They named it Iuvavum and prized it for its salt deposits. Sandwiched uncomfortably between Austria and neighboring Bavaria was a tiny, independent city-state called Salzburg. This curiosity would eventually express itself in “Turkish” music and in dramatic presentations set in the exotic East, including an opera titled Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The erstwhile conquerors left behind sacks of coffee beans, a crescent-shaped pastry soon dubbed the croissant, and a persistent curiosity among the Viennese about all things oriental. In 1683 a Turkish army, bent on invading the West, had been turned back after laying siege to the city. The people of Europe had reason to be grateful to Austria and to its capital, Vienna, in particular. This empire, sometimes called Austria, was a multinational patchwork stitched together over the centuries by intermarriage, inheritance, military conquest and pure luck. Astride the Empire’s southeastern reaches stood another political anomaly, the hereditary domains of the Habsburgs. Its emperor was the spiritual descendent of Caesar and Charlemagne but he, in fact, possessed little power. Neither holy, Roman nor an empire (as numerous wags through the centuries have noted), this bizarre entity comprised most of the German-speaking countries from the North and Baltic seas to the Alps. While large nation-states were taking shape elsewhere, the central part of the continent remained a hodgepodge of independent kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities and cities loosely organized into something called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations. Religious conflicts had decimated the population of Germany and had fragmented it politically. Salzburg: An engraving by Anton Amon, after Franz von Naumann, 1791.Įurope in the early 18th century was marking time, trying to catch its breath after the bloody excesses of the previous century.

Mozart biography