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Mozart's Sister: A Novel

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The children of Leopold Mozart are uniquely talented, daughter Nannerl (Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart), five years older than prodigy Wolfgang Mozart. Unfortunately for Nannerl, her aspirations will not only be secondary to her sibling's achievements, but she will be flatly forbidden to compose. In 1770 Salzburg, only men compose music; women may perform for appreciative audiences, but certain accomplishments are rendered gender specific. Treasured for her musical talent until the birth of her brother, Nannerl is unprepared for the vehement rebuff of her father, his open hostility to her dedication to anything other than performing for select royal audiences. The family undertakes a grand your when Nannerl is eleven, Wolfgang six, enchanting their aristocratic audience; but when Wolfgang announces that he is playing one of Nannerl's compositions, Leopold flies into a rage, accusing the girl of sabotaging her brother's chances for success.

Consequently, when Leopold prepares to introduce his son to Italy, Nannerl is left at home under her mother's supervision, instructed to teach piano to wealthy students and forward the profits of her labors to father and son to finance their tour. Extremely close in their youth, brother and sister turn away from one another during Wolfgang's Italian tour, a young man feted and applauded, his music and charm the toast of salons. Of necessity, Nannerl bows to Leopold's demands, but doing so causes a lasting resentment of Wolfgang's burgeoning career. Her dreams are shattered; but much as she tries to cut herself off from her creative spirit, it is music that sustains this remarkably talented woman, hampered by the conventions of society. Surprisingly, the appearance of a talented young woman pulls Nannerl from her despair, inspired to help this girl achieve the notoriety she deserves, Victoria's doting father bringing unexpected purpose into Nannerl's life. In fact, it is through Nannerl's letters to Victoria's father that the story is told, the anguish of ignoring her talents in favor of her brother.

Charbonnier's challenge is daunting, but she successfully blends the Mozart's historical legacy with the lifelong commitment of a woman who aspires to transcend gender, her genius an undeniable gift in a world unprepared to recognize her capabilities. Her potential fame conceded to her brother, Nannerl's clumsy attempts at relationships are grounded in naiveté, hence very painful when confronted with reality. Still, music is her muse. In the end, it is pain that forges Nannerl's talent and her future, no one as champion but herself. It is Nannerl who secures Wolfgang's legacy, years of separation forgotten in an effort to save his work for those who follow. If Nannerl's emotional outbursts seem inappropriate in the context of the novel, perhaps this is predictable: her passion for playing and composing is not acceptable. As much as she seeks to control her natural impulse to use her gifts, at times such efforts fail. This is the great torment of Nannerl's soul, genius denied. Luan Gaines/ 2007.

Mozart's Sister: A Novel

Maria Anna Mozart, beloved nicknamed Nannerl, was the elder and only sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As children, both were considered gifted musical prodigies and their father, Leopold, arranged tours to display their talents to the masses in the grandest capitals of Europe. Both children could play the most challenging pieces and could compose into notes any song they heard.

They enjoyed a pleasant childhood, indulging their musical creativity and creating their own childish kingdom. As Nannerl and Wolfgang's musical genius progressed into composition, her adoring younger brother greatly praised and encouraged her work. At a concert, when he announces that the piece he has just played was written by his sister, Leopold is incensed. He orders Nannerl to never compose music again because in the 18th century, women did not become composers.

Thereafter, Leopold focused all his attentions on Mozart, not Nannerl. He refused to allow her to study the violin and composition. Leopold announces Nannerl must remain at home when he takes Wolfgang on tour and obliges her to give piano lessons to wealthy students to finance her brother's Italian tour. Her dreams shattered, Nannerl complies, but falls into a deep depression.

Victoria, one of her students, becomes her protégé. Through Victoria, Nannerl's passion for music is re-awakened. When Victoria's father becomes interested in her, he rekindles her spirit. Her relationship with Mozart, however, is plagued by years of separation and the preference of their father for his son and not his daughter. Nannerl struggles not only with the loss of her hopes and dreams, but also with the ever-growing estrangement with her brother and her father who refuses to recognize her talents because of the laws of society which will not allow a woman to enter the wold of musical composition.

Even her choice of suiters were one-by-one turned away by Leopold. In 1784, she married the magistrate Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg (1736-1801) and moved to St. Gilgen. Nannerl returned to Salzburg to give birth to her first son and left the newborn there in Leopold's care.

Nannerl grew ever more distant from Wolfgang, especially after his marriage to Constanze Weber. They resumed corresponding briefly after the death of their father, but by then, their affection for each other had all but disappeared and Mozart's brief letters to her dealt almost exclusively with the disposition of their father's estate.

When Wolfgang dies, Nannerl re-awakens to life and makes it her purpose to honor her brother by collecting and assembling all his compositions and erecting monuments to honor his life.

After her huband's death, Maria Anna returned to Salzburg and supported herself once again by giving piano lessons. She died on October 29, 1829, and was buried in St. Peter's cemetary.

Mozart's Sister by Rita Charbonnier is a heartwrenching tale of great genius denied. It tells of great triumph and equally great descent and the strength of one woman, Nannerl, to overcome the pain of living her life in the shadow of her brother.

Rita Charbonnier brings to life the brilliance of the 18th century with its tight social expectations, sex scandals, and brilliant personages. Her well honed theatrical and musical background is evident in the spectacular descriptions of the music and composition characteristic of Wolfgang Mozart. It is a compelling read, not only for those who love classical music, but for those who love sweeping historical tales of strong women. Brava Rita! Encore! Encore!
Bloodstone Castle

Leopold Mozart's genes found a way to show themselves for at least one generation before they began to fade from the human gene pool. I began thinking about this one day recently when I was listening to one of Leopold's symphonies, the "Toy Symphony," on my satellite radio as I was driving to a meeting. Leopold's notion that his children - or, at least his son Wolfgang - were enormously talented was clear: he once referred to Wolfgang as "the miracle which God let be born in Salzburg."
But what of Wolfgang's arguably equally talented older sister, Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart?

The quest for the answer to this question took me to Rita Charbonnier's wonderful work, "Mozart's Sister (La Sorella di Mozart, in the original Italian).

As with all historical fiction writers, the task placed before Charbonnier was intimidating - how to blend the historical events in the life of Nannerl with a fictional tale of a woman trying hard to rise above a society where gender really, really mattered. Charbonnier accomplishes this task, producing a novel that draws us into the European salon world of the late 1700's while spreading before us the musical genius of a woman who is kicking against the goads of a men's world that was totally unprepared to accept such talent in a woman.

Charbonnier, herself a talented young Italian scriptwriter and musical theatre performer, has chosen the time-honored path of letter exchanges between Nannerl and another talented woman, Victoria, who, like the cavalry in the Old West, charges into Nannerl's life to pull Nannerl out of her depression to find an outlet for her genius. Charbonnier spins her tale by using letters between Nannerl and Victoria's adoring father to open the window into Nannerl's heart. In this book, we look through that window.

Well, we all know that no matter how hard we try, our Muse, if we have one, cannot be ignored. So it was with Nannerl.

The author leads us across this path: Nannerl's dreams had been shattered when her Father demanded her withdrawal from a performer's life in deference to her brother. Nannerl's dreams of success and fame are destroyed and she turns away from her creative talents. Yet, it is music - always music- that keeps Nannerl afloat until Victoria arrives with an emotional life ring to save Nannerl.

Of course, in the end, it is Nannerl who saves herself.

In the book, Charbonnier has us witness Nannerl securing Wolfgang's legacy after years of seperation and estrangement from each other. This selfless effort saves Nannerl's emotional soul. Plainly, the author takes us over the surface and into the heart of Nannerl's great torment - a woman of great talent, a woman suppressed by a heavy-handed society.

How good it was to read of her rising above it all.

This book has surprised me. I do not like romantic historical novels,
and when I began flipping through it by chance I was biased. I
suspected the author of wanting to make extravagant claims - the true
genius in the Mozart family was not Wolfgang Amadeus, but his sister,
and she was the real composer of The Magic Flute and Eine Kleine
Nachtmusik, and so on.

But in fact I was captivated by the first pages of the novel, when
Amadeus and his sister Nannerl are small. This part of the novel is
quite amusing. Then, gradually, Nannerl's life begins to entangle her
almost to the point of suffocation. This isn't just the tale of
frustrated female talent, but above all of a complex character,
struggling with itself and with the world. Amadeus doesn't come out
very well as a person (after all, he wasn't exactly a saint) but his
value as a musician is never under discussion. When Nannerl reaches
rock bottom, she seems to be reborn and everything stretches out
towards a finale that is bitter but ultimately sweetened by laughter.

The structure of the book seems to me original. It starts as an
epistolary novel, but the letters gradually disappear and the reader
doesn't even notice exactly when they stop. The narration progresses
almost like a musical composition, and in particular that of a
Fantasia for piano by Mozart, that is mentioned in the end.

I liked less the sentimental parts about courtships and amorous
anxiety, but that might be due to my own prejudice against the genre.
In any case, it was a surprisingly enjoyable read.

I have read other "family stories, novels etc" on the Mozart family and this one seems to fit in well with them. It gives another facet to that interesting and fascinating family which produced one of the world's greatest composers in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That Nannerl was a victim of the times is an understatement. Wolfgang was a victim of the times also; he fared slightly better.

The jacket on Mozart's Sister describes the author, Rita Charbonnier, as a writer of teleplays, which might explain the problems with this book. Perhaps she is used to having a director and art director to fill in the action and the scenographic details, for while the story was interesting and obviously well-researched, this novel failed at something that for me is critical in historical fiction, namely, taking the reader into the period in question. I felt like I learned absolutely nothing about late 18th century Austria. Moreover, this book felt like a teenaged romantic fantasy, with lots of melodrama and little story.

Perhaps I should back up. The book starts out well enough, setting forth the relatonships among the Mozart family: Nannerl, the title character, a young woman of remarkable music talent who is prone to fits of melancholy, Wofgang, Nannerl's younger brother to whom she is utterly devoted, Leopold, the father who believes that the violin is an inappropriate musical instrument for females and who focuses all of his attention and family resources on his son, and Anna Maria, the children's mother, who would like nothing better than for Nannerl to make a good marriage. The book starts out alternating between a third person account of the family's early life and letters between Nannerl and Armand, a charming military officer with whom Nannerl has fallen in love. At this point the novel is fairly interesting, although the correspondence between Nannerl and Armand, rather than setting forth much of the background of the story, which is what the author intended, is mostly filler full of high-blown romantic drivel. The most interesting character is the housekeeper, Tresel, probably because she doesn't say much. Dialogue in the book reads pretty well, as you might expect from a screen writer, but just isn't very interesting. Thereafter the book deals with Nannerl's estrangement from her father and brother and from music itself and her battle with depression. Not even the appearance of an incredibly handsome Baron who is in love with Nannerl can keep things from getting incredibly dull.

The biggest problem with the book, however, is that Nannerl, as written, just isn't a very interesting character. She spends most of the novel sulking, and while it's understandable given the options available to women in the 18th century and her treatment by her father, Charbonnier just doesn't do that much with her. There is a long section on how a difficult horse (named Ebony of all things) brings Nannerl out of her shell, which just comes across like another adolescent cliché.

In all I found the execution disappointing because the notion of Mozart having had an extremely talented and yet historically unrecognized sister is such a compelling one and the world of 18th-century Salzburg is one about which I'd have liked to know more. But this novel, other than a few sex scenes, comes across more like a book intended for adolescents than something I could ever recommend for adults.

Nannerl Mozart is a musical genius - she plays the harpsichord and composes from a remarkably early age. Then one day her little brother is born: Wolfgang. She loves him instantly. The Mozart children share a strong bond. Love, support and music are one and the same for them. They have such a connection they always know exactly what the other one is thinking. And so great is Nannerl's love for her impetuous brother that she puts herself, her needs and desires firmly in second place. At the age of 18 she stops making music and begins working to pay for Wolfgang's musical studies. Her sacrifice belongs to the natural order of things and respects the historical context in which they are living. Still, it's a sacrifice paid in salty tears of rage. The renunciation of artistic expression is a form of spiritual mutilation - a mutilation for Nannerl that pushes her to the brink of insanity.

I'm a great lover of Mozart and I was lucky enough to visit Salzburg, where there's plenty of evidence of Nannerl's impact on Wolfgang's life. I enjoyed this book immensely and I think that it is an opportunity to enter the Mozart legend with a different, feminine spin. The portrait of the Maestro goes beyond the artistic value. His affectionate tyranny over his sister and the way he takes advantage of her creativity brought to my mind some type of sibling rivalries that I have known personally. And I believe that a woman cannot read MOZART'S SISTER without asking herself how much of her power she is repressing because of her own misogynistic attitudes.

As a huge Mozart fan, I thought it would be interesting to read about his other family members. I knew I would have to read this book the minute I saw it. At least in this protrayal, Nannerl is depicted as a very depressed, jealous and angry young woman living with a brilliant, but very dysfunctional family. If alive now, she would certainly benefit from some good psychotherapy and a prescription for Prozac.Yet, despite the sadness and gloom in her life (and the story), I found myself riveted to the book and eagerly looking forward to reading more. It saddens me to think that the world might have lost out in sharing the beautiful music of another Mozart genius. Would have loved to see more factual information on Nannerl included in the very brief addendum at the end of the book.

The story of Nannerl Mozart, Wolfgang's sister, is told in a combination of epistolary and narrative form. It is an historical fiction of a woman with an independent mind and spirit attempting to fit in with the 18th century expectations of womanhood--the story of an anachronistic prodigy that must subvert her musical talent to those of her brother's. The epistolary parts are more lyrical, poetic, and nuanced. They were more immediately felt and fresh sounding than the overwrought narrative, which repeatedly advises us that Nannerl's chauvinistic father was very controlling and that she must sacrifice her musical ambition to promote and help fund Wolfgang's career. The tale is melodramatic, dearly earnest, with many exclamatory sentences and too much emotional repetitiveness. I would have preferred that the author flesh out more of the characters in Nannerl's life and give them more independent vitality than wield them as vehicles of Nannerl's plight. The story lacks emotional tension because emotions are overbaked. When the author does modulate her prose and gives more grace to her narrative (in Nannerl's letters), I feel more fully engaged in the story. Overall, it was moderately enjoyable, but the fervid doggedness feels intermittently stale and devotional.

I originally intended to purchase this book but then came upon a copy in the library and I'm glad I went that route. For anyone to say this book was well researched in its time period is a definite over-statement. Historical information to paint the backdrop is sketchy. The writer attempts to take the reader through musical linguistics to simulate the music inside Nannerl but it comes out over-done instead of natural and flowing as Nannerl's talents apparently contained. Wolfgang's interjections throughout are the only sparks that really come alive. Nannerl herself is dull, childish and a drama queen with far too much "woe is me" in her to be believable. As a reader, you'll find yourself thinking "oh just jump in the nearest river and spare us the rest of the details" instead of empathizing with her. During the 18th century, it is extremely understandable that a woman was limited in choice and was normally governed by a male figure in her life but Nannerl's decision in this narrative sounds all too much like a personal choice as opposed to an oppressive father. Additionally, there's no formality in this book as would've been expected and required during the 18th century. Individuals refer to Nannerl by this nickname when they have no societal and social reason for doing so. Assuming to call her by family nickname, let alone her Christian name, would have been a definite faux pas. Read this book with a light heart and light mind and you'll enjoy it but don't seek depth or real information.