Maria Anna Mozart - Relationship With Wolfgang

Relationship With Wolfgang

When Mozart was a toddler, Nannerl was his idol. According to Maynard Solomon, "at three, Mozart was inspired to study music by observing his father's instruction of Marianne; he wanted to be like her." The two children were very close, and they invented a secret language and an imaginary "Kingdom of Back" of which they were king and queen. Mozart's early correspondence with Marianne is affectionate, and includes some of the scatological and sexual word play in which Mozart indulged with intimates. Occasionally Wolfgang wrote entries in Marianne's diary, referring to himself in the third person.

Wolfgang wrote a number of works for Marianne to perform, including the Prelude and Fugue in C, K. 394 (1782). Until 1785, he sent her copies of his piano concertos (up to No. 21) in St. Gilgen.

Concerning the relationship between Wolfgang and Marianne in adulthood, authorities differ. According to New Grove, Wolfgang "remained closely attached to her." In contrast, Maynard Solomon contends that in later life Wolfgang and Marianne drifted apart completely. He notes, for instance, that after Mozart's unhappy visit to Salzburg in 1783, Wolfgang and Marianne never visited each other again, that they never saw each other's children, and that their correspondence diminished to a trickle, ceasing entirely in 1788.

Wolfgang died 5 December 1791. Sometime around 1800, Marianne encountered Franz Xaver Niemetschek's 1798 Mozart biography. Since this biography had been written from the perspective of Vienna and of Constanze, much of its content was new to Marianne. In an 1800 letter, she wrote:

Herr Prof. Niemetschek's biography so completely reanimated my sisterly feelings toward my so ardently beloved brother that I was often dissolved in tears, since it is only now that I became acquainted with the sad condition in which my brother found himself.