En route to Prague from Salzburg, we stopped at the Augustinian monastery and chapel at St. Florian, where composer Anton Bruckner grew up as a choirboy and became organist.

We began with a 45-minute tour of the monastery and I was impressed with two major rooms: the library, which houses about 130,000 books and manuscripts; and Marble Hall, where special functions take place. Today we saw it set up for a wedding reception.

Both rooms, however, featured large ceiling paintings, and the one in Marble Hall was an optical illusion, making you think the ceiling was rounded when in fact it was flat.

We visited the crypt where we saw the coffin of Anton Bruckner, which is located directly below the organ in the rear gallery.

What was a little gruesome was that there was a collection of 6000 skulls just adjacent to Bruckner’s coffin. These were people who died of natural means but I do not know why they were next to Bruckner.

It was time for an impromptu concert so we went upstairs to the huge chapel. Of course my eyes were drawn to the three pipe organs: one huge one in the back (the “Bruckner” organ) and two smaller instruments on both sides of the chancel.

Because we were unwilling to pay 300 euros in order to play the Bruckner organ (!) we had to make do with one of the smaller chancel organs. I have to admit the console was a bit unusual and I had to figure out which tabs corresponded to the specific manuals. It was not in any way standard!

The first piece on the concert, though, was Bruckner’s “Locus iste.” Let me share Scott Fikse’s quote from his Facebook page:

The Church of St. Florian where Anton Bruckner himself is buried beneath the great organ. Hitler wanted to turn the pews around to face the organ (among other changes) in order to change the sanctuary into a concert hall for the music of Wagner, Bruckner, and others. The church remained as it was intended, however. Today we sang Locus Iste and our Austrian tour guide was literally brought to tears at the thought of a Hawaiian choir singing the music of their beloved Bruckner in his final resting place.

Photo credit: Timothy Carney

Karol’s Karolers sang three numbers, reprising Carl Crosier’s setting of “The Queen’s Prayer” but also sang “Na Ke Akua” by John McCreary, the late choirmaster-organist of St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Like yesterday, I’m afraid I didn’t catch the beginning of the song. Sorry!

It was time again to get on the bus, with a brief stop at Český Krumlov, our first stop in the Czech Republic. The first order of business was to walk up the very steep hill in order to see a panoramic view of the city.

We finally got to Prague about 7:00 pm and found out the town is overrun with a Harley-Davidson convention with motorcycles everywhere, necessitating that our large group be split between three small hotels. I was assigned the third hotel with nine people each having a single room. Due to some confusion over the location of our hotel and the dropoff, my group ended up trekking a long way, perhaps about a half mile, burdened with our suitcases bouncing over the cobble stone streets. Not fun!