Maria Anna Mozart

Maria Anna Mozart, portrait attributed to Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre seemed to benefit from being born into a musical family. But this was not entirely the case with Maria Anna Mozart and Fanny Mendelssohn. 

Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart (1751-1829) was born in Salzburg four years earlier than her brother Wolfgang Amadeus, whom she helped and inspired as a child. Her father Leopold taught her to play the harpsichord and she toured with him and Wolfgang around Europe playing harpsichord and fortepiano. But her parents decided that she couldn't continue to perform after having reached the age to marry. At eighteen, she couldn't travel anymore; she stayed at home while her brother continued his tours. Wolfgang apparently tried to encourage her to fight for a career and also to marry the person she loved, but she never contested her father.

We know that Maria Anna composed music because we can read many flattery comments in Wolfgang's letters. But her father never mentions her work, and it has all disappeared. In spite of her brilliant childhood as a keyboard virtuoso, Maria Anna Mozart lived the typical life of a housewife. In later years, after the death of her husband, Maria Anna Mozart worked as a music teacher in Salzburg.