Women in Music: Nannette Streicher

Happy 2020, the year of endless Beethoven festivals to celebrate his 250th birthday. Of course I shouldn’t complain, because it can be hard to find live performances of his works in other years—just kidding. Everyone plays Beethoven always. Don’t get me wrong, Beethoven wrote some great music. But I’m bored with all the talk of him. Let’s talk about Nannette Streicher instead!

Nannette the Boss

Our newest friend Nannette was born in 1769 in Augsburg to Johann Andreas Stein, a famous builder of pianos and organs. She grew up surrounded by music and, naturally, acquired a modicum of skill at it. Don’t worry though, this isn’t a YA fantasy in which everyone turns out to secretly be the most virtuoso person in the world. In 1777, she and her father travelled to Vienna to play for Mozart. His reaction, in classic Mozart style, was essentially a thumbs sideways. She also sang, until health reasons forced her to stop.

What she was great at was building pianos. After learning the trade from her father, she took over his business after his death in 1792. Nannette (at age 23, math nerds) and her brother Matthäus Andreas (then only 15) built pianos under the label “Frère et Soeur Stein” and, in keeping with their hipster decision to use French, successfully petitioned Emperor Franz I to relocate their business to hotbed-of-culture Vienna in September 1793.

In Vienna

Nannette married pianist Johann Andreas Streicher in December of 1793, then decamped with him and her two brothers to Vienna. (Friedrich Stein, at the tender age of 9, was too young to make it “Frères et Soeur”.) There they built up an excellent business reputation, and sold their pianos to the stars of the day. Among these satisfied customers was good old Beethoven (it’s like we can’t get away from him).

Then, in 1802, Nannette went rogue from the family business and started her own: “Nannette Streicher nee Stein”. These pianos were just as popular as the jointly produced instruments. George IV of England even commissioned one for the Royal Lodge, and her network of distributers included Breitkopf & Härtel.

Society Lady

Frau Streicher (or, as Beethoven [again] once addressed her in a letter, Countess Streicher) had more impact on Viennese musical society than just physical, though. (In my head, that is a pun on the impact of the piano hammers on piano strings, please enjoy it.) She and her husband also hosted popular salons for new and rising talent, which grew in size and fame when they added a 300-seat concert hall to their workshop in 1812, as one does. This hall’s inaugural concert so inspired some of the well-heeled audience members that they then formed the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The Streichers’ events attracted everyone from Goethe to Archduke Rudolph (the Beethoven [gah] one, not the one of Mayerling fame).

According to contemporary accounts, Nannette was a very affable and intelligent lady with a cheerful demeanor. Hermann Rollett wrote that she had a “lively, almost manly way of being and speaking.” In other words, she was living her best life as she saw fit. When she played the piano—for friends, as she no longer performed publically—they frequently commented on her sensitive and passionate playing. She also published two marches for piano in 1817.

Beethoven

Alright, yes, Beethoven is a part of Nannette’s story. There is a reason that he keeps cropping up. In spite of being only a year older than him, she is now often written of as his “surrogate mother”. Beethoven himself called her his “saving angel” in one of his many letters to her. So what great service did she render Beethoven? Was she his greatest patron? Did she save his life in a boating accident? Build him a custom piano? (Actually yes to that one.) Introduce him to the emperor?

No.

She helped him organize his household. His letters to her are a hilarious list of ills that his housemaids have committed and solicitations of advice on what to do about them, and his thanks to her for taking care of his washing. Dear Nannette, seeing Beethoven floundering about, probably shook her head gently and sighed (genteelly, of course), put on a smile, and helped the great composer with his worldly troubles.

Read more about Nannette here and here [PDF], because I left out a lot. And don’t judge her appearance too harshly, she is wearing the height of 1830’s fashion.

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