Richard Rodgers composed the music that made Salzburg a global destination. Every melody visitors now hum in Mirabell Gardens, at Nonnberg Abbey, and across the hills outside the city came from Rodgers, who wrote The Sound of Music (1959) with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. He never visited Salzburg. The songs did the travelling for him.
The Story
Rodgers was born in Queens in 1902 into a household where music was constant. His mother played piano by ear; his father took him to Broadway operettas every Saturday. By fourteen he was writing songs. By seventeen, one of them was on Broadway. His first major partnership, with lyricist Lorenz Hart, lasted from 1919 to 1943 and produced 26 shows, including Babes in Arms, On Your Toes, and The Boys from Syracuse.
When Hart became unable to continue working, Rodgers joined Oscar Hammerstein II, and what followed was the defining chapter of American musical theatre. Oklahoma! (1943) established the principle that songs in a musical should advance the drama, not interrupt it. Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949, Pulitzer Prize for Drama), The King and I (1951): each one pushed the form further. Their partnership earned 42 Tony Awards, 15 Oscars, and two Pulitzers.
The Sound of Music was their last show together. It opened on Broadway on 16 November 1959, ran 1,443 performances, and won five Tony Awards. "Edelweiss," the final song they wrote together, was completed during Boston tryout performances. Rodgers supplied a simple waltz melody; Hammerstein shaped it into a lyric about a man's quiet love for a country being taken from him.
Hammerstein died in August 1960. The film, directed by Robert Wise, reached cinemas in 1965. Its global success turned every Salzburg location associated with the story into a pilgrimage site, the Mirabell Gardens, Nonnberg Abbey, the Hellbrunn gazebo, the hills outside the city. Rodgers had written every note that made this possible. He died in New York on 30 December 1979.
