3

The Secret Symphony

In, out, pull. In, out…Nannerl sewed in rhythm to the tune that she hummed—softly, so Mama wouldn’t hear. She glanced across the big kitchen to the fireplace where Mama stood pouring the wax to make candles. Nannerl hummed the tune again, but in her head this time. This wasn’t any old tune. It was the tune of a symphony! Her symphony! The one she was going to have finished by the time she met Johann Christian Bach!

Nannerl had spent every extra minute of the past four days composing. It wasn’t easy. When she wasn’t practicing the clavier, she was helping Mama wash the clothes, bake the bread, make the soap, and pack the trunks for the trip. When she did manage to slip away to her room, someone would always barge in with a question or an errand. So far, no one had discovered her secret. She had become an expert at slipping her papers under the bed and pretending to knit as soon as she heard the door click.

Nannerl knew what would happen if Papa discovered that she was composing a symphony. She remembered when she had tried to show him her sonata for violin and piano. First, he would laugh. Then he would shake his head and say, “A symphony, Nannerl! Where did you ever get such an idea? To compose a symphony, one must have years and years of strict training and besides, you musn’t waste your time with such things. There is so much music already written for you to practice. And there are so many household tasks that you must learn from your mama!” Then, to make her feel better, he would give her a few little composition exercises. Baby things, like filling in chords to a bass and melody line already given! As if she hadn’t already done that when she was eight!

Now if her symphony were published…what would Papa say then? Inside her head, Nannerl could hear the sound of forty, maybe fifty violins, rising above the deep voices of the cellos. It would have more instruments than any symphony anyone had ever written. She could hear them swirling together, surrounded by flutes and an oboe and—

“Nannerl!” Mama’s scolding voice interrupted the entrance of the clarinets. “Stop your dreaming and get on with the sewing! There are trunks to pack and clothes to iron and bread to bake. We’re leaving tomorrow, not next year!”

“Sorry, Mama,” said Nannerl, stabbing the rose-colored satin with her needle. Her best performance dress, with all its gold embroidery and silk lace, lay in a heap on the kitchen table. Nannerl sighed and checked how much lace was left to attach to the sleeve.

It seemed that the lace had always been her monthly job. First, she had to take it all off, or it would be ruined in the wash. Then, after the washerwoman had scrubbed the clothes, and after the drying, the lace all had to be stitched on again. Nannerl had been sewing lace on hers and Mama’s clothes for the last two weeks!

Now there was just one row of stitching left. In, out, pull. In, out, pull…Nannerl’s sewing needle moved back and forth, conducting the music in her head like a baton. Suddenly, moist, warm fingers covered her face, and satin brushed the back of her neck.

“Guess!” said a familiar voice behind her.

“Katherl, of course, you silly goose!” said Nannerl, standing up and hugging her best friend. Katherl’s father was the Salzburg court surgeon. Since Papa was assistant court composer, Nannerl and Katherl had always been friends.

Nannerl looked at Katherl’s dress. It completely covered her feet. Nannerl had begged Papa to buy her a “grown-up” dress that was really long like thirteen-year-old Katherl’s. But Papa wouldn’t hear of it. He disapproved of very long dresses. “She’s always trailing dirt,” he would say. Today, as usual, the bottom of Katherl’s dress was splotched with mud.

“Good afternoon,” said Katherl, curtsying and turning to Mama. “I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t knock. Your servant, who was outside preparing the carriage, let me in, so I thought I’d surprise Nannerl.”

“Good afternoon, Maria Anna,” said Mama, smiling at Katherl over the candle wicks. Katherl’s real name was Maria Anna Katharina, almost the same as Nannerl’s.

Nannerl lifted her needle. “Isn’t it exciting about Sebastian?” she said. “He’s our very own servant, and we have our own carriage too! Even if we are hiring the driver and horses in stages. On the last tour we had to ride in a public carriage and it was horribly squished.”

“Sebastian is handsome. How old is he?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably about nineteen. How was your trip to Munich? Did you get a new bonnet?”

“Two. You should see them. The new fashion is to have a few flowers above the rim, sweeping down like…so…just above the eyes. I will be the first in Salzburg to show it off,” said Katherl, fingering the lace on Nannerl’s performance dress. “What I wouldn’t give for a dress like this! Was it really a present from the Empress Maria Theresa?”

“Of course,” said Nannerl, remembering that performance when she and Wolfi had astonished the court in Vienna. The next day, the paymaster had come to the inn where they were staying and delivered two costumes; one for Wolfgang, the other for her. Whenever she put it on for a performance, Nannerl would finger the edges of the lace, feeling lucky and grown up.

She pulled the last stitch with a tug. “Finished!” she announced, glancing over at Mama. “Could I please say good-bye to Katherl, just for a few minutes?”

Mama looked up from the candles with her lips pressed together, but Nannerl detected the trace of a smile. “Well, just for a few minutes. But watch the time carefully…there are clothes to iron and trunks to pack and—”

“—bread to bake,” Nannerl finished as she grabbed Katherl’s hand and raced out to the hall.

Outside the music room, Nannerl pressed her ear against the closed door, motioning for Katherl to do the same.

“Wolfi, here is the score of a symphony by Joseph Haydn. Notice the instruments he chooses,” Papa’s voice drifted out with a few notes played on the violin.

“C’mon Nannerl, let’s—” whispered Katherl, but Nannerl just shook her head and listened harder. So Papa was teaching Wolfgang how to write a symphony! “You must know the sound of each instrument very well,” Papa continued, “so that you know which ones will sound right together. You choose a theme, a melody as a basis, then expand upon it.” Some clavier notes drifted out to the hall.

Nannerl pressed her ear hard against the door until it almost hurt, as if that could somehow help her to be in there with Wolfi and Papa. She didn’t want to miss anything. But it seemed as if Papa wanted to keep leaving her out.

Well, she would just have to work harder. Maybe tonight, after the packing. Who needed lessons from Papa anyway? She had studied that score a hundred times at least, in the mornings before she practiced the clavier.

She and Katherl tiptoed to her room, trying not to step on the creaky parts of the floor. Nannerl closed the door and Katherl sat down on the bed. She sighed. “Do you realize that you are the luckiest girl in Salzburg? What I wouldn’t give to visit Paris and London and Amsterdam!”

“With only your mama and papa and little brother for company?”

“But just think who you might meet! Your new servant Sebastian seems nice. When did your papa hire him?”

“Just the day before yesterday, for the trip.” Nannerl paused. “Katherl…if I show you something very secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”

Katherl kneeled on the floor. She lay her head on the bed and closed her eyes. “Never, ever,” she said in solemn tones. “I promise, and if I do, death shall be my punishment.”

“Get up, you silly goose,” said Nannerl, giggling. “All right, here it is.” She quickly thrust the stack of papers at Katherl, then looked at the floor with her hands behind her back.

“Is it a sonata?” asked Katherl.

“No.”

“A trio?”

“No.”

“A quartet?”

“No, silly, look at the number of instruments!” Nannerl looked up from the floor. Her friend’s mouth dropped open.

“A…a symphony? You’re writing a symphony?” asked Katherl in her loudest voice, the one that always seemed to fill a room to the very top.

“Sh!” said Nannerl. “No one can find out, until I can get Johann Christian Bach to help me get it published. It’s going to be gigantic. It’ll have way more instruments than any symphonies now, perhaps hundreds of them! I think it’ll even have a boys’ choir and an adult choir and…oh, Katherl, what do you think?”

Katherl studied the music and Nannerl waited, twisting a loose bit of thread around her finger. Katherl took clavier lessons sometimes. It wasn’t as if she knew as much about music as Papa or anything, but Nannerl still felt nervous.

“Well?” asked Nannerl, still twisting the bit of thread.

Katherl quickly looked up. “It looks fine, but…”

“But what?”

“Well…um…all those instruments…”

“You don’t like it? You think it’s a stupid idea?” Nannerl pulled the thread against her fingertip, indenting the skin.

“No, no, I like it. But what I mean to say is…well…nobody’s ever written anything with so many instruments. Maybe it’s kind of…well…kind of big?”

“Maybe…” said Nannerl. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Anyway, I think you’re a genius!” said Katherl in a loud voice, so that Nannerl had to shush her again. “Sorry,” Katherl whispered. “People will probably think it sounds strange. But who cares what they think, as long as you know it’s the best thing you ever wrote!”

“I don’t know,” said Nannerl. “I think I’d like it to be published and be famous.”

“Well, I hope you do get to be famous. You deserve it, because you work so hard and you’re so talented. Papa says you and Wolfi are the greatest performers in all of Europe!”

“Always performer…I wish they would say composer,” said Nannerl, looking down at her symphony. She lifted her head and looked at Katherl. “Do you think someday they will?”

“I know they will!” said Katherl. She noticed the thin book lying on Nannerl’s night table and picked it up. “What’s this?”

“It’s a travel diary, to write in every day. Will you write to me? Maybe you could even send ideas for the symphony with Herr Hagenauer’s letters.”

“Who’s Herr Hagenauer?”

“Our landlord, silly. Remember—he owns the grocery shop next door? And he has a daughter, the stuck-up one who thinks she’s so great just because she’s fifteen? Herr Hagenauer and Papa always write letters when we’re away, so you could send your letters and ideas with his! And I’ll send letters with Papa’s!”

Katherl kneeled again, with her hand outstretched this time, like the actor in the French theater group Nannerl had seen in Vienna.

“Dearest Nannerl,” she whispered, “I shall write thee always, faithfully, and I shall never, ever, forget thee.”

Nannerl giggled, but deep in her stomach she felt an ache.

Three years! How could she live without Katherl for three years! She grabbed the outstretched hand and lifted the older girl to her feet.

“I’ll miss you,” said Nannerl, hugging her friend and not wanting to let go.

Wolfi suddenly marched into the room. “Mama’s getting mad at you for staying away so long,” he reported. “She says you should come right away, to iron the clothes. She says we’re leaving tomorrow, not—”

“—next year,” finished Nannerl, giving Katherl one final hug.

Wolfi stuck his tongue out at Katherl. “Catch me if you can, but don’t trip over your long dress,” he said, running away.

Katherl started to run after him, then stopped. Their latest trick in dealing with Wolfi was to ignore him. She and Nannerl stepped into the hall in their most dignified manner. They linked arms and whispered all the way to the front door.

“Good-bye, dear Nannerl, good-bye,” Katherl said, blowing kisses as she walked backwards and bumped into Sebastian, who was coming in from outside. She blushed.

“Bye, dearest Katherl,” said Nannerl, blowing a steady stream of kisses to her friend. She felt like crying but she couldn’t, not yet, not in front of Sebastian.

“Nannerl!” Mama’s voice came out from the kitchen.

“Bye!” Nannerl said again, waving and watching Katherl lift her long dress and stumble down the stairs.

Nannerl ran to the kitchen. She watched Katherl step onto the cobblestone street below. The ache was in her throat as she began to press Wolfi’s suit. Three years without Katherl. Two hot tears fell on the cloth and sizzled under the iron as she moved it back and forth, back and forth. Then the violins in her head tuned up and began to play, and she started to feel the rhythm again, the rhythm of the symphony she shared with Katherl.