You likely knew that Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was a child prodigy, but did you know his older sister, Maria Anna, was also a musical genius?

Salzburg-based musicologist Dr. Eva Neumayr discusses why Maria Anna's story faded from the spotlight and her importance in preserving Wolfgang’s legacy.

In this episode, you’ll:

• Discover how Maria Anna and Wolfgang influenced each other throughout their lives.

• Identify why societal expectations cut short Maria Anna's career

• Learn how she championed her brother, impacting our understanding of his life and works.

For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.

Episode Transcript and Timestamps

DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: Grüß Sie from Salzburg, Austria.

Welcome to Opus 16 of Classical Cake, the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music and Austrian culture while enjoying one of Vienna's delicious cakes.

I'm your host, Daniel Adam Maltz.

As a child prodigy, Mozart was known for, “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.”

But I'm not talking about Wolfgang. That quote was about his older sister, Maria Anna Mozart. Nannerl, as she was affectionately called, faded from history. But why?

My guest today is Dr. Eva Neumayr, the chairwoman of the Maria Anna Mozart Society. She is a musicologist who heads the music collection archives of the Archdiocese of Salzburg and she also works with the Mozarteum Foundation.

Dr. Neumayr, thank you for joining me.

EVA NEUMAYR: Thank you for asking.

Featured Cake: Nusstorte [1:03]

MALTZ: Today’s cake is Nusstorte. The inside has nutty rum filling with layers of vanilla cream.

Outside, marzipan fondant is topped with a chocolate drizzle and walnuts.

So let's dig in.

It's not too early for cake, right?

NEUMAYR: As we are in Salzburg, anyhow… [Laughter]

MALTZ: Very good.

Learning to play harpsichord [1:34]

MALTZ: So, Nannerl showed musical talent early. Who taught her the harpsichord?

NEUMAYR: Well, first of all, I'd like you not to use her nickname Nannerl, because we are not related to her — obviously — and it was a name used in the family.

Later on, she grew up, of course, and was no child anymore. She always signed with Maria Anna Mozart or Maria Anna von Berchtold zu Sonnenberg later on when she was married.

She was taught the harpsichord by Leopold Mozart, her father, and he started her on the harpsichord when she was eight years old, which was actually pretty early for that time because the Bach family started with their children with 10.

MALTZ: It’s interesting to see how our approach to different things changes throughout history with 8 being late night now. And even people trying to say that it's almost too late to start. But it wasn't always the case.

Relationship between Maria Anna and Wolfgang as children [2:51]

MALTZ: What was the relationship like between Maria Anna and Mozart as children?

NEUMAYR: They were very close. Mozart showed very great talent, very early, as we know. He was very interested in the harpsichord. So, he started playing very early from the book Maria Anna had gotten from her father to learn different pieces. This book is so important because his earliest pieces are noted in there. But it was actually Maria Anna’s notebook.

MALTZ: And I read that Wolfgang really idolized his sister.

NEUMAYR: Well, she was the big sister. That's what little brothers do. And she was a very gifted pianist, also. In the beginning, she was the better pianist, of course.

European Tour [3:50]

MALTZ: So the siblings were quite talented, very early on. And the father, Leopold, embarked on a European tour…

NEUMAYR: And also the mother.

MALTZ: And also the mother?

NEUMAYR: Anna Maria Pertl and whose birthday is 300 years, this year.

MALTZ: There’s a lot going on this year! [laughter]

So, could you tell us more about this time of their tours around Europe?

NEUMAYR: Well, they started in June of 1763 and this tour lasted three-and-a-half years. So a long, long tour. Of course, one traveled a lot slower at that time. Well, they went all over. They went to Paris and stayed a while. They went to the Netherlands. They stayed in London for 15 months. On the tour back, they went to Switzerland. So it was quite a long way.

Leopold Mozart was a very gifted organizer, among other things. And, well, he did a very good job in educating his children, but also presenting them.

MALTZ: Their concerts were very well received all over.

NEUMAYR: It was also the time of the child prodigies.

MALTZ: There’s a report, a quote talking about Maria Anna's playing saying, “His daughter, Leopold's daughter, 11 years of age, plays the harpsichord marvelously and performs the longest and most difficult pieces with impressive precision.” So clearly, they made a good impact.

NEUMAYR: Yes. And she was one of the first European pianists playing concerts all over. So that was something very new.

Why did Maria Anna stop touring? [5:53]

MALTZ: So she stopped touring when she was 18 and Wolfgang kept going. What caused her to stop traveling?

NEUMAYR: Well, she even stopped earlier. She stopped around 16 and then the family stayed home a little. Then the first Italian tours came where father and son went without mother and sister. This, of course has, on the one hand, economic reasons because traveling was very expensive.

It also has the reason of Leopold Mozart didn't want his daughter to be a traveling artist in society. It was not seen seen as positive for women at that time.

MALTZ: Clearly, the connotation and the expectations were different for Wolfgang and Maria Anna.

NEUMAYR: Yes, definitely. And Wolfgang, of course, had this compositional talent that evolved — that erupted, kind of. That was different from Maria Anna, because she she was a gifted pianist, a gifted musician, but she never saw herself as a composer, I believe. Next to her brother, she just decided I don't do that. I’ll play the piano. Which was smart.

MALTZ: So we talk about the society not having the same expectations for her because she is a woman. But, it was also somewhat because she was becoming closer to a marriageable age.

NEUMAYR: That's definitely so. She grew up and, as an adult woman, it was not so easy to go around and play because that would make her a professional musician — earning her money with music. That was not received well in society. That would diminish her chances to marry somebody.

MALTZ: As you mentioned, she stopped touring early on as she was getting older and reaching a marriageable age. But she actually waited to get married until she was 33.

NEUMAYR: That was not unusual at that time. At that time, only 20 percent of the people were married at all because you had to have enough money, somebody had to come along to ask you, and so on. So there was a very high percentage of the population who didn't marry at all.

A lot of musicians’ daughters never found anybody to marry. So Maria Anna… with her marriage [to a baron], she really married up. And she was well provided for then. So she really did well in life.

MALTZ: There’s the story of — before she eventually did get married — that she actually wanted to marry another person that Leopold did not approve of.

NEUMAYR: Yes, Franz Armand d’Ippold. He was a friend of the family and he appears in the letters around 1783 and they they get very close. But there's no evidence at all that Leopold did not approve of him. Not at all. Franz Armand d’Ippold also visited Leopold when he was ill later on. He visited Maria Anna’s little son who grew up with Leopold, and Maria Anna sent him greetings all the time. So I don't believe at all that Leopold was the reason those two didn't work out. I mean, Wolfgang even wrote to her she they should both go to Vienna and make a living there. But Franz Armand d’Ippold was a high official.

Performing as an adult [10:15]

MALTZ: Did she continue playing music in adulthood?

NEUMAYR: Yes, she definitely did when she married in 1784 and went to St. Gilgen — which is about 30 kilometers from Salzburg — a little village. We know that she continued to practice the piano three hours per day. So that's a long time for the 18th century and considering she had five stepkids and three of her own.

So, marrying a member of the upper class gave her the opportunity to pursue her musical interests, clearly. There is evidence from some very eminent musicologists who even think that she premiered four of Mozart's piano concertos after she had already married and moved to St. Gilgen, and she premiered them in Salzburg.

MALTZ: I’ve heard that as well.

NEUMAYR: Yeah, so that's Manfred Hermann Schmid. There's no evidence for that — no hard evidence. But it's a very interesting hypothesis.

What we are sure of is that when she returned from St. Gilgen after her husband had died in 1801, she immediately started teaching — not because she needed it, but because she liked to teach and she wanted to.

She was also soloist in the concerts of Count Ernst von Schwarzenberg, which were the dominant concerts at that time in Salzburg in the early 19th century. There's a quote where they say the most eminent soloist is Maria Anna von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, Mozart's sister, who traveled widely in Europe when she was a child. So, we definitely know she played.

She probably played Mozart’s concerts because copies of those concerts went from her estate to St. Peter's Monastery, where they still are. So, after that death or even before her death.

MALTZ: I can't think of the exact letter, but I know there's a letter that I've come across from Wolfgang to Maria Anna detailing exactly how certain passages in the piano concerto should be played with the correct ornamentation and articulation.

NEUMAYR: Right, exactly.

MALTZ: So, clearly, she was of a standard.

NEUMAYR: Of course. And it’s also interesting that he always wrote the cadenzas for her. She didn't write her own cadenzas, which is something that strengthened the idea that she didn't see herself as a composer. Because otherwise she would have done that herself and she probably could have done that herself, but not as well as her brother. That's why in St. Peter's Monastery, in the archive, there are autographed cadenzas by Mozart from her estate. Also, the piano parts are always in her handwriting.

MALTZ: Wolfgang also wrote pieces for her, dedicated to her.

NEUMAYR: Of course, yeah, he did.

MALTZ: They maintained their relationship.

NEUMAYR: Yeah, and she was always the first he sent it to. He wrote what do you think of that and so on.

Maria Anna and Wolfgang’s relationship before his death [14:22]

MALTZ: It seems that the relationship between Maria Anna and Wolfgang changed in the years leading up to Wolfgang's death. Why is this so?

NEUMAYR: I’m not sure if the relationship went bad or so, I don't think so, actually. There are some opinions that they kind of quarreled after Leopold Mozart’s death, but there's not that much evidence for that. They didn't disagree very much. I mean, how she continued to work for his works and do everything to further his legacy… I don't believe the relationship went really bad. I mean, they may have been some misunderstandings.

MALTZ: Nothing out of the ordinary for siblings.

NEUMAYR: No, nothing. Nothing very bad.

Securing Wolfgang’s legacy [15:25]

MALTZ: You mentioned earlier that when her husband died, she moved back to Salzburg around 1801. Constanze, who was Mozart's wife — widow at that time — also lived in Salzburg. Did they have a relationship?

NEUMAYR: Yeah, well Constanze came in 1824, so that was pretty late. She had lived there for 23 years already in Salzburg again. Yeah, they visited.

The important thing is that Maria Anna already, before she moved back to [Salzburg], became a person people asked when they wanted to know about her brother.

So, in Salzburg, people began to visit her. And the latest ones were the Novellos, of course. They are very famous. But there were lots of others.

In 1824, Constanze came with her husband, Georg Nikolaus Nissen, who was working at that time on a biography of Mozart. Maria Anna kept all the family's letters, and that's what she gave them. So this biography would not have happened without her. And we would definitely not know as much about Mozart’s early life if she wouldn't have given the letters.

She also was asked by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1792 for the Nekrolog. They wanted to do, after Mozart had died, a piece on him — a written obituary on him. A long one. And she gave the information for that.

So, a lot of stories we know from his early days we know from her.

MALTZ: We really have her to thank for this legacy and wealth of information we have.

NEUMAYR: Of course. I mean, partly Constanze, but also, Maria Anna Mozart.

Maria Anna’s final years [17:51]

MALTZ: What was the end of her life like?

NEUMAYR: Well, she she had troubles with her eyes. I believe she lost sight on one eye around 1820 because her nephew, Franz Xaver Mozart, visited her in 1822 or so, and he relates that. But at that time, she was a very lively lady. Later on, she lost sight in her other eye around 1825. She still kept teaching and had her students, but she became more frail and she died of old age in 1829.

MALTZ: She died relatively wealthy.

NEUMAYR: Yes, definitely. She was very wealthy. Her husband had provided her with a pension and also additional funds. So she died a very wealthy lady.

MALTZ: She was teaching because she loved it.

NEUMAYR: She was teaching not because she needed the money. Definitely not.

Suggested resources to learn more [18:57]

Maria Anna Mozart was a victim of the societal pressures of her era. But the preservation of her brother's work is her lasting legacy.

To learn more, please visit the Maria Anna Mozart Society.