Maria Anna & Wolfgang Mozart: 2 geniuses?

Until she was 16, Maria Anna Mozart (1751-1829) shared equal billing with her brother Wolfgang Mozart (1756-91), 5 years younger. Musical partners and collaborators, Wolfgang and Maria Anna played music together before royalty, and were the talk of Europe. So what happened to her?

Wolfgang (L) and sister Maria Anna (R) were devoted to each other and ?co-writers of Wolfgang’s earliest work. 
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Maria Anna was the first child of Leopold Mozart, a musician and composer who had his daughter musically educated from a young age. Maria showed great talent, a child prodigy in both composing and playing. When Wolfgang was young, he was quickly engrossed in playing music with his sister. The film featured emotional images of this childhood bond, emphasising the siblings’ cooperation with music. Leopold recognised his children’s unusual talents; he soon had them travelling and playing concerts to the European aristocracy.

According to a new film Mozart’s Sister (2012), imagined the Mozart family's tiring life on the road from 1763 on, travelling by coach from one royal court to another. Together the wonder-children toured most of Europe. Contemporary reviews praised Maria, and she was even billed first on promotional posters. As a child, there was no issue with performing for an audience. But skilled singer, harpsichord player and violinist nicknamed Nannerl, was first seen as the family's infant prodigy. In the film, she was still performing, though increasingly side-lined by Wolfgang's growing fame. Her father bowed to social strictures for women, refusing to let her continue with violin or composing, while privately conceding Nannerl's talent to his wife. The teen fretted about her career prospects, but was forced to retire at age 17, was left at home, and was never to play in public again.

Having been forced to withdraw from public life because she was now a woman, the film explored how she was retired by dad Leopold and what happened to her music. She had been a musical prodigy just like her younger brother Wolfgang, so naturally she retained her love of music.

The two Mozart siblings, 

The Conversation

An amazing new discovery of her creative work is being uncovered through historians, musicologists, letters between siblings and other evidence. If confirmed, this new evidence suggests she may have contributed to her brother’s earliest works; a global search for her own works continues. The musical-mystery story unfolded around the world with historians following why her lost talent may have been hidden all this time.

This film came at a time, 2012, when many people were reassessing the nature of female authorship in the arts. The Mozart case was not an oddity. There were many other examples of women whose talent was obscured OR completely lost. Many people analysed the less well-known female creators of today, composers, musicians and conductors, as well as the very low rates of female participation in classical music today. In 2020-21 season a survey of the top 100 global orchestras found 5% of works were composed by women!

Writer René Féret's film was partly a feminist reclaiming of one of history's lost women, plus a revisionist version of Mozart's early life. The issues commanded attention, including a clear sense of the hardship and bitterness Mozart Sr put his family through. Marc Barbé and Delphine Chuillot were Léopold and Anna-Maria Mozart, the parents who put their children through a gruelling continental tour. Their 10-year-old Wolfgang/David Moreau was remarkable.

The person who felt all this most keenly was Mozart's elder sister, Nannerl, played by the writer’s daughter Marie Féret. She was reduced to the status of Wolfgang's accompanist, despite being a talented musician and having, she claimed, contributed to her brother's compositions. Then a quirk of fate led to her friendship with the King's younger daughter Louise, played by another Féret daughter, Lisa Féret. The exchanges between Louise and Nannerl were sometimes tough. But the two sisters’ performances had a kind of rugged authenticity that attracted.

Maria Anna and Wolfgang at piano, and parents Leopold and Anna Maria;

by Austrian artist Johann Nepomuk della Croce,
c1780; Mozart House, Salzburg. Wiki 

Maria Anna and Wolfgang were inseparable and often composed together. But this ended when Maria Anna turned 17. For women musicians in C18th, it was thought unseemly for a girl to perform in public, likening this public performance to that of a prostitute. Regardless of their skill, these women wouldn’t have any career prospects. They were even banned from playing musical instruments deemed unseemly eg violin and cello. Even though this was during the Enlightenment, any enlightenment was reserved for white men only. Definitely not to women! Yet Wolfgang continued pursuing music at will. Maria Anna’s musical talents weren’t even encouraged at home. Her life was only illustrated through her diary entries, which ware mainly filled with ordinary family events.

Maria Anna married Johann Baptist von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg in 1783 and had 3 children . They moved to St Gilgen in Austria near the Mozart family home in Salzburg, and continued to practise music daily. On her husband’s death in 1801, and now with an income and a title (baroness) in her 50s, she returned to solo concerts.

Mozart’s Sister was a documentary that functioned on several levels. A] It was a biopic that portrayed Maria Anna’s story by recreating her childhood. The narration and interviews highlighted her relationship with her brother. It was filmed in Austria and framed by present-day museum curators and experts. B] The film was a broader statement on the non-appearance of female composers.

Director Madeleine Hetherton-Miau’s created a hard-hitting documentary. The film offered a well-researched investigation into Maria Anna’s life, showing how the draconian attitudes that prevailed in her time condemned her to a lesser life than Wolfgang, even though she was equally talented. It also reminded of the importance of championing women musicians today, to avoid discrimination being repeated. The director was excellent in portraying this duality via the contrast of Maria Anna’s path with the brilliant young British composer Alma Deustger (b2005). Deustger has great skills in composing and conducting, but she was able to pursue her passion and make it her career. The film used a recent literary trend i.e discussions of how talented women in history were overshadowed by their more famous male equals, then overlooked totally.