Mozargyny
As talented as her brother (possibly), she was forbidden from music at the age of 18. How Marianne Mozart reacted to this, however, is the stuff of legend.
Many of us know the story – born in Salzburg, traveled Europe as a child, played before Kings and Dukes and people with titles like “Elector of the Duchy of Westphalia”, whatever that is; the father parading the child around like a trained monkey. Keyboard exercises, playing blindfolded, memorizing difficult scores on one hearing, even more, all of it leading to quotes like this about the youngster:
“Interpreting the greatest maestros’ most difficult sonatas and concertos on the harpsichord with great clarity, inexpressible lightness, skill, and style. It was a source of wonder to many.”
And then… it stopped. Via paternal command, Mozart stopped composing, never toured Europe again, becoming a quiet piano teacher for local students, eventually dying rather wealthy in the third decade of the nineteenth century.
<record scratch to a halt>
What? You don’t remember that last?
Damn misogyny. Or, in the case of the two Mozarts, Mozargyny. For Wolfgang had a sister whom he loved dearly, and by all accounts, “Nannerl” – her nickname – was as talented a child as her brother. However, by her own father’s order, Marianne Mozart gave up touring, playing, and composing as a teen because such wasn’t becoming of a woman in the mid 18th-century.
And her reaction to this… it is not the stuff of drama, It is the stuff of legend.
Act 1, The Child Marianne and The Family Business
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, “Marianne” as she was called, “Nannerl” by nickname, was born to Anna Maria Mozart in July 1751, five years before her more famous brother, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart (“Wolfgang” or “Wolfie” throughout the rest of the piece).
In 18th-century Austria, and throughout Europe, it was customary for families to be involved in a single line of work – families of butchers, manufacturers, bankers, dock workers, more. The family trade, an idea no longer in vogue in contemporary American culture, was a reality in the working and professional classes, including the arts and music. It really has been the way of the world until very, very recently.
So the first thing you learn about Nannerl and Wolfie is this: Their father, Leopold Mozart, was the premier instructor of children’s violin in Europe, writing an introduction to the instrument still used in the 20th century. There is no accident of happenstance here – like Johann Sebastian Bach, another born into the family business, Wolfgang and Marianne were groomed and trained from the age of 3-onward to be musicians and, in Wolfgang’s case, composers. The idea of Wolfgang leaving home and finding a trade for himself was not even an option for the man. He was either going to succeed in the courts of Europe or he would be kapellmeister at some half-forgotten church, that was the range of Wolfgang’s possible futures.
But at least he had career options.
Marianne did not.
Act 2: Marianne and Wolfgang
Growing up as a toddler, there is very little information about her childhood, so we can only assume that she had a typical babyhood – was loved by her parents, survived a couple of scares with diseases unknown to us today, that sort of thing.
When Marianne was five years old, her mother gave birth to her more famous brother, a child who adored his older sister and, as soon as he could sit on the bench, would imitate her as she practiced on one of the family’s harpsichords or pianos. Leopold, a man so entrenched in 18th-century assumptions, quickly grew spellbound at his son’s precocity, his ability to hear the melody and transfer it to the piano, completely ignoring the simple fact that his daughter was doing the same, according to family letters. But, with Marianne being female, her musical talents didn’t matter.
With the boy showing the same gifts, the family business kicked into overdrive.
Her musical training was standard until this period. Leopold, upon noticing Wolfgang’s talent, accelerated his children’s music training, focusing on playing and, in Wolfgang’s case, composition and theory. Marianne was grounded in harpsichord, piano, and violin playing, those being the solo instruments of her day, as well as voice. (While both Mozart children were trained to sing, there is very little record of their doing so, which may speak to, er, the quality of their voices.)
Paris. Vienna. London. Prague. No capital of Europe was too large, no potentate too minor, for Leopold to parade his two children around, his thoughts constantly focused on the next concert, the next meeting. For Leopold was, above all else, a striver, a man who worked diligently to improve not just his fortune in life, but his social station, this passion consuming Leopold above all else.
And his children, especially his son, was the family’s ticket. It was just the way of Leopold’s world.
Marianne, by all accounts, played just as skillfully as her younger brother, but seeing a 5 year-old doing the same thing a 9 year-old was doing was just a more appealing narrative and visual, and Wolfgang was showered with all the praise, training, and attention. Leopold, for his faults, recognized her talents going so far as saying:
“My little girl plays the most difficult works which we have… with incredible precision and so excellently. What it all amounts to is this, that my little girl, although she is only 12 years old, is one of the most skilful players in Europe.”
Regardless, this wasn’t enough to change her destiny six years later, a destiny fixed at birth so that, regardless of talent and ability, even ‘one of the most skilful players in Europe’ is forced to hang it up once they achieve marrying age, which Marianne did in 1769, aged 18.
Again: it was just the way of the world.
Act 3: Marianne and Music
How does one define a lost genius? Where is the evidence for my claim that Marianne was talented, and not just hyped by her greedy dad? There are no recordings of their playing, and there is very little evidence of her compositions, even the ones refenced by her brother and father.
And we are left with the simple fact that the argument that Marianne was a genius is going to solely be placed on the testimony of her brother, a man who himself ranks on the Mount Rushmore of Western Music.
Wolfgang was a very prolific letter writer and his letters to his sister are filled with references to her compositions and abilities as a musician. And, by the accounts of one of the greatest composers of Western music, a man who was a legend at his ability to improvise, Marianne was his equal at the keyboard and very important to his musical development, especially as a child.
Before Wolfgang could hold a pen, it was Marianne writing the music down for Wolfgang’s Symphony #1 (K.16) composed when Wolfie was eight.
As for her compositions, very little remains. Well, that’s optimistic – we have no evidence that she even composed, except for the words of other people, especially, again, Wolfgang.
However…
1. It could very well be that some of Wolfgang’s very early work (the K.1 – K.20 phase), especially those pieces written down by Marianne like the symphony above, were ‘polished’ by her, if you know what I mean. If there is going to be any piece with her music most likely in it, it will be the above symphony.
2. She also wrote music and sent it to her brother. Did he ever incorporate some of her themes and melodies in his music, knowing she would recognize them, pleased they lived on in her brother’s work? Again, it’s possible, even probable. Copyright was not yet a thing and if you liked someone’s melody, in the 17th century you just lifted it and used it for your own means: she would not have seen it as him ‘stealing’ her music, especially given the family circumstances. (Though a growing sense of ownership of intellectual ideas, even songs you wrote, was beginning to seep into the arts… but that’s another essay.)
Marianne’s playing abilities are better tracked. As an adult, Wolfgang constantly wrote piano duets for both to play, many of them written so they could sit at the same keyboard, these duets commonly found in the standard repertoire. In my opinion, the best display of Marianne’s ability as a keyboardist is found in her brother’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-Flat Major, K.365. Written in 1777 upon his return to Salzburg after a two-year European tour, this piece was meant to highlight the various music styles Wolfgang was exposed to the previous years.
Both piano lines are of the typically Mozartean difficulty and beauty – both first and second pianists need to be equally skilled, as the composer, one of the great maestro’s in history himself, held nothing back in stretching the players technique and dexterity to their limits in this absolutely gorgeous piece. And being a romantic softie, the author likes to believe that Wolfgang was gallant enough to give his sister First piano during their first performance.
Which, when you are one of the greatest of all time at something, is quite a statement. Wolfgang gave up the lead knowing his equally talented sister was well up to the challenge, a full eight years after she stopped playing ‘professionally!
If you wish, feel free to pause and watch this YouTube video of the 3rd movement to K.365. Just a fantastic piece of music, and since the two piano lines are pretty much the same, you can imagine Nannerl as the 2nd pianist, Tamara Stefanovich, and Wolfgang as the 1st pianist, Pierre-Laurent Aimard:
Effectively, one of the greatest writers of piano music in the Western Canon wrote this intricate piece for his sister. And yet, so unknown to history is Marianne, her presence is erased in the Best Picture winning Amadeus:
Act 3: Marianne and Leopold
Her ambitions, such as they were, ended with her father. While Leopold was enough of an opportunist to understand that five-year old Wolfgang offered his family a ticket to a world largely closed to him, his vision was not expansive enough for him to have two grown children who earned livings as world-class composers, arrangers, and instrumentalists. And in a story which begins to resemble a Judy Blume young-adult novel, Leopold starts stifling her.
First it begins with Marianne’s compositions. Women just didn’t write music in Leopold’s world, and what they did compose was deemed to be trifling precisely because it was written by a woman. Leopold forbid her from publicizing her compositions, even going so far as to forbid her to compose – as noted above, our only evidence of her writing music is her brother’s praises for her work. If she composed music after this period, she (or a family member) had them destroyed.
Once she reached ‘marrying age’, 18, Leopold stopped her from touring. The above Concerto for Two Pianos was written upon Wolfgang’s return from a European trip for, by this time, aged 26, Marianne had long stopped touring at her father’s command.
By all accounts, while her brother quarreled with Leopold constantly, Marianne constantly submitted to Leopold’s wishes. In her early twenties, Marianne fell in love with a soldier and was going to marry him. Leopold determined the boy unsuitable, forbade the marriage, and Marianne submitted, finally marrying an older magistrate a couple of years later.
It even gets a little weird: Upon request, Marianne allowed Leopold to raise her first child, by himself, for the first 2 years of the child’s life, this done at Leopold’s request. He only gave up the child because he died, and the number of theories as to why she did this (or why Leopold wanted the child) are varied. However, the author believes Leopold wanted to replicate the success he had with his son, and Marianne wasn’t able to deny him (and the father of the child was apparently fine with this too - it wasn’t like he didn’t have money or influence.)
Act 4, Marianne and the World
In most tellings, this is where the story comes to a tragic conclusion – this priceless talent, her gifts squandered by an overbearing father and a society which rigged the game against her from before birth. We can then explore how this dynamic cost us dozens, hundreds of geniuses and thousands of hours of music as the women of the Bach, Haydn, and Mendelssohn families were prevented from displaying the talents they obviously had (all of Bach’s children, regardless of gender, were fantastic instrumentalists). This is the typical ending point of narratives like this, the theme of lost opportunities, which became very popular in the Romantic period and just won’t go away.
But that would be a disservice to the real person, as to even frame the narrative in this way is to erase her. Again. Because that was not how she reacted, and us placing our modern sensibilities on the people of the past many times forces us to ignore the real person for the person we want her to be.
Marianne’s reaction wasn’t that of a defeated woman, someone broken by having her ambitions stymied by her short-sighted father and her misogynistic society.
Leveraging her brother’s fame and her father’s ambition, after her dalliance with the soldier, Marianne married up a few levels in the social hierarchy, a feat which would not have been possible without Leopold’s training and Wolfgang’s prominence. Faced with the death of her music career, she accepted her situation and, instead of sinking into depression, tackled the world which was open to her, succeeding in this venture as she succeeded in music.
Happily married to a very wealthy man, a landed aristocrat, Marianne gave birth to three children, was well received wherever she traveled, and when he died, he left her a considerable fortune, allowing her a peaceful existence the last decades of her life, until her passing in 1829.
And so, don’t think of Marianne as a lost talent. Think of her as the rare person who was denied the use of her own talents by both society and her own father, and, instead of responding with retiring despair, took the situation into her own hands and effectively said “If I have to marry somebody, it may as well be to a guy who is rich, connected, is gone for months on end, and will die when I have 28 years left on this planet, leaving me so much money that, after living off it for 30 years, even I left a sizable fortune.”
And that’s exactly what she did. Marianne Mozart was such a talented genius, she accepted every challenge her father and European society threw at her, won every single one of them, and died like a boss.
If only more of us had such equanimity, strength of character, and grace when the world denies us fairness.
Marianne Mozart, you have earned our eternal respects.
The idea for this piece came from the Will Smith film King Richard. Playing the father of tennis sensations Venus and Serena Williams, a tennis instructor says in disbelief to Richard Williams “You’re telling me you have TWO Mozart’s?” And it irritated me that this comment wasn’t met with “But there WERE two Mozart’s!” at any point in the movie because, dammit, there were two “Mozart’s”. And misogyny cost us one of them. And lazy research cost Nannerl another opportunity to be highlighted.
Sorry, Will. Good movie, but lost opportunity.