Maria Anna Mozart

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart (30 July 1751 – 29 October 1829), usually called "Marianne" or nicknamed Nannerl, was a highly regarded musician from Salzburg, Austria. Already in her childhood, she established a remarkable reputation for herself across Europe as a child prodigy. However, her musical career was terminated by her parents, who forced her to stay in Salzburg and look for a future spouse. This did not stop her from utilizing her love and talent for music to teach the piano, as well as supposedly writing her own works. Her brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was said to have been greatly influenced by her.

Childhood
Maria Anna (Marianne) Mozart was born in Salzburg to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria Mozart. When she was seven years old, her father started teaching her to play the harpsichord. Leopold took her and Wolfgang on tours of many cities, such as Vienna and Paris, to showcase their talents. In the early days, she sometimes received top billing, and she was noted as an excellent harpsichord player and fortepianist.

However, given the views of her parents, prevalent in her society at the time, it became impossible as she grew older for her to continue her career any further. According to New Grove, "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." As a result, Marianne had to stay at home in Salzburg with her mother, or, if her mother was gone, with her father. From 1772 on she taught the piano in Salzburg.

There is evidence that Mozart 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.

Love life
Around the summer of 1783, Mozart seems to have developed a relationship with Franz d'Ippold, who was a captain and private tutor. Why this relationship did not evolve into a marriage is not known. Eventually, Marianne married a magistrate, Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg (23 August 1784), 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). Nevertheless, she continued to see herself as a pianist, practicing three hours a day and continuing to teach the piano.

Marianne's son
An unusual episode in Mozart'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 Mozart 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 Mozart'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. Mozart 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 Mozart's brother. He also suggests that giving up her son was indicative of her total subordination to her father's wishes.

Relationship with Wolfgang Amadeus 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. In their early correspondence, Marianne received rather affectionate texts that included scatologicaland sexual wordplay in which Wolfgang 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. Concerning the relationship between the two siblings in adulthood, authorities differ. According to New Grove, Wolfgang "remained closely attached to her." In contrast, Maynard Solomon contends that in later life Marianne and Wolfgang drifted apart completely. He notes, for instance, that after Wolfgang's visit to Salzburg in 1783 (with his new wife Constanze), they never visited each other again, that they never saw each other's children, and that their correspondence diminished to a trickle, ceasing entirely in 1788.

Ten years after the death of Wolfgang in 1791, Marianne encountered Franz 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."

Scholars still do this day cannot agree on whether Maria Anna Mozart is partly responsible for her little brother's genius. Since their relationship was quite close in their youth, it is likely that they influenced one another musically, where Marianne may have been the dominant part in this dynamic, due to her being several years older than Wolfgang. As the anthropologist Stevan Jackson states, “No musicians develop their art in a vacuum […] Musicians learn by watching other musicians, by being an apprentice, formally or informally.”. There is evidence, however, that Marianne did pose as a role model for her brother, certainly taking on a teaching role in the education of the young boy. Researchers also speculate that she collaborated with Wolfgang on his earlier pieces, since composing a symphony is a rather challenging task for any musician, especially one as young as Wolfgang

Her works
Based on letters written by Wolfgang to his sister, scholars are certain that Marianne composed musical pieces herself. In one of the passages he wrote to her, he states, “My dear sister! I am in awe that you can compose so well, in a word, the song you wrote is beautiful.”. Besides these texts, there is no evidence of her writing her own music because none of her manuscripts have survived.

Later years


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 her old age, Marianne had her first encounter in person with Wolfgang's widow Constanze since the visit of 1783. In 1824,[13] Constanze and her second husband Georg Nikolaus von Nissen moved to Salzburg. Although Marianne had not even known that Constanze was still alive, [10] the encounter was apparently "cordial", though not warm. Eventually, Marianne did the Nissens a great favor: to help them write a biography of Wolfgang, Marianne lent the Nissens her collection of family letters, including Wolfgang and Leopold's correspondence up to 1781.

In 1821, Marianne was visited by Wolfgang's son, Franz Xaver Mozart, whom she had never met during her brother's lifetime. 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, at 78 years, and was buried in St Peter's Cemetery, Salzburg.

As a fictional character
Maria Anna Mozart provided the inspiration for many authors' fictional characters.
 * English songwriter Leon Rosselson wrote the song "Whatever Happened to Nannerl?" and recorded it on his album Wo sind die Elefanten? (1991)
 * 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, a 2006 novel by, Marianne initially tells her life's story through a series of fictional letters to the Major Franz Armand d'Ippold, grows frustrated and debilitated by her father's refusal to acknowledge her ability to compose music, and eventually devotes her life to the promotion and study of her brother's music.
 * 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.
 * In 2019, the American band Saint Motel released the song "Diane Mozart" which seems to be based on Marianne, especially her relationship with her brother.
 * She is the protagonist of the 2020 young adult historical fantasy novel The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu.