Nannerl Mozart was a child prodigy like her brother Wolfgang Amadeus, but her musical career came to an end when she was 18. A one-woman play puts her back on the stage. In September 2015, on the occasion of the 100th performance of her play The Other Mozart, actress Sylvia Milo writes about her inspiration and process. On June 26, 2020, Yellow Barn brings The Other Mozart to Putney, Vermont. (This article first appeared in The Guardian on September 8, 2015.)

"I am writing to you with an erection on my head and I am very much afraid of burning my hair”, wrote Nannerl Mozart to her brother Wolfgang Amadeus. What was being erected was a large hairdo on top of Nannerl’s head, as she prepared to pose for the Mozart family portrait.

It was that hairdo that drew my attention. Nine years ago I was visiting Vienna for the 250th birthday celebrations of Wolfgang Amadeus, and I was thrilled to explore the city following in Wolfi’s footsteps, many of which turned out to be Nannerl’s as well. At the Mozarthaus Vienna – Wolfgang’s apartment – on the exit wall, as if by an afterthought, there was a little copy of the Mozart family portrait. I saw a woman seated at the harpsichord next to Wolfgang, their hands intertwined, playing together. I grew up studying to become a violinist. Neither my music history nor my repertoire included any female composers. With my braided hair I was called “little Mozart” by my violin teacher, but he meant Wolfi. I never heard that Amadeus had a sister. I never heard of Nannerl Mozart until I saw that family portrait.

I was intrigued and determined to find out more. I read Wolfgang Mozart biographies, studied the situation of women and female artists during Mozarts’ time and in different countries, read writings of Enlightenment philosophers, conduct manuals … But the richest source of information came from the Mozart family letters. There are hundreds, and we have them because Nannerl preserved them. Most are written by Leopold and Wolfgang but some of Nannerl’s letters survived as well. Through these letters, sometimes only from the replies to her lost letters, Nannerl slowly emerged. I was able to understand the Mozarts as people, as a family, and through the lens of the times and the social situation in which they lived. I saw Nannerl’s potential, her dreams, her strength, grace and her fight.

Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation. And so she was left behind in Salzburg, and her father only took Wolfgang on their next journeys around the courts of Europe. Nannerl never toured again.

But the woman I found did not give up. She wrote music and sent at least one composition to Wolfgang and Papa – Wolfgang praised it as “beautiful” and encouraged her to write more. Her father didn’t, as far as we know, say anything about it.

Did she stop? None of her music has survived. Perhaps she never showed it to anybody again, perhaps she destroyed it, maybe we will find it one day, maybe we already did but it’s wrongly attributed to her brother’s hand. Composing or performing music was not encouraged for women of her time. Wolfgang repeatedly wrote that nobody played his keyboard music as well as she could, and Leopold described her as “one of the most skilful players in Europe”, with “perfect insight into harmony and modulations” and that she improvises “so successfully that you would be astounded”.

Like Virginia Woolf’s imagined Shakespeare’s sister, Nannerl was not given the opportunity to thrive. And what she did create was not valued or preserved – most female composers from the past have been forgotten, their music lost or gathering dust in libraries. We will never know what could have been, and this is our loss.

Director Isaac Byrne and I searched for the ghost of Nannerl, and the story she needed to tell in my one-woman play. Period-style movement transports us to the Mozarts’ time using delicate gestures, court bows and curtsies, and the language of fans.

To create the 18th-century world of opulence and of restriction, the set became an enormous dress which spills over the entire stage (designed by Magdalena Dabrowska), with a corset/panniers cage on top. Finally the hair stands as tall as Nannerl’s, after we found the right hairspray to hold it all up-up-up – and yes, it is all my own hair.

Creating music for the show was down to two composers, Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen, who chose, rather than to try to re-create Nannerl’s compositions, to portray her musical imagination, using the sounds she would have had in her ears: the fluttering of fans, tea cups, music boxes, bells, clavichords.

I’ve been touring The Other Mozart for the last two years: this month marks its 100th performance, how fitting that it will take place just a few steps away from where Nannerl performed in London as a girl.

It has been a long journey to bring Nannerl back to England after an absence of 250 years. I sometimes feel like Leopold Mozart – on a quest to show the world this brilliant Mozart.

Earlier this summer, Howard Weiss-Tisman, reporter for Vermont Public Radio, wrote this story commemorating Yellow Barn's 50th anniversary.

▶️ Listen to the story as it was broadcast on July 23, 2019

(Howard Weiss-Tisman/VPR)

The Yellow Barn music festival in Putney is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Back in 1969, local resident David Wells was a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. He invited a group of his students up to his place in Vermont to enjoy the summer, eat some good food and explore classical chamber music.

Wells and his wife, Janet, introduced the students to the community. In return, Putney embraced the idea of having young musicians from around the world in their small town. Neighbors cooked potluck meals, they put up some of the students, and throughout the summer they would gather inside the yellow barn for a night of chamber music.

Wells died in 2012, but musicians from around the world are still coming to Putney every summer to play music at Yellow Barn.

"This is home — and that's what's always been remarkable about Yellow Barn," said Catherine Stephan, the current executive director of Yellow Barn. 

Stephan first came up to play music at Yellow Barn 25 years ago when she was a 20-year-old cellist; then 10 years ago, she came back and became executive director.

"None of it would be what it is without the love that David and Janet brought to Yellow Barn and brought into this room," she said. "They brought out the best in every single one of us."

(Howard Weiss-Tisman/VPR)

Wells continued to invite students up every summer. The festival grew, in both size and prominence, and eventually invitations went out to young musicians who weren't only working with Wells.

In 2002, a new barn was built just up the road. That's where, on a recent afternoon, an ensemble was practicing for a special program commemorating the Yellow Barn's 50th anniversary.

In the summer of 1969, the students at Yellow Barn gathered to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing. This summer, Yellow Barn put together a night of classical and contemporary moon music — including a piece by composer Arnold Schoenberg from the early 20th century: "Pierrot in the Moonlight."

Auditions for this year were held at 50 sites around the world, and more than 500 people auditioned for about 40 slots in the 2019 summer program.

Yellow Barn artistic director Seth Knopp said even though Yellow Barn has grown, that original idea of having musicians come up to Vermont to teach, learn, and share their talents and love of music, is what drives the audition process.

"David wanted to work with his students and have them improve over the summer. And that's the thing that I wanted to protect more than anything else," Knopp said. "It's not so much a matter of, you know, showing their wares or their terrific playing. You know, everyone here I feel has the means to grow. They have the means to do meaningful searching in music."

Anthony Marwood has been coming to Yellow Barn as a faculty member since 2000. Marwood performs around the world, and last year was recognized by Queen Elizabeth II for his work.

He said he makes time in his schedule every year to spend a few weeks in Putney to slow down, spend time with the music, and to teach young musicians and to learn from them. When he leaves Putney each year, Marwood said he tries to hold on to all of that for as long as he can.

"The world is a very strange and peculiar place at the moment, I feel. And there's ... a lot of focus on what is troubling, and I feel personally there is a lot to be troubled by," Marwood said. "So it's very important in one's life to actually go the other way and to be engaged with something that really feels enormously positive. I mean, to put it bluntly, working with these young players gives one really great hope for the future. And that's a very valuable resource for us all right now."

There are Yellow Barn concerts and events in Putney into the first week of August, including a special 50th anniversary gala celebration on Aug. 3. That will take place at the original yellow barn near the home of David and Janet Wells.