Stephanie Cowell

“Marrying Mozart is a charming novel, so much so that one would enjoy it even if the gentleman involved in these girls' lives were not one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music. It also has the virtue of offering a believable and appealing portrait of Mozart himself. A perfect harmony of fact, fiction.” The Los Angeles Times

“A grand little mini-opera, filled with twists of affection, musical politics, love, loss and chocolate.” The Seattle Times

MARRYING MOZART is the story of the four spirited Weber sisters of Vienna and the struggling composer who fell in love with all of them in different ways and eventually married one.

Mozart arrives in the city of Mannheim in 1777 with his mother; his child prodigy days are behind him and at the age of 21, he is trying to find work as a composer. He is invited one evening to a musicale at the home of the poor violinist Weber who has four daughters. Quickly, the susceptible Mozart falls in love with the exquisite second daughter, but when he has to leave for Paris to find work and then back to Salzburg, she goes her own way. In fact all four Weber girls go their own ways, falling in love with the wrong people, trying to break free of their manipulative mother who wants to marry them to royalty though they live in a tenement and hardly have money for hair powder. Three girls are gifted sopranos. The eldest adores her father and wants to open a music shop, the second one lands in trouble, betrays Mozart, and becomes a great success at some cost; the youngest, at fifteen an adolescent philosopher, wants only to do good works while the third daughter tries to hold the splintering family together. As they are rushing about, Mozart is climbing with difficulty in the world of music, trying to make a name and a living so that he can defy his father and marry. Each of the four sisters (Josepha, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie) would remain close to him for the whole of his brief life.

MARRYING MOZART was born from my years of singing Mozart's operas but the idea did not form until one lazy afternoon while I drank Viennese coffee under a picture of the composer in New York City's Cafe Mozart. I began scribbling notes on a bit of paper while eating pastry and listening to a Mozart horn concerto. Within days the book formed into the story of four lovely sisters and one lonely young man who nobody much thought would be a genius. The novel took less than nine months to write with revisions and was published by Viking in 2004. It has been translated into seven languages and I have given readings from it with string quartets, sopranos and once a chamber orchestra in many places throughout America. In Salzburg it was sold down the street from Mozart's house in a bookshop where the composer himself bought books more than two hundred years ago.

MARRYING MOZART is published in the following foreign editions:

German: "Welche Wonne dich zu finden" from Droemer Knaur
French: "Épouser Mozart" Jean-Claude Lattes
Italian: "Il matrimonio delle sorelle Weber" Neri Pozzi
Portuguese: Editorial Presenca
Hungarian: Geopen Publishers
Serbian: Globosimo Aleksandrija
Polish: Rebis