Maria Anna Mozart

This article is about the sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For his mother, see Anna Maria Mozart.

"Marianne Mozart", "Nannerl", and "Nannerl Mozart" redirect here. For her cousin of the same name, see Maria Anna Thekla Mozart.

Maria Anna Mozart
Portrait of Maria Anna Mozart near the onset of her childhood fame in 1763, attributed to Lorenzoni
Born	(1751-07-30)30 July 1751 Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg
Died	29 October 1829(1829-10-29) (aged 78) Salzburg, Austrian Empire
Occupation(s)	Musician, music teacher
Spouse	Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg ​ ​ (m. 1784)​
Children	3

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia "Marianne" Mozart (30 July 1751 – 29 October 1829), nicknamed Nannerl, was a highly regarded musician from Salzburg, Austria. In her childhood, she made tremendous progress as a keyboard player under the tutelage of her father Leopold, to the point that she became a celebrated child prodigy, touring much of Europe with her parents and her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age 17, her career as a touring musician was discontinued by her father, though she continued to work at home teaching piano. She eventually married and had a family, continuing her teaching career. She is known to have composed works of music, though no manuscripts are extant. In her later years she contributed to the biographical study of her late brother.

Life

Childhood

This portrait, by Louis Carrogis, known as "Carmontelle", was painted in Paris during the family grand tour. It shows Leopold with his violin, Wolfgang at the keyboard, and Nannerl (perhaps unusually, since her fame was as a keyboardist) singing.

Maria Anna Mozart was born in Salzburg to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Mozart. In childhood, she bore the nickname "Nannerl," a name that is sometime still used for her today; later on her informal first name became "Marianne". When Nannerl was seven years old, her father started teaching her to play the harpsichord. She progressed very rapidly, catching the attention of her little brother Wolfgang, whom Leopold soon started teaching as well. By age 13 Nannerl had reached the point where her father, in a letter (8 June 1764), called her "one of the most skilful pianists in Europe." As it emerged that both children were musical prodigies, Leopold had the idea (1762) of taking them on tour to perform. There were several such journeys, of which the greatest was a three-year grand tour in a general northwesterly direction, including long stays in London and Paris; other journeys went eastward to Vienna. In the early days, Nannerl sometimes received top billing, and she was noted as an excellent keyboard player.

However, given the views prevalent in her society at the time, it became impossible for Nannerl to continue her concert tours as she grew older. According to Rieger, "from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother, as she had reached a marriageable age." Wolfgang continued to tour with Leopold (for instance, in three journeys to Italy), while Marianne had to stay at home in Salzburg with her mother. From 1772 on she taught piano in Salzburg.

There is evidence that Marianne wrote musical compositions, as there are letters from Wolfgang praising her work, but the voluminous correspondence of her father never mentions any of her compositions, and none have survived.

Courtship and marriage

Portrait traditionally regarded as being Maria Anna Mozart in adulthood, c. 1785; for its doubtful status see [2]

Marianne's mother died in 1778 while accompanying her son to Paris on a job-hunting tour. Marianne, who had stayed at home, remained there for several years as the lady of the house. After 1781, when Wolfgang departed permanently for Vienna, she was Leopold's only family companion.

Around the summer of 1783, Marianne seems to have developed a relationship with Franz Armand d'Ippold, who was a captain in the Imperial and Royal Army as well tutor to the Salzburg court pages. Why this relationship did not lead to marriage is not known, though scholarly suspicion falls upon the possibility that Leopold objected. Wolfgang, now living in Vienna, intervened sympathetically by letter, suggesting that the whole family move to Vienna, and that he would make introductions to help d'Ippold establish a career there. These plans failed to materialize.

Eventually, on 23 August 1784 Marianne, aged 33, married a magistrate named Johann Baptist Franz Freiherr von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg (1736–1801), and settled with him in St. Gilgen, a village in Austria about 29 km east of the Mozart family home in Salzburg. Berchtold was twice a widower and had five children from his two previous marriages, whom Marianne helped raise. She also bore three children of her own: Leopold Alois Pantaleon (1785–1840), Jeanette (1789–1805) and Marie Babette (1790–1791). The marriage may have been a difficult one, in that Berchtold's children were often ill-behaved, even disrespectful, and Berchtold was not always reasonable with her. The distance to Salzburg suggests that Marianne lost at least some of her Salzburg piano pupils. Nevertheless, she continued her professional career as a pianist, practicing three hours a day and continuing her teaching in St. Gilgen. There is an extensive correspondence with Leopold, who until his death in 1787 attempted to provide what help he could from a distance, running errands and reporting news.

Marianne's son

An unusual episode in Marianne's life occurred when she gave birth (27 July 1785) to her first child, a son who was named Leopold after his grandfather. She had traveled from her home in St. Gilgen to Salzburg for the birth. When she returned to St. Gilgen, she left her infant in the care of her father and his servants. The elder Leopold stated (by a letter that preceded Marianne back to St. Gilgen) that he would prefer to raise the child for the first few months himself. In 1786, he extended the arrangement to an indefinite term. There is no record of Marianne's response to her father's demands. Evidently, Leopold continued to care for his grandson, taking delight in his progress (toilet training, speech, and so on), and commencing with the very beginnings of musical training. Marianne saw her son on occasional visits, but in general, was not involved in his care. The arrangement continued until the death of her father, on 28 May 1787. Biographers differ on the reasons for this arrangement. Little Leopold was ill in his infancy, and perhaps needed to be kept in Salzburg for this reason, but this does not explain why he was still kept there after his recovery. Another possibility attributes the arrangement to Marianne's delicate health or her obligation to take care of her stepchildren. Biographer Maynard Solomon attributes the arrangement to Leopold's wish to revive his skills in training a musical genius, as he had done with Marianne's brother. He also suggests that giving up her son was indicative of her total subordination to her father's wishes.

Relationship with Wolfgang

Nannerl and her brother, c. 1763, by Eusebius Johann Alphen (1741–1772). For discussion of the portrait's authenticity, see Portraits of Mozart.

During their childhood, the four and a half years older Marianne was her brother's idol. According to Maynard Solomon, "at three, Mozart was inspired to study music by observing his father's instruction of Marianne; he wanted to be like her." The two children were very close, and they invented a secret language and an imaginary "Kingdom of Back" of which they were king and queen. By the time Wolfgang was a teenager, traveling in Italy, there is often correspondence between the two. Wolfgang's contributions, often added on to Leopold's letters, are affectionate, frequently teasing; they included some of the scatological and sexual wordplay in which he indulged with intimates.

Her brother wrote several works for her to perform, including the Prelude and Fugue in C, K. 394 (1782) and the four Preludes K. 395/300g (1777). Until 1785, Marianne received copies of his piano concertos (up to No. 21) in St. Gilgen. In sending the copies, Wolfgang took the trouble to write down the cadenzas for these works that, performing them himself, he would have played from memory or improvisation; the copies Marianne preserved made it possible for pianists to perform the Mozart cadenzas in later years.

Concerning the relationship between the two siblings in adulthood, a key observation is that the last letter from Wolfgang to Marianne (she kept correspondence assiduously) is dated 1788, three years before his death, leading some scholars to suggest a falling out. Otto Jahn suggested various reasons: that Wolfgang had essentially abandoned his family when he moved off to Vienna, that she did not care for his wife Constanze, and perhaps some friction over Leopold's will. Solomon notes that after Wolfgang's visit to Salzburg with Constanze in 1783, the two siblings never visited again and thus never saw each other's children.

Ten years after the death of Wolfgang in 1791, Marianne encountered Franz Xaver Niemetschek's 1798 biography of her brother. Since this biography had been written from the perspective of Vienna and of Constanze, she only then read about certain parts of his life for the first time. In an 1800 letter, she wrote:

Herr Prof. Niemetschek's biography so completely reanimated my sisterly feelings toward my so ardently beloved brother that I was often dissolved in tears since it is only now that I became acquainted with the sad condition in which my brother found himself.

Musical works

Letters written by Wolfgang to his sister show that Marianne composed works of music. In one of the letters, he wrote, "My dear sister! I am in awe that you can compose so well, in a word, the song you wrote is beautiful." The letters are the sole evidence for her status as a composer because no manuscripts of her work have survived.

Later years

Crypt 54 (St Peter's Cemetery, Salzburg): communal vault in which Maria Anna Mozart and Michael Haydn are buried

After the death of her husband in 1801, Marianne returned to Salzburg, at first accompanied by her two living children. Financially well provided for she still gave piano lessons and was a highly esteemed piano soloist in the concerts at Prince Ernst von Schwarzenberg's. Her students during this time included Anna Sick, who later became the court pianist at Stuttgart.

In 1821, Marianne was visited by Wolfgang's son, Franz Xaver Mozart, whom she had never met. She took the opportunity to tell him about his father's childhood, and to introduce him to various family friends.

In her last years, Marianne's health declined, and she became blind in 1825. Mary Novello, visiting in 1829, recorded her impression that Marianne was "blind, languid, exhausted, feeble and nearly speechless", as well as lonely. She mistakenly took Marianne to be impoverished, though in fact she was frugal and left a large fortune (7,837 florins).

Marianne died on 29 October 1829, aged 78, and was buried in St Peter's Cemetery, Salzburg.

Her role in Mozart biography

Marianne served posterity in providing much useful information to biographers of her celebrated brother. Not long after her brother's death in 1791, she was consulted by Friedrich Schlichtegroll, who created the first biography of Mozart. She responded by writing an essay of several pages; she also persuaded Johann Andreas Schachtner, a court trumpeter and old family friend, to write down his own memories. These documents, covering Wolfgang's years of childhood, offer information that would never otherwise have been obtainable.

Much later, in 1820, Marianne's former sister-in-law Constanze Nissen, whose first marriage had been to Wolfgang, settled in Salzburg in the company of her second husband, Georg Nikolaus Nissen. The two had the intention to write a comprehensive biography of Mozart. Although Marianne and Constanze had never been close and had not kept in touch, Marianne nevertheless shared with the pair her extensive collection of Mozart letters and memorabilia, which formed an important part of the finished biography and indeed of all subsequent Mozart scholarship.

As a fictional character

Maria Anna Mozart provided the inspiration for many authors' fictional characters.

• The Secret Wish of Nannerl Mozart (1996) by Barbara Kathleen Nickel is a young adult novel.
• Marianne was the subject of a 2001 "biography in poems", The Other Mozart by Sharon Chmielarz.
• Mozart's Sister, a 2005 novel by Alison Bauld, follows Marianne's life through marriage, children, widowhood, and death in conversations with her nephew Franz Xaver.
• Nancy Moser wrote Mozart's Sister: A Novel (2006).
• In La sorella di Mozart (Italian: "Mozart's sister"), a 2006 novel by Rita Charbonnier,
• Ann Turnbull's 2007 young adult novel Mary Ann and Miss Mozart refers to Maria Anna Mozart.
• The popular young adult author Carolyn Meyer wrote of Nannerl's life in her 2008 novel In Mozart's Shadow: His Sister's Story.
• Marianne was the subject of Nannerl, la sœur de Mozart (Mozart's Sister), a 2010 French-language film from director René Féret.
• In his 2011 novel Mozart's Last Aria, Matt Rees has Marianne investigating her brother's death.
• In 2013, Marianne's life was adapted into a one-person theatre piece called The Other Mozart where writer/musician Sylvia Milo portrayed Marianne in a partially fictional autobiography.
• She appears in several episodes of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle.
• She is the protagonist of the 2020 young adult historical fantasy novel The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu.
• The 2024 documentary film Mozart's Sister by Madeleine Hetherton-Miau ad Rebecca Barry investigates the role of Maria Anna in relation to her brother.

References

Biographical publications'

• "Mozart family". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. 2001. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40258. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
• Abert, Hermann (2007). Cliff Eisen (ed.). W. A. Mozart. Translated by Spencer, Stewart. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07223-5. OCLC 70401564.
• Clive, Peter (1993) Mozart and his Circle. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965). Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0233-0. OCLC 8991008.
• Eisen, Cliff (2009). "Mozart in Italy and the Enigma of a Collection: Newly-Discovered Portraits and Artifacts" (PDF).
• Solomon, Maynard (1995). Mozart: A Life. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019046-9. OCLC 31435799.

Works of fiction with Maria Anna Mozart as a main character

• Bauld, Alison (2005). Mozart's Sister. London: Alcina Press. ISBN 978-0-9550713-0-0. OCLC 64769121. Bauld has also published a fictional diary as Nannerl Mozart in the form of Nannerls' blog.
• Charbonnier, Rita [in Italian] (2007). Mozart's Sister: A Novel. Ann Goldstein (trans.). New York: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-34678-0. OCLC 132585106. Originally published in Italy as: Charbonnier, Rita (2006). La sorella di Mozart: romanzo (in Italian). Milan: Corbaccio. ISBN 978-88-7972-759-4. OCLC 64219881.
• Chmielarz, Sharon (2001). The Other Mozart: Poems. Princeton: Ontario Review Press. ISBN 0-86538-101-1. OCLC 45207996.
• Lu, Marie (2020). The Kingdom of Back. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-1524739010. OCLC 1141426794.
• Meyer, Carolyn (2008). In Mozart's Shadow: His Sister's Story. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-205594-3. OCLC 180689946.
• Moser, Nancy (2006). Mozart's Sister. Minneapolis: Bethany House. ISBN 978-0-7642-0123-3. OCLC 70045811.
• Rees, Matt (2011). Mozart's Last Aria. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-201586-0. OCLC 703206599.

External links

• Media related to Maria Anna Mozart at Wikimedia Commons