Mozart’s Imaginary Sister

I have been finding my way back to classical music recently and was pretty shocked to learn that just four classical composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky) comprise almost all the music played by modern orchestras. I then realized that I did not know a single female composer. This seemed very wrong for someone who considers themselves a crusader for gender equity.

What do great classical composers and present-day VC funds have in common?

I found a great Spotify playlist featuring female composers that describes itself as “celebrat[ing] the great women composers who continue to transform the classical world” which I found to be an odd description. I think the author’s intent was to emphasize that classical music, often considered anachronistic, is still being written and created today. However, what struck me was that this sentence seemed to imply that all of the female composers in the list were still alive and able to continue to compose today. Perhaps the playlist did indeed only filter for women who are still living but it lead me to an interesting thought which was that in the course of history, women likely were not composing very long at all and, as a result, there was simply a greater statistical chance that these women were in fact living today vis a vis famed classical male composers (the four above, decidedly dead).

My desire to listen to music made by women was to see if the nature of this music was noticeably different — did we collectively miss something in music by listening to only the works for four male composers, even if they are performed by orchestras composed of men and women? These pieces were beautiful and melodic, played with gusto and eloquence that equaled what I’d heard from their male peers— but perhaps I noted (or imagined) just a subtle extra flair, an understated whiff of courage, a rebellious hint of tradition-bucking? The story I conjured in my mind was that of Mozart’s imaginary younger sister, with talents paralleling his but none of his formal training. Ezra* learned secretly in the hallway, with her ears pressed against the door, straining to hear the secret wisdom being passed down through the generations. Excluded, she captured only bits and pieces of this tradition. Her parents were doting and affectionate, supportive in letting her use the piano but not able to provide further studies for her. Her first pieces were composed through delighted mimicry, attempts to master through ardent discipline and adherence to the bits and pieces of age-old tradition she had collected second-hand. As she matured, her work was imbued with the grief of exclusion, the disillusionment of talent overlooked, and perhaps finally, angry, defiance, and rebellion of the established order. Quite simply because she was not formally taught the intricate details of tradition and legacy, she had the freedom and capacity to form her own style of art, that was vastly different from the prevailing zeitgeist.

Is it better? Is it worse? Who can tell with art? Is it different? Decidedly, and there is value just in that.

In this hypothetical timeline, Ezra faced significantly barriers to learning and progressing in formal study of the art of composing, yet nowhere was anyone maliciously attempting to bar her. Her parents, loving and doting, were doing what they thought was best for her given the prevailing cultural expectations and roles at the time. And yet across great swaths of population, if this continued to happen, we could end up with disparate outcomes as vast as the ones we see today.

Hanlon’s Razor says “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” as a corollary perhaps we should add “don’t attribute to malice that which can be explained by…well-meaning people trying to fulfill cultural expectations of their times and wanting the best for their children including wanting them to be socially accepted and fit into the prevailing societal expectations of the times.” Is the role of parenting not to raise children who can flourish? If you are in organized society, is it not logic to interpret one’s children as flourishing if they belong and fit within the established order of organized society? Thus, systems have a tendency to perpetuate. To change slowly, generationally, at a glacial pace until you look around one day and realize you can’t name a single female composer.

The hypothetical story about Ezra offered me an alternative explanation that enabled me to reconcile my belief in the inherent goodness of people and systemically disparate outcomes. There is a version of the world where the vast majority of people could have been well-meaning and want the best and yet have resulted in women being systemically underrepresented in all manner of disciplines.

It is natural to want a villain to point to — a villain to blame, a being so totally and uncontrovertibly evil you can hate. This is what childhood comics teach us. They frame the world around the stories of good v. evil, light v. dark, superheroes v. villains. There are certainly bad people in the world but for the most part, the people I meet are kind. They are doting fathers that want the best for their families, their wives and daughters. They are also sometimes complicit in systems that perpetuate unequal outcomes. We should call on ourselves to aspire to be more and leave the world better but also recognize the inherent humanity of the people we are trying to villainize, especially when we lump them together into one uniform and false collective where one does not exist. I am at peace knowing that the world is more complicated than it seems and all tragedies do not implicate a villain.

*It is with great sadness that I report, after further research, that Mozart’s imaginary sister Ezra is not so imaginary after all (though I did not know it at the time I wrote this). Mozart was one of 7 children, 5 of whom died in infancy. His eldest sister Maria Anna (Marianne) Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl, was taught by her father to play harpsichord starting in age 7. According to New Grove, “from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother, as she had reached a marriageable age” (when she was 18). According to Wikipedia, “there is evidence that Marianne wrote musical compositions, as there are letters from Wolfgang praising her work, but the voluminous correspondence of her father never mentions any of her compositions, and none have survived.”

Mozart’s not-so-imaginary eldest sister Maria Anna (Marianne) Mozart, also known as Nannerl.