The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

by Maria Augusta Trapp

  The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

  The Story that Inspired the Sound of Music

  Maria Augusta Trapp

  Contents

  Part One

  The Chapter Before the First

  I Just Loaned

  II Glories of the Past

  III “The Baron Doesn’t Want It….”

  IV An Austrian Christmas

  V “God’s Will Hath No Why”

  VI Feasts in a Family

  VII A Festival Summer and a Baby

  VIII Uncle Peter and His Handbook

  IX An Operation, a Turtle, and a Long Distance Call

  X Aren’t We Lucky!

  XI “Never Again”

  XII From Hobby to Profession

  XIII And the Lord Said to Abram…

  Part Two

  I On the “American Farmer”

  II The First Ten Years Are the Hardest

  III Getting Settled

  IV Barbara

  V What Next?

  VI In Sight of the Statue of Liberty

  VII Learning New Ways

  VIII The Miracle

  IX Merion

  X The Fly

  XI Stowe in Vermont

  XII A New Chapter

  XIII The End of a Perfect Stay

  XIV The New House

  XV Concerts in Wartime

  XVI Trapp Family Music Camp

  XVII Snapshots of the Camp

  XVIII Trapp Family Austrian Relief, Inc.

  XIX A Letter

  XX The Memorable Year

  XXI Cor Unum

  About the Author

  Praise

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Chapter Before the First

  TO BE quite honest, this really is a foreword or an introduction, but I’m so afraid that if I say so, you won’t read it, as I never read forewords, and being so anxious that you do listen to what I want to tell you about the book before it starts, I ask you, foreword or no foreword, please read it just the same.

  About fifteen years ago my family and I were visiting in Tirol. Our hostess was a famous writer.

  “Isn’t it funny,” she said one day, “I never wrote a word in my life until after I was forty!”

  “That’s quite incredible,” we mused.

  The next day we all went into a picturesque valley. On the way we saw a chapel greeting us from one of the wooded slopes.

  “Let’s climb up there,” said our hostess. “That’s an interesting place.” And so it was. The ancient building was of quaint architecture. Through the roof came a rope dangling down, which belonged to the bell in the little steeple. Playfully I took the rope to try out the sound of the bell.

  Looking at our friend, I said: “I wish I could become a writer, too, after I’m forty!” I meant that as a joke, and felt a little embarrassed when she didn’t smile.

  She looked at me rather queerly and said: “Did you know the story?”

  I let the rope go and asked: “Which story?”

  “Well,” she said, “the people say that once in a hundred years it happens if someone rings this bell while pronouncing a wish, that wish, whatever it may be, will come true, provided the person is unaware of the legend. The people of this valley call it the ‘wishing bell.’”

  “No—I didn’t know this story,” said I.

  This was fifteen years ago.

  While working on this book and writing down the memories of a family, it astonished, amazed, almost overwhelmed me to see how much love—genuine, real love—was stored up in one short lifetime: first, God’s love for us His children, the leading, guiding, protecting love of a Father; and as every real love calls forth love in return, it couldn’t be any different here.

  As we are singers, this story turned into a song, a canticle. “Cantate Domino canticum novum,” sings King David in one of his Psalms: “Sing unto the Lord a new song.” God has become for our age the great Unknown One. Things are blamed on the weather, on politics, on circumstances, on lack of vitamins, on inheritance; but they are rarely attributed to their one source. “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” wants to be a canticle of love and gratitude to the Heavenly Father in His Divine Providence.

  Cor Unum

  Stowe, Vermont

  Pentecost Sunday, 1949

  Part One

  I Just Loaned

  SOMEBODY tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up from the workbooks of my fifth graders, which I was just correcting, into the lined, old face of a little lay sister, every wrinkle radiating kindliness.

  “Reverend Mother Abbess expects you in her private parlor,” she whispered.

  Before I could close my mouth, which had opened in astonishment, the door shut behind the small figure. Lay sisters were not supposed to converse with candidates for the novitiate.

  I could hardly believe my ears. We candidates saw Reverend Mother Abbess only from afar in choir. We were the lowest of the low, living on the outskirts of the novitiate, wearing our black mantillas, waiting with eager anticipation for our reception into the sacred walls of the novitiate. I had just finished the State Teachers’ College for Progressive Education in Vienna and had to get my Master of Education degree before the heavy doors of the enclosure would shut behind me—forever.

  It was unheard of that Reverend Mother Abbess should call for a candidate. What might this mean? Her private parlor was far at the other end of the old Abbey, and I chose the longest detour to go there, in order to gain time for examining my conscience. I was the black sheep of the community; there was no doubt about that. I never meant anything bad, but my upbringing had been more that of a wild boy than that of a young lady. Time and again I had been warned by the Mistress of Novices that I could not race over the staircase like that, taking two and three steps at a time; that I definitely could not slide down the banister; that whistling, even the whistling of sacred tunes, had never been heard in these venerable rooms before; that jumping over the chimneys on the flat roof of the school wing was not fitting for an aspirant to the novitiate of the holy Order of Saint Benedict. I agreed wholeheartedly each time, but the trouble was, there were so many new trespasses occurring every day.

  What was the matter now, I thought, slowly winding my way down the two flights of old, worn steps, through the ancient cobblestoned kitchen yard, where the huge Crucifix greets one from the wall, and where the statue of Saint Erentrudis, founder of our dear old Abbey, rises above a fountain. Slowly I entered the cloister walk on the other side of the kitchen court.

  Troubled as I was, searching through my laden conscience, I still felt again the magic of the supernatural beauty of this most beautiful place on earth. Twelve hundred years had worked and helped to make Nonnberg, the first Abbey of Benedictine Nuns north of the Alps, a place of unearthly beauty. For a moment I had to pause and glance again over the gray, eighth-century cloister wall before I ascended the spiral stairway leading to the quarters of Reverend Mother Abbess.

  Shyly I knocked on the heavy oaken door, which was so thick that I could hear only faintly the “Ave,” Benedictine equivalent of the American, “Hello, come in.”

  It was the first time I had been in this part of the Abbey. The massive door opened into a big room with an arched ceiling; the one column in the middle had beautifully simple lines. Almost all the rooms in this wonderful Abbey were arched, the ceilings carried by columns; the windows were made of stained glass, even in the school wing. Near this window there was a large desk, from which rose a delicate, small figure, wearing a golden cross on a golden chain around her neck.

  “Maria dear, how are you, darling?”


  Oh this kind, kind voice! Not only stones, but big rocks fell from my heart when I heard that tone. How could I ever have worried? No, Reverend Mother was not like that—making a fuss about little things like whistling—and so a faint hope rose in my heart that she might perhaps talk to me now about the definite date of my reception.

  “Sit down, my child. No, right here near me.”

  After a minute’s pause she took both my hands in hers, looked inquiringly into my eyes, and said: “Tell me, Maria, which is the most important lesson our old Nonnberg has taught you?”

  Without a moment’s hesitation I answered, looking fully into the beautiful, dark eyes: “The only important thing on earth for us is to find out what is the Will of God and to do it.”

  “Even if it is not pleasant, or if it is hard, perhaps very hard?” The hands tightened on mine.

  Well now, she means leaving the world and giving up everything and all that, I thought to myself.

  “Yes, Reverend Mother, even then, and wholeheartedly, too.”

  Releasing my hands, Reverend Mother sat back in her chair.

  “All right then, Maria, it seems to be the Will of God that you leave us—for a while only,” she continued hastily when she saw my speechless horror.

  “L-l-leave Nonnberg,” I stuttered, and tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. The motherly woman was very near now, her arms around my shoulders, which were shaking with sobs.

  “Your headaches, you know, growing worse from week to week. The doctor feels that you have made too quick a change from mountain climbing to our cloistered life, and he suggests we send you away, for less than one short year, to some place where you can have normal exercise. Then it will all settle down, and next June you will come back, never to leave again.”

  Next June—my goodness, now it was only October!

  “It just so happened that a certain Baron von Trapp, retired Captain in the Austrian Navy, called on us today. He needs a teacher for his little daughter, who is of delicate health. You will go to his house this afternoon. And now kneel down; I want to give you my blessing.”

  I knelt down. The fine, delicately small hand made the sign of the Cross on my forehead. I kissed the ring and, as through a veil, I had a last glance into those unforgettable eyes, which seemed to know all about woe and sorrow, grief and suffering, but also victory and peace. I couldn’t utter a single word without bursting out loudly, but no words were needed, anyway.

  “Now then, go and do it, and wholeheartedly, too.”

  That was all.

  A few hours later I was seated on one of the green benches under the old chestnut trees at the Residenzplatz in Salzburg, waiting for the bus that was to take me to Aigen. One hand was clasped tightly around a piece of paper which said: “Captain Georg von Trapp, Villa Trapp, Aigen bei Salzburg” the other one held the handle of an old-fashioned leather satchel, which stood next to me on the bench, and which contained all my earthly possessions, mostly books. Under my arm was pressed the neck of an almost inseparable part of myself, my guitar. Years back, when I had started to work my way through college, I had bought it with my first self-earned money. It had accompanied me everywhere, on all the many trips and hikes through the Alps, up to the holy hill of Nonnberg. And now it went with me into exile.

  I was still bewildered, everything had happened so fast. I tried to review the last few hours, which had passed like a bad dream. After I had come back from Reverend Mother Abbess, my Mistress of Novices, Frau Rafaela, was already waiting for me in the candidates’ room, her arms full of clothing. When I had entered the convent a year before, I had exchanged my Austrian costume for the black dress and black mantilla of the candidates. My own clothes had been given away during the year to some needy persons after the Chapter meeting had decided I was to be admitted for reception. I could see that Frau Rafaela felt quite badly about the whole situation, too. She looked a little helplessly at the clothes on her arm, which had belonged to another novice who was a little shorter and wider than I. She chose one dress and, obediently, I put on an old-fashioned blue serge gown with funny latticework around the neck and sleeves. I put it on three times, because I could not make out which was front and which was back. Next came a leather hat, which looked exactly like a fireman’s helmet. It went right down to my brow, and I had to give it a little push when I wanted to see Frau Rafaela, who just said:

  “Now let me look at you.”

  As she stepped back a little, her eyes wandered from the hat down to the blue dress, on to the black stockings and heavy, black shoes. She nodded approvingly.

  “Very nice—very elegant.”

  Frau Rafaela was a saintly, elderly nun; the days of her farewell to the world dated back at least thirty years. I feel pretty sure now that I must have reminded her vividly of the young ladies of her own day.

  Then came a few instructions: On my day off I should always come back to the convent; I should remember the doctor’s advice to get enough sleep and exercise—but moderate, moderate; and finally, I should always bear in mind that my home and place was Nonnberg, and although I had to deal with the people of the world, I was just loaned to them.

  My heart ached when I had to bid farewell to the other three young candidates with whom I had shared the big, lofty room overlooking the green valley of the Salzach River. While Frau Rafaela bent over a little scrap of paper to write down the name of the place where I was to go, I took in with one last glance the picture of the large, oblong room with the six windows, the white-curtained cells along the wall, where we slept, the large table in the middle, and the huge, old-fashioned Kachelofen, the European tile stove which can radiate so much comfort and warmth in the severe Salzburg winters. How happy I had been there, and how long it would be until I should be back; but “Thy Will Be Done” was painted in faded, old-fashioned letters over the door on the whitewashed wall.

  A few more words, a final blessing, and for the last time my fingers dipped into the pewter holy water font. For a few moments I knelt at the choir grate, looking down to the main altar, asking Our Lord for strength. Then the old oaken door opened with a cranky squeak, unwilling, it seemed to me, to let the youngest child of Nonnberg go back into a world from which it would much rather have protected her.

  When I stepped from the cool archway into the centuries-old graveyard, my eyes, half blinded by tears and the bright sunshine, fell upon the inscription of a weathered gravestone, crooked with age: “God’s Will Hath No Why.”

  Under the arched doorway which was cut into the big outer wall of the cemetery I turned for a last loving look at the cherished walls and whispered: “I will be back—soon.”

  Then I was on the road that led down the hill on which Saint Erentrudis had built her castle of God in the eighth century. And a castle it was, built on solid rock, with its huge walls nine feet thick at the foundation. Where this foundation seemed to grow out of the rock a little terrace had been cut into the stone. Here I paused for a few moments, looking over the railing into the deep valley from which the rock rose steeply for almost three hundred feet, down where the houses of Salzburg nestled to the green mountain side. I was still higher than the steeples of the churches. I looked over the quaint old Grabendächer (“ditch roofs,” a roof construction frequently used on old houses in Salzburg), followed with my eyes the silver ribbon of the Salzach River, way over to the mountains from which it came. Over there must be Aigen, where I was to go.

  Where I was to go—for heaven’s sake—I had to reach the bus; and down I went the hundred and forty-four steps, two at a time, forgetting already the very recent admonitions. On the Residenzplatz I learned that the next bus was due in half an hour and so, a little breathless from running, there I was now sitting on one of the green benches.

  I felt quite uprooted and a little empty in my head. What was to come next? My eyes fell on the crumpled piece of paper in my hand, and I read again, “Captain von Trapp.” That made me wonder. I had never been at the seashor
e, nor had I ever met a sea captain in my life. I knew them only from story books and pictures.

  “I guess he is an elderly man with a bushy, gray beard, red cheeks, and sharp, blue eyes,” I thought to myself. “Most probably he chews tobacco and spits quite a bit. If he is a captain, he must have been around the world many times. Surely all his walls must be plastered with trophies, lion and tiger hides, weapons, pottery, and whatnot. It will be awfully interesting.”

  At the same time I felt a certain awe creeping into my heart, because surely he would shout a lot, as sea captains are supposed to be very gruff. At this very moment I remembered the story of the mutiny on the Bounty, a silent picture which I had seen just before I entered the convent, and which had haunted my nights for quite some time. There was one scene of sea wolves who not only boxed the ears of their sailors, but beat them half to death and imprisoned them with bread and water—oh, shouldn’t I rather—