Mozart's Sister

by Nancy Moser

  He grabbed her hand, stopping its comfort. “We played three public concerts here at the inn. Three. Yet they stayed away. They had to know we are here. It was in the papers. We are staying at this ridiculously expensive inn just so …”

  I peeked at the carving on the ceiling and the velvet on the chair by the window. I’d noticed it was a better lodging than the others, and now I knew why.

  He picked up a newspaper that was lying on one of the beds, opened it, and read, “‘Leopold Mozart has afforded the inhabitants of his native city the pleasure of hearing the effect of the extraordinary gifts which the Great God has bestowed on these two dear little ones in such abundant measure; gifts of which the Herr Kapellmeister has, as a true father, taken care with such indefatigable zeal.”’ He tossed the paper to the floor, then pointed to it. “They realize my accomplishments and my great success, which my family refuses to acknowledge.”

  Mama picked up the newspaper and folded it carefully. “Perhaps it is you who should call on them?”

  “Never!” He began to pace in front of the door. “To do so would be submitting to their authority-a privilege they have never earned.”

  “To do so would be to follow God’s directive to love one another.”

  He stopped pacing and glared at her. “Don’t bring Him into this.”

  “Then don’t exclude Him.”

  Suddenly Papa’s shoulders dropped. He looked old. “I try … I try so hard.”

  Mama took him into her arms, and he dropped his head to her shoulder. She stroked his hair as she often stroked ours. “No one tries harder, dear one. You are a good man. A good husband. A good father. But I would like to meet your family. I would like the children to meet them.”

  Papa nodded into her shoulder.

  Wolfie turned to me. “Is Papa crying?”

  Papa immediately stood erect and faced the door, his hands busy at his face. Mama clapped her hands twice and moved toward the changing screen. We quickly returned to our dressing. “Come, come, children,” she said. “It’s time for bed. We leave tomorrow”

  Good. I wanted away from here. I wanted Papa to be away from here too.

  Papa put family first-our family. I hoped we would be enough for him. For it was clear he’d given up everything for us.

  How could I offer him less?

  Although Papa said we’d barely earned enough in Augsburg to cover our expenses, I was excited because it was in that city that he bought us a portable clavier from Johann Stein. The instrument would be handy for practicing during our travels.

  Yet except for that one high point and seeing the beautiful scenery-from the left or right we saw an endless expanse of water, woods, fields, meadows, gardens, and vineyards, and all these mingled in the most charming fashion-our trip west during the next few days was tedious. We stopped in Ulm, where Papa spoke out against the Gothic architecture and the half-timbered houses. He said they were dreadful, old-fashioned, and tastelessly built. He much preferred symmetry. I didn’t mind the fancy curlicues of the cathedrals. They reminded me of a land of fantasy. I didn’t believe heaven would be symmetrical and ordered. Nature was too full of caprice to make heaven anything but.

  I kept my views to myself.

  We were heading to Stuttgart because we had a letter of introduction to Duke Karl Eugene, but at a station where we stopped to change horses, we discovered he was leaving Stuttgart for his palace at Ludwigsburg, and from there was going to travel to his hunting lodge fourteen hours away.

  Papa had no choice but to change direction, and we headed to Ludwigsburg to try to catch him. But when we arrived, he had already moved on-and worse, had commandeered most of the horses. Papa spent hours combing the town for steeds.

  The rest of us spent our time at the inn. While Mama rested in the bed behind us, Wolfie and I dragged two chairs to the window and marveled at the show being played out on the street below

  There were soldiers everywhere, marching, ever marching. Before going out to look for the horses, Papa had complained that when you spit, you spit into an officer’s pocket or a soldier’s cartridge box. We were told by the innkeeper that there were twelve to fifteen thousand soldiers in town, yet they really didn’t have any reason for being there. Five months previous, the Seven Years’ War had been declared over. France and our own Maria Theresa had fought Prussia and England over the eastern land of Silesia-with Frederick of Prussia getting to keep Silesia in the end. Yet Duke Karl Eugene didn’t care that there wasn’t a war going on. He liked having pretty soldiers around. Papa said they made him feel powerful. Most had been forced into service through raids of peasant villages and were hired out as soldiers to foreign states.

  Wherever they came from or wherever they were going, all were grand.

  Wolfie leaned out the window to see better-too far. I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him back to safety.

  “They look pretend,” he said, totally oblivious to the fact he’d ever been in danger. “They look like they’re about to take their places in an opera.”

  He was right. The soldiers were dressed exactly alike, even down to their hair, which was powdered white, combed back, and done up in curls. In contrast, their beards were greased coal black. It was an odd combination.

  We listened to the officers yell out their commands: “Halt! Quick march! Right! Left!”

  I leaned my elbows on the sill, amazed at the soldiers’ straight lines as they marched. “I can’t imagine them getting their pretty uniforms dirty in battle,” I said.

  Wolfie jumped off his chair and ran to an open travel trunk, where he retrieved the child-sized sword he often wore with his fanciest suits. He stood very straight and held it vertically, flat against his nose. “I will be a soldier. I will be very brave and fight for the empress!”

  He spoke too loudly and I shushed him. I glanced at Mama, who was trying to nap, but too late. Mama sat erect. “You will not be a soldier, young man. Never!”

  “Why not?” Wolfie asked. He thrust the sword at the trunk as if it were an enemy soldier.

  Mama swung her feet over the side of the bed and tried to reach her shoes with a toe. I spotted one of the shoes under the bed and rushed to bring it close. She put them on and answered Wolfie with a sigh. “Because you are destined to be a great musician, that’s why.”

  Wolfie caught the edge of a nightshirt with his sword and flung it across the room, where it caught the air and billowed to the floor. “I could do both,” he said, running after it.

  “You could not, and will not.” She motioned him over. He complied, and Mama took control of the nightshirt and the sword and took his hands in hers. “You, dear Wolfgang, have a gift from God. Your father and I are doing our best to make sure the entire world knows about it. It is a gift that should be cherished and nurtured. It is your destiny.”

  I moved to her side. “What about me, Mama?”

  But Mama wasn’t done with Wolfie yet. She looked intently at his eyes. “Do you understand me, dear boy?”

  Instead of answering, he kissed her cheek and went back to the window to watch the soldiers.

  Finally finding myself with Mama’s full attention, I asked the question again. “What is my destiny, Mama?” To perform with your brother, becoming the greatest duo in all musical hist—

  Mama stroked my cheek. Her face lost its adamant edge and eased into a wistful smile. “You, my dear daughter, are destined to be a wife and mother. You will have many children and teach all of them to make music just as we have taught-”

  I took a step back, shaking my head.

  “You are upset?” Mama asked.

  “I want to be a great musician like Wolfie. I want to compose and perform all over the world-with him.”

  “Even your brother will eventually need to find a paid position in a court. But paid musical positions are not available for women. Now, if you were a great singer, you might be able to sing in an opera….

  I felt the air go out of me. Finally I managed a f
resh breath. “If I have no hopes of ever getting a position, then why am I doing this tour?”

  “Because you can. Now you can.”

  “But later?”

  Mania shrugged. She took my hand and kissed it. “Right now you are having experiences far beyond those of most girls-most women. Appreciate what you have now, what you are seeing and doing. Take it in and hold it close, here …” She touched the center of my forehead. “And here.” She laid a gentle hand over my heart. “It’s all you can do”

  “But it’s not fair. Just because he’s a boy and I’m a girl . .

  Mama stood and tugged at the corset that bound her torso. She looked past me toward the window. “Hopefully your father will be back soon. Help me get the brown trunk better organized so we will be ready to leave.”

  I looked toward Wolfie, who was once again hanging precariously out the window

  But this time I did not move to pull him safely inside.

  The logistics of our journey kept my mind off the inequities of being female. For the most part.

  Yet by the very nature of the different people, traditions, and lands we experienced along the way, I found myself gaining hope that somehow, in some place, life could be different. I could become a great woman of music. I could do what no woman had done before. I could challenge the system and change society for the better.

  Couldn’t I?

  Perhaps. But first I had to learn all that I could on our travels and become the best musician I could be. So help me God.

  Ludwig burg had been unlike Augsburg, Heidelberg unlike Lud-wigburg, and Mannheim unlike Heidelberg. As the month of July passed, we discovered that every locale had its own unique flavor.

  For one thing, the religious customs along the journey were very different to us. Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Jews, all living together. It was quite extraordinary. There were no fonts for holy water in our rooms. Nor crucifixes. We found this more interesting than distressing. Our own Salzburg had expelled all the Lutherans back in 1730, so we’d never known anything but what the archbishop decreed from his Residenz. To see that there were other ways of living, of thinking, of worshiping …

  And dressing. In one inn we met a man from England whose trouser-waist was high under his arms with a coat that hung down to the middle of his calves. Add to this, old-fashioned narrow boot sleeves. The man bathed every other day in the Main River, just before the dining hour, coming to the table looking very much like a baptized mouse.

  But in spite of our mocking in private about the odd fashion and customs, Papa bought a new pair of boots and I got a broad-brinmied English hat. How I loved walking the streets in it. I felt quite grown-up and worldly, as if I could be a new kind of woman. In Salzburg I would have received taunts. Oh, how large the world had become.

  Although we missed the duke, we did get to play in a few towns along the way to Mannheim, where we heard the most luscious orchestra. There was a saying that “Prussian tactics and Mannheim music place the Germans in the van of all nations” We found that to be true. The people of Mannheim employed impeccable musicians, who looked upon their conductor as a musical emperor, yielding to his every wish.

  The orchestra employed a new phenomenon called cresceudo and decrescendo, where the music’s volume swelled and faded, forcing the audience into alternating moments of ecstasy and straining to hear the music. Such interpretation made my heart swell and pound. If only I could attain such variations on the keyboard. But there I had little control. Once depressed, the key of a clavier pressed the string at one volume. Perhaps someday some brilliant inventor would cre ate a way to monitor the loud and soft for keyboards too.

  Unlike Ulm, Papa liked the look of Mannheim-especially at night. He found nothing more beautiful than one of Mannheim’s illuminated prospects. And the terraces, waterways, and fountains … it was a lovely place, one that was difficult to leave.

  And yet, we had no other choice.

  We traveled next to Frankfurt, where Papa decided to advertise a public concert. He appealed to “all those who took pleasure in extraordinary things” and promised that I, a girl of twelve, and my brother, a boy of seven, would play concertos and sonatas, and that Wolfie would play both the violin and keyboard. But then Papa titillated the audience with our importance by adding, “Further, be it known that this will be the only concert inasmuch as immediately afterward they are to continue their journey to France and England.”

  Mama made a tsk-tsk sound when she saw the announcement, because we didn’t have any pressing engagements in France and England and he made it sound as if people were waiting for us with bated breath.

  But it worked. And after we’d done our first concert, Papa advertised that, because of the request of “several great connoisseurs and amateurs,” we’d been convinced to stay on and do additional concerts. Through five public concerts, Papa had Wolfie do the note game, where he would name notes that people sounded-in singular, or in chords, on any instrument, or even clocks. Wolfie also did the covered-keys trick and improvised for extended lengths of time. He was very talented. I would never take anything away from my brother’s prowess.

  And I did well too-actually my very best toward my effort to become a musician who could not be ignored in spite of her gender. I heard Papa say, “Nannerl can be compared with the boy, for she plays in such a way that everyone speaks of her and admires her fluency.” It was a victory that made me want to try even harder.

  Wolfie’s penchant for saying whatever came into his head nearly got him in trouble in Mainz. The violin virtuoso Karl Michael Esser played the clavier, and Wolfie told him that he did well, but he did too much, and it would be better to play just what was written. Actually, my brother was right. Esser wasn’t that good at improvising and thus should not have attempted it. But for Wolfie to say so … we all hoped he would gain discretion with his years.

  Along the way, Wolfie got the Schnupfen, the sniffles, and we had to slow down, taking an expensive riverboat up the Rhine because the roads were so drenched. The river towns were less than clean. Papa had feared we would have carriage trouble and opted to put the carriage on the boat and go that way. So many castles-on nearly every crest of every hill, on either side of the river, there was a castle looming down on us. Wolfie and I chose which ones we liked the best and claimed them as our own. I preferred the ones facing west, the ones that were bathed in the colors of the sunset. I would have a Castle Nannerl. I would share it with a husband and many children. But there would also be a grand music room with space for a large audience. And I would have my very own workroom in a parapet that would offer a glorious view of the Rhine, inspiring me to achieve great heights of music-music that would provide us with a good living. After all, I did need to be practical.

  We all did. Money was always an issue: earning it and dealing with it. For even the smallest principality had its own coins, and Papa had trouble getting a good exchange rate for Bavarian money. He also received a few letters from Herr Hagenauer suggesting we not spend so much and not stay in such nice places. We’d already spent over a thousand gulden, but Papa said other people had paid for the expenditure. And we had to keep our health and our reputation in mind. We had to travel like nobles if we were to be associated with them. Every time I played I wondered how much we would receive-and when. The presents were very nice-we received a beautiful set of bottles valued at four ducats, a snuff box, a toothpick case, a ring, and a piece of embroidery (Papa said we would soon have enough items to rig out a stall). But money was always best. Money eased the wrinkles in Papa’s brow

  Some places were profitable, and others were not. In one concert given to a small group of nobles, they were more interested in eating and drinking than in our music. But most audiences were very appreciative.

  By the end of September we were in Cologne, but we found the cathedral there in a horrible state, like a stable. The pulpit that Martin Luther had preached from was held up by a brick, and the furniture was in disrepair. We t
ried to go into the choir area, but it was closed to visitors. Yet what was worse was when we were met by a drunken priest, who greeted us and was eager to show off a display of the cathedral’s treasures.

  Papa wondered if it wouldn’t be more edifying to get the house of God into a clean condition rather than to have jewels, gold, and silver-with which numerous saints’ bones were thickly encasedlying in iron chests and shown for money. And the boys’ choir shrieked more than sang. All this put Papa in a mood. I reminded Wolfie to be especially good.

  Along the next leg of the journey, traveling west toward Brussels by way of Aachen, we met Princess Amalia, the sister of the king of Prussia. Yet even though she was a princess, she didn’t have any money. Her traveling party was quite Spartan, not royal at all. Yet if the kisses she gave us could have been transferred to gulden, we would have been rich. But neither the innkeeper nor the postmaster was paid in kisses. She even tried to get us to not go to Paris but to Berlin instead. Papa thought this ridiculous, for Paris was to be the jewel in our tour.

  And there was more that the princess offered Papa… . Although Papa spoke of it in hushed tones to Mama, there were implications that one of her proposals was of a more intimate kind. I thought less of her because of that. And yet, for her to be intrigued with Papa … he was a handsome man. So tall. So proud. He had a way of holding himself that made a person believe anything he said, that made a person want to be whatever he wanted them to be. Whatever kind of person I wanted myself to be.

  How I strived to be that person as we continued on our Grand Tour.

  KZI-41 14e—

  Oh, to be alone, to have five minutes to myself.

  Cramped quarters, cramped carriages, being together every hour of every day …

  One autumn afternoon in Brussels, while we were waiting for Prince Charles to summon us for a concert (weeks we waited), Mama needed some black headache powder from the apothecary, so I offered to go. Alone. At first Papa objected, worrying that I would feel uncomfortable venturing out on my own in such a strange place.