More about Amy Beach and Nannerl Mozart
.jpg)
Yesterday I saw the 2010 French film about Maria Anna Mozart (nicknamed Nannerl), the sister of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The film is just doing the rounds in the United States.
Although the movie description online begins, “A speculative (my emphasis) account of Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart. . . .” The movie certainly does nothing to inform the viewer that this movie is a work of fiction. As a matter of fact, the movie trailer runs its very first title as: “The True Story of Mozart’s Sister.”
How do the myths we create from history impact our human evolution, I wonder? When is it justified? Ever? There are current nonfiction writers who have been blasphemed for fictionalizing parts of books they proceed to call memoir or nonfiction. Yet, some say of these accounts, that the authors get at the “real” truth through their fictions, so it is okay.
One concern I have is in the fact that many, actually probably most, moviegoers leave this movie about Nannerl believing that they have learned the truth of her life. But, that was a concern of mine, coincidentally, also when the movie of Nannerl’s famous brother, Amadeus, was released in 1984. That movie, too, was a fiction, but how many who saw it (or the play on which it was based) realized that, for instance, there was no such rivalry between Amadeus Mozart and his contemporary composer, Salieri, as portrayed in the film? The account was fictionalized in order to create dramatic tension and story.
I knew about the Amadeus fiction at the time of the movie’s making because I was just two years out of film school and managing the film studio that created it. When Saul Zaentz announced that he would make a movie based on Peter Shaffer’s play, I was thrilled. I ran out and bought every book I could find about Mozart, so as to be knowledgeable as the film went into production and later when it would come to Saul’s post-production studio in Berkeley. It was when I read those various biographies, that I first learned about Nannerl.
Most of what I read speculated that she may also have been a child prodigy, like her brother. Some historians even speculated that she composed some of the early pieces that Mozart is credited for having written when he was very young (like four and five years old), for Nannerl was five years older than Amadeus, is known to have played the harpsichord very well, and in some letters written to Nannerl by Amadeus he comments on her compositions.
As I began to write my biography/memoir of Amy Beach, Nannerl Mozart came to mind, and I mentioned her in my chapter about child prodigies. Amy Beach was, in fact, a child prodigy. We don’t know if Nannerl Mozart was one or not. And that may be just as sad a fact as if she actually were one and was forced to set her talents aside due to her female gender (as the movie speculates). For this reason, I think it is important that we speculate about the lives of women/girls who have lived, and continue to live, in a world where they have no chance of realizing their capabilities and talents – due to their gender. How many prodigies have we missed? How many have had no opportunity to realize their talents or make their marks on the world?
I believe that a “speculative” tale about someone like Nannerl Mozart is worthwhile, but I cannot hold to the idea that it should be presented dishonestly as fact.
There is as much dramatic tension and story and tragedy in the fact that we do not know what Nannerl was capable of. That is a sadder fact – when looked at globally, over time, in context of all the probable lost girl prodigies – than the possible fact and loss of one prodigy in Nannerl Mozart. We do not have to lie and say that Nannerl was a prodigy; simply posing the possibility, followed by the fact that it would not have mattered anyway due to our dismissive, self-denying, and non-egalitarian treatment of girls and women throughout history, would be enough.
Speculating as to what Nannerl might have been and done had she been treated equally as a human being dredges up far more powerful thoughts and emotions than the dishonest, “true story” presentation of a girl as a prodigy denied. Filmmaker Renet Feret seemed to understand this point – as evidenced by his late in the movie scene of a French princess who gives her life to the church, becoming a nun, while likewise speculating what her own life might have been had she been born male. Speculation then has the potential to create a more powerful message than a faked fact. Some regard the writing of fiction as a more direct route to truth than the writing of nonfiction….
Admitting that we do not know what Nannerl Mozart’s potential was could be the powerful and tragic theme of her life were it to be treated as nonfiction. And admitting that we are speculating about her innate potential, would be crucial to the presentation of her life as fiction; this approach might be no less powerful that the honest, nonfiction, approach were it to be presented, honestly, as fiction.
Amy Beach, born approximately 100 years after Nannerl Mozart and 100 years before my own birth, was a recognized child prodigy. And yet her gender also hampered her development and opportunities at every turn. Others have sugar-coated Beach’s life, and mythologized some of her truths as well. It is my goal as I write this book about her, to stick to the facts and to find the powerful truths in them. If I speculate, I will make a point of letting the reader know that is what I am doing.
