The Mozart Girl

by Barbara Nickel

  The

  Mozart Girl

  Barbara Nickel

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Nickel, Barbara Kathleen, 1966–

  [Secret wish of Nannerl Mozart]

  The Mozart girl / Barbara Nickel.

  Originally published under title: The secret wish of Nannerl Mozart.

  Toronto: Second Story Press, ©1996.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77260-089-6 (softcover).­—ISBN 978-1-77260-090-2 (ebook)

  I. Title. II. Title: Secret wish of Nannerl Mozart.

  PS8577.I3S4 2019 jC813’.54 C2018-905267-8

  C2018-905268-6

  Copyright © 2019 by Barbara Nickel

  Cover by Juliana Kolesova

  Edited by Rhea Tregebov

  Designed by Ellie Sipila

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council

  and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the

  financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  Second Story Press

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, ON M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  The Birthday Party

  Chapter 2

  A Notebook for Nannerl

  Chapter 3

  The Secret Symphony

  Chapter 4

  Good-bye!

  Chapter 5

  An Organ and a Broken Wheel

  Chapter 6

  The Nymphenburg Concert

  Chapter 7

  Sopherl

  Chapter 8

  The Mannheim Orchestra

  Chapter 9

  Wolfi’s Fever Tune

  Chapter 10

  The Kerpen Family Orchestra

  Chapter 11

  Waiting

  Chapter 12

  An Unexpected Guest

  Chapter 13

  A Violin Lesson

  Chapter 14

  Versailles

  Chapter 15

  The Christmas Day Concert

  Author’s Note

  Chronology

  Glossary

  List of Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Sincere thanks to Sue Ann Alderson, the 1992/93 UBC Writing for Children workshop, Rhea Tregebov, Second Story Press, Cindy Nickel and her students at Shekou International School, my family, Ian Hampton, Mara Gottler, Bevan Voth, Alan Crane, and Holly Duff.

  for Ian,

  who first introduced me to Nannerl

  1

  The Birthday Party

  Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia, Nannerl for short, caught a huge breath and closed her eyes tight.

  “…beautiful purple gowns, servants, a new wig for every day of the week,” she wished silently, closing her eyes tighter to help things come true faster.

  “C’mon, Nannerl, blow them out before the wax gets into the cake,” interrupted her brother, Wolfi.

  “You must make your one wish quickly, or your good luck will vanish,” advised Papa.

  “…a room of my own, and playing the clavier for queens in castles, and being the most famous…” Nannerl couldn’t hold her breath any longer, “the most famous composer in the whole world!” She quickly opened her eyes and with one breath blew out twelve tiny candles and the extra one Mama had placed in the middle for the year to come.

  “What did you wish for?” asked Wolfi.

  Nannerl sighed. Her seven-and-a-half-year-old brother asked too many questions, especially about what she was thinking. She just didn’t want to tell things to Wolfi anymore. She would rather talk to her best friend, Katherl, who hadn’t been able to come to the party because she was away on a trip. This time Mama saved her.

  “It’s bad luck to tell your wish,” Mama explained. “You must never, ever tell it, or it won’t come true.”

  “But what if—”

  “Sh, Wolfi. We must be quiet while Papa lights Nannerl’s Zwölfjahrekerze,” whispered Mama.

  Nannerl folded her arms and smiled. For once, someone had told Wolfi to be quiet because of her. Today was her very own special day. She watched Papa light her thick “twelve-year-old candle,” remembering when she had been only four years old, before Wolfi was born, and the candle had been much taller. How beautiful it had been, with its swirling gold angels and violins and red roses, and its tiny black notches an inch apart all the way down the smooth wax.

  That year they had burned it down to the fourth notch, and each year they had melted it down one more notch, until now the candle was only an inch high. In an hour or two it would be melted, except for a bit of old red and gold wax left in the bottom of the holder.

  She sighed again. Although today was the happiest of days, with cakes and presents and even roses from Frau Spiegel, their next door neighbor, Nannerl couldn’t help the ache she felt in her stomach when she thought of her candle melted down to almost nothing. “When your Zwölfjahrekerze has melted, you are no longer a child,” Mama had told her once.

  “Wolfi!” Mama’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Nannerl turned to see her brother with one finger smack in the middle of her fancy birthday cake. His blue eyes danced as he slowly drew his finger out and began to lick it furiously, like their dog Bimberl.

  Nannerl couldn’t help giggling. Mama finally laughed too, and sank down to her knees to stroke Wolfi’s curls. He did the silliest things sometimes, but nobody stayed mad at him for long.

  Mama took the silver knife and began to slice down through the sugar sprinkles and the sweet bread center of the cake. Nannerl’s stomach growled as she saw the nuts and the raisins and…yes, Mama had remembered to add her favorite, dried apricots. And she had even used the Gugelhupf mold to make all those swirly patterns on the top!

  But best of all were the things hidden inside, the mysterious treasures Mama mixed in the batter and baked with the cake. The things you found told your future. Nannerl hoped she wouldn’t find a dumb old button this year; that would mean she’d be poor for the rest of her life.

  She looked up and saw Wolfi’s messy face. Crumbs and raisins fell from the sides of his mouth to the floor.

  “Watch your manners, Wolfgang,” Mama scolded. “The rats and the cockroaches will come out at night to eat all those raisins and…”

  “Mama, Papa, Mama!” screamed Wolfi, jumping up and down and making more crumbs fall from his mouth. He had found his treasure.

  He managed to swallow his cake, then spat a button and a silver coin into his hand. “How can I be rich and poor at the same time? I’d rather be just rich,” he said, looking forlornly down at the button. He threw it to the floor and furiously polished the coin with his shirt.

  Nannerl quickly ate a few forkfuls of cake, then felt a tiny object, hard against her teeth. She fished it out and held it up near the window. A thin gold ring gleamed in the sun.

  “A ring!” she cried. “A ring! I’ve never found a ring before! Papa, what does it mean?”

  “It means, dear Nannerl,” Papa began, with the little smile that always made Nannerl’s stomach squirm. He used that smile when he was about to tell her she had played an F instead of an F sharp, or that she had broken the rules of harmony by writing p
arallel fifths into her composition exercise. “It means that you will someday, most certainly, be married. And of course this prophecy will come true, and what a happy day that will be!”

  Married? Nannerl tried to rearrange her wish picture, imagining a man with a red coat and shiny black shoes trailing after her through the rooms of the castle, applauding with everyone after her performances and lifting her hand high to kiss it as she curtsied. Somehow, he just didn’t fit. Nannerl thought she’d rather curtsy alone.

  Wolfi finished gulping down a second piece of cake and ran to Mama, who had entered the room with a basket of presents. He ran back and forth between Nannerl and Mama, delivering the gifts: a hair ribbon, a new quill pen, and, Nannerl looked closer…a small red book with a gold border around the edges.

  “It’s a travel diary for you to write in, on our journey,” said Papa. “You must be faithful, Nannerl, and write in it every day.” Nannerl held a thin white page between her thumb and index finger. The little book reminded her that in one week they would be leaving Salzburg again for another grand tour. Only this one would be even grander and longer; they might be away for three years! And of all the places she had seen, Nannerl still thought Salzburg was the most beautiful. It was just a city-state, not as big or powerful as their neighbors Austria and Bavaria. But how could she say good-bye again to the mountains and narrow, steep side streets, the twin cathedral spires and all the meandering walkways beside the Salzach River?

  During the tour, she and Wolfi would perform before counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses, and all kinds of important people in the great courts. On the last tour, which had lasted a year, Nannerl had sometimes grown tired of traveling; the late nights, the smelly inns, the people with their mouths hanging open as she and Wolfi performed musical tricks like playing blindfolded. And they always seemed to like Wolfi better than her. “Look at the little boy! He’s a Wunderkind!” they would exclaim.

  But it was exciting all the same. This time they would visit Nymphenburg Palace near Munich, and cities like Coblenz along the Rhine River. Then they would go on to Paris, and Papa said he hoped that she and Wolfi could perform before the Queen and King of France at the Palace of Versailles! Nannerl felt her palms grow sweaty as she imagined curtsying to them and sitting down to play. She couldn’t even imagine how big the Palace of Versailles must be, but she was sure it would be grander than any she’d ever seen.

  “Listen,” Papa interrupted Nannerl’s thoughts. “Listen to that music. Such beautiful music, it must be Wolfi. He’s slipped away to the music room. Such beautiful music, we must hear him.” He dropped his fork on his plate, its clattery sound echoing in the room as everyone silently followed Wolfi’s music out to the hallway, then to the music room.

  Nannerl stood on her tiptoes and peered over Mama’s shoulder. She noticed how small Wolfi’s hands looked on the keys, how his face tightened up and his tongue stuck out a bit, and how all of his mischief had somehow dropped away from him and got into the music. It sailed up high, touching the ceiling and the portraits of Grandma Pertl, then blew through Mama’s hair and out the window into the late June afternoon.

  Nannerl felt the old ache in her throat, the one she always felt when she heard Wolfi play his music. It was a proud ache, but also something else, something rotten that she couldn’t name. She looked at Papa’s flushed face and felt Mama’s quickened breath in front of her. The feeling in her throat grew as she remembered that today was her birthday. And here they were, gawking at him all starry-eyed!

  Nannerl couldn’t stand it anymore. She ran from the music room, softly so they wouldn’t notice, straight to her bed in the room that she and Wolfi shared. She sobbed and sobbed into the thick quilt, until the awful ache slowly began to go away and her breath became easier to catch. She felt something in her hand. The travel diary! Maybe she could write out how she felt. She sat up, wiped her nose and eyes with her sleeve, and began to write.

  June 2, 1763

  Dear Diary,

  I can’t stand how they pay attention to Wolfi all the time. They don’t seem to care that it’s my birthday, just sit around listening to him. Maybe, when I’m a famous composer, after I die, they’ll find this book and everyone will read it and feel horrible about how they’ve treated me. I can hear Wolfi’s music down the hall. Now it is finished, and they are laughing and talking and begging for more. I wonder if someday they’ll beg to hear mine. Oh they will, they will! I will work on writing that Minuet and Trio I started, now! I wish Katherl would come back from Munich soon.

  Yours always,

  Anna Maria Walburga Ignatia (Nannerl)

  She reached under the bed, took out a thick sheaf of papers, and sat cross-legged on the bed, determined to figure out the bothersome violin part that just wouldn’t go together with the piano part, no matter how long she worked.

  “Nannerl, Nannerl!” Wolfi burst through the door and began to bounce up and down on the bed, scattering her papers everywhere.

  “Wolfi, just look at what you’ve done!”

  Wolfi ignored her and kept on jumping. “Come and sing while I play the piece I wrote yesterday.”

  “No,” she said flatly, gathering her papers and organizing them into a neat stack.

  “Please, please, please?” he begged, and began to tickle her feet.

  “All right, Wolfi, you win this time,” Nannerl laughed, and shoved her compositions under the bed. She grabbed his hand and together they raced down the long hallway to the music room.

  2

  A Notebook for Nannerl

  Coin…button…cake…” Wolfi’s far-off mumbles interrupted Nannerl’s dream.

  She opened one heavy eyelid and saw her new diary sitting on the night table. Yesterday she had turned twelve! She was now grown up, because her twelve-year-old candle had burned down. She ran a finger up the bony ridge of her nose and through her hair, which didn’t really feel any more grown up than yesterday. Her doll, Salome Musch, smiled up at her, one eye covered with the pillow. They had named Salome after the old woman who used to come and make the meals when Mama had been sick. Nannerl sighed and kissed the doll’s hard forehead. Maybe now, since she was twelve, she should stop playing with Salome and give her to Wolfi.

  She looked across the room at her brother, twisted in his eiderdown quilt. He turned over and Nannerl heard the noise he made in his sleep from grinding his teeth together, then “…want…violin…” His words were hard to catch.

  Nannerl gave up straining to hear them and snuggled down under her own warm quilt. For the fifth time in a week, she wished she had a room of her own. Wolfi’s latest habit of sleep-talking kept waking her up, and this had been such a good dream. She closed her eyes and tried to make it continue. She was in a castle and the prince had just placed a golden medallion around her neck, in honor of her great contribution to the musical life of Salzburg. She was feeling its cool smoothness against her skin, and listening to all the courtiers cheering and clapping, and…it was no use. Nannerl couldn’t go back to sleep.

  She tiptoed to the hall and checked the time on the grandfather clock. Five o’clock, half an hour before Papa would come around to announce, “Nannerl! Wolfi! Time for my Wunderkindern to wake up and practice for their breakfast!” Wolfi usually groaned and hid under his quilt, letting Nannerl beat him to the clavier. By the time he stumbled into the music room, wiping sleep out of his eyes, she was finished with her scales and ready to help Mama set out the rolls and cheese for breakfast.

  She looked at the clock again. What if she practiced extra long and hard today, beating Wolfi by an hour at least? Papa would be sure to praise her and say how hard-working she was, perhaps right in front of Wolfi! She went back to her room and looked at her little brother lying in his nightshirt, his quilt now kicked to the floor. Well, Papa’s extra praise would help Wolfi remember he was still four and a half years younger than her. Maybe some people tho
ught Wolfi was like God, but really he was just a little boy who liked to tickle people and sleep in.

  She pulled the stiff corset over her nightshirt, feeling its achy tightness around her chest. There was no one to help her pull it tighter, but she could get Mama to do that later. She chose her new yellow dress that puffed out over her big crinoline, the one with the green bows at the sleeves and a matching bow around the cap. Papa and Mama and Wolfi sometimes teased that she was dressing up for a boy, but that was nonsense. Why couldn’t she wear something nice on an ordinary day? And actually, it wasn’t very ordinary. It was the day after her twelfth birthday.

  Nannerl carefully closed the door of the music room so that she wouldn’t wake anyone up. Her fingers felt cold and stiff as they went up and down the keys, playing scales and arpeggios over and over until the sky turned pink and the birds woke up and joined her with scales of their own. Nannerl stopped suddenly. Had she heard Mama and Papa’s door click open? She wanted to play something for Papa, something that would be a secret just between the two of them.

  She noticed a thin notebook sitting on top of a messy stack of papers. The inscription on the worn front cover, in Papa’s clear hand, read: For the clavier, this Notebook belongs to Miss Maria Anna, 1759. She had forgotten about the notebook, thought it was sitting somewhere at the back of the old music cupboard. How had it got here? It was the one Papa had given to her at her first clavier lesson, when she was seven.

  Nannerl flipped through the book. Most of the early pieces were minuets composed especially for her by Papa. She found her favorite, Minuet No. 11, and began to play. Maybe Papa would hear it and remember the lesson when she had played it for him. That time she had played it without any mistakes, but also with something else. She had put everything into the music: Mama’s hugs and the way Wolfi made her laugh, chocolates, their dog Bimberl’s fur, and the shadows that flicked over the walls during supper. She had stirred all of it into the little minuet so that it steamed rich like the stew Mama made on winter afternoons.