Sound of Music: Culture and Travel Context

The Sound of Music is a stage musical that was adapted for film in 1965. It is set in Salzburg, Austria. The film was a box office record-breaker in 29 countries, won five Oscars including Best Sound, Best Music and Best Picture, and was once the highest grossing movie of all time. While the film has never been popular in Austria, it is a great showcase of locations of the Alps.

The Trapp Family was an Austrian singing group, whose story has been told in several versions; Maria von Trapp's 1949 memoir, the 1956 West German feature film Die Trapp-Familie, the 1959 stage musical The Sound of Music and the 1965 film The Sound of Music, each of them further away from the real life events.

The Trapp Family singing group formed in Salzburg in the 1930s by naval officer Georg von Trapp, his wife Maria (née Kutschera) and the family's children. After winning a prize at a local music competition in 1936, they turned professional, and toured all over Europe. Following Germany's 1938 annexation of Austria, they emigrated to Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, until settling in Vermont in the United States. As the Trapp Family Singers, they kept performing until 1957.

Maria von Trapp published a memoir in 1949, somewhat embellishing and glossing some facts, due to her controlling and self-promoting tendencies. The book inspired the 1956 West German comedy drama film Die Trapp-Familie, one of the most successful German films of the 1950s. This film is freely available in good quality with English subtitles on YouTube, and makes for an interesting viewing experience, as the later classic movie followed its structure almost scene by scene, and despite not being a "musical" in the Broadway/Hollywood sense, it has some impressive musical numbers featuring the a capella polyphonic choral singing and the old Austrian hunting and sacred songs for which the family was then famous. Even though its screenwriters took some more artistic license with Maria's version for the sake of cinematic storytelling, and the family's children don't age in an 11-year timespan, it strives to be accurate and faithful to the Trapp Family's story, factually and musically. Its ending has a flavour of dated comedy: as the family is stranded in the Immigration Center at Ellis Island, with the (matte-painted) Statue of Liberty seen through a huge prison-like window in the background, the plot increases the tension of uncertainty until a cue for the family to launch a beautiful song that melts all hearts, opens all doors and assures the happy ending.

Die Trapp-Familie was the inspiration for the even more fictionalized stage play The Sound of Music, a full musical with an original score by Rodgers and Hammerstein and no songs from the family's repertoire, which debuted on Broadway in 1959. 20th Century Fox eventually bought its movie rights, and was slow to start production, because of the costly and troublesome shooting of Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, and its poor box office numbers.

The latter film is set in 1938, as Maria (Julie Andrews), a spirited nun in a Catholic convent, is tasked by Mother Abbess to become governess of retired and widowed naval captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer)'s seven children – in reality, they married in 1927. While he has kept military discipline in the house, Maria is more free-spirited, and teaches the children with music. As Nazi Germany takes power over Austria (the Anschluss), the family decides to escape to Switzerland over the mountains on foot – in reality, by this time they were a nationally famous professional touring musical ensemble, and after refusing an invitation to sing at the Führer's birthday party, they quietly boarded a regular train to Italy.

The Sound of Music has been a great world success, saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy, surpassed Gone With The Wind as the highest grossing movie of all time, stayed on exhibition until 1969 and has been referenced and lampooned by shows and musicals such as The Producers (with the show-within-a-show called Springtime for Hitler), Chess, and Sister Act. Still in the 2020s, the stage musical plays at many venues, and the story inspires many visitors to see Salzburg and Austria. However, the Hollywood version never appealed to a Germanophone audience, which is generally familiar with the Trapp Family story and playlist, and has always favoured the 1956 version. Besides the gross geographical impossibility of hiking all the way to Switzerland – the location choice for final scene is indeed unhappy, as they are actually walking into "Mordor", that is, the vicinity of the Berghof, Hitler's personal mountain retreat with a huge SS barracks on its backyard (the Eagle's Nest is briefly but clearly visible in the distance) – Austrians are prone to dislike the American songwriting (one song here was once described as "an insult to Austrian musical traditions") and might find their country presented in a stereotypical theme-park-like way, while Germans have been troubled by the Nazi theme, provided that the film was released only 20 years past World War II.

Both films play into the "Austria victim theory"; the claim that the country was the first to be occupied by Nazi Germany, without regard to the many Austrian Nazi leaders, including Hitler, who were perpetrators in World War II and the Holocaust (see Holocaust remembrance#Austria). The films take place just before the war, and focus on the Anschluss, though the German film approaches the question in a less "black and white" and more "shades of grey" manner than the American one.

In the 21st century, the city and the region have been coming to terms with the legacy of The Sound of Music, recognizing the business opportunities created by the film's world popularity, and adapting to create more ways to give fans what they want, with many filming location tours and musical events happening every year.

1 Nonnberg Abbey. The oldest operational nunnery in the German-speaking world, founded in 715, where the real Maria also lived. It's the location for the beginning of the film. It was only shot on the outside; the interiors were mostly filmed in the American studio.

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Source and licence

Text adapted from Sound of Music by Wikivoyage contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.