over the centuries. Demonstrating the complex history of what are now the modern states of Austria and neighboring Germany, the city of Salzburg and its outlying area were effectively ruled by its archbishop, yet remained a part of the broader Holy Roman Empire. It was only during the turmoil of the Napoleonic era, in the early 1800s, that the Austrian Habsburgs formally incorporated Salzburg into its political dominions.