Vienna has changed much since Marianna's day. The walls that once encircled the capital (fig. 1.1) are down, their ring now traced by wide boulevards booming with traffic and trams. Smooth, swift subways link the inner city with bustling suburbs where cattle once grazed. The old palaces are now museums, libraries, government offices, convention centers, or even rental properties. Here and there a touch of glassy modernism sprouts among the bewigged eighteenthcentury and plump nineteenth-century facades. Glittery boutiques lure tourists where modest shops once fed the daily needs of a living city.

The new city is overlaid almost transparently upon the old. Stephansdom, the great cathedral, and the other churches Marianna knew, still chime the hours and call to worship. The splendid palaces, no longer royal and noble residences, drape an ancient pride over their new democratic or commercial functions as museums and offices. Still, for the informed music historian, every street in inner Vienna is a historical stage, with many of the same houses as backdrop. Most of the streets still follow their old courses, paths that knew the tread of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler—all of them foreigners—and of Franz Schubert, the only born Wiener in that Pantheon. It is the scene, too, of Marianna's story. But unlike the suburban Schubert, she was born within the city walls.

To a reader who wants to get on with our composer's life, a review of all the members of Marianna's family and their backgrounds may seem an unnecessary detour, but it is not. Several of the Martines siblings play significant parts in the story. Some of them turn out to be surprisingly interesting people. Mustering them here is like listing the dramatis personae of a play. It is only with that cast and against that Viennese backdrop that we can form any impression of the life and personality of our shadowy composer.

Parents

In 1773, when she was twenty-nine years old, Marianna prepared an autobiographical sketch at the request of the Bolognese composer and musical scholar

Padre Giovanni Battista Martini, who occupies an important place in this tale. A crucial source of information about her early life, this statement offers us a tantalizing glimpse at her personality and her aesthetic values.