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My last mass performance with the Chorvereinigung St Augustine in the Universitatskirche. The choir is a mixture of professional, semi professional and amateur singers and produces a fantastic sound in a magnificent setting performing a Viennese Mass every Sunday morning and on high days.
The interior of the basilica at Maria Taferl, completed in 1738 was designed initially by Georg Gerstenbrand, Imperial Viennese architect with subsequent additions by Carlo Lurago and Jakob Prandtauer in the late Austrian baroque style.
On Saturday around 70 singers and musicians, me included, departed Vienna on a coach destined for Maria Taferl, a pilgrimage village and church west of Melk along the Danube Valley. The setting was fantastic, as was the wedding and church, the bride and groom both being members of the Austrian aristocracy, although the use of titles is formally banned in the republic. We sang Mozarts Coronation Mass, an Austrian favorite and best of all received a wage, an unusual concept in an Austrian Church choir!
The Wachau is famous for its vineyard's, seen here set into hillside terraces at Weissenkirchen.
'Frescoed' spiral staircase within the towers of Melk abbey's Church.
The central Hof at the benedictine abbey of Melk. Designed by Jakob Praudtauer and completed in 1736, it is one of the richest baroque abbeys in central Europe with an imposing monastery Kirche and a library containing 2,000 volumes form the 9th to 15th Centuries alone. The monastery acquired its current baroque overcoat after the final defeat of the Turks in the late C17th which allowed the Hapburg's to remodel palaces, monasteries and churches that originally had to be fortified, hence Melk abbey's strategic setting.
The town of Melk at the western extreme of the Wachau as seen from the abbey, which dominates the area from its rocky outcrop.
