Trapp Family


The Trapp Family were an Austrian singing family of the former naval commander Georg von Trapp. The family achieved fame in their original singing career in their native Austria during the interwar period. They also performed in the United States before emigrating there permanently to escape the deteriorating situation in Austria during World War II. In the United States, they became well known as the "Trapp Family Singers" until they ceased to perform as a unit in 1957. The family's story later served as the basis for a memoir, two German films, a Broadway musical The Sound of Music, and the highly successful 1965 film of the same name. The last surviving of the original seven Trapp children, Maria Franziska, died in 2014 at the age of 99.

Biography

History of the group

had seven children at the time of his first wife's Agathe's death and in 1927, he married Maria von Trapp, 25 years his junior, with whom he had three more children. Both incarnations of the household were musical and by 1935 the family was singing at the local church in Aigen where they made the acquaintance of a young priest, Dr. Franz Wasner, who encouraged their musical progress and taught them sacred music to add to the folk songs, madrigals and ballads they were already singing. While singing at their Salzburg home they were also heard by the German concert singer Lotte Lehmann who persuaded them to take part in the song competition at the 1936 Salzburg Festival, for which they won a prize; after this, accompanied by Dr Wasner, the family toured and performed in Vienna, Salzburg, and undertook a European tour that encompassed France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany and England.
In 1938, the family performed in the United States for the first time before returning to Austria when their visas expired; however, in the same year, Adolf Hitler annexed Austria, and the family made the decision to leave first for Italy and from there to the United States, where they applied for immigrant status in 1939. They arrived with very little money, having lost most of the family fortune earlier during a 1935 banking collapse in Austria. Once in the United States they earned money by performing and touring nationally and internationally, first as the "Trapp Family Choir" and then, the "Trapp Family Singers", a change suggested by their booking agent Frederick Christian Schang. After living for a short time in Merion, Pennsylvania, where their youngest child Johannes was born, the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, in 1941. They purchased a farm in 1942 and converted it into the Trapp Family Lodge, initially called "Cor Unum". After World War II, they founded the Trapp Family Austrian Relief fund, which sent food and clothing to people impoverished in Austria. By now based permanently in the United States, the family performed their unique mixture of liturgical music, madrigals, folk music and instrumentals to audiences in over 30 countries for the next 20 years. They made a series of 78-rpm records for RCA Victor in the 1950s, some of which were later issued on RCA Camden LPs. There were also a few later recordings released on LPs, including some stereo sessions. The family singing group disbanded in 1957.
, 27 September 1941.
Maria wrote an account of the singing family The Story of the Trapp Family Singers which was published in 1949 and was the inspiration for the 1956 West German film The Trapp Family, which in turn inspired by Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical The Sound of Music,
in addition to the highly successful 1965 film of the same name. The original seven Trapp children were: Rupert ; Agathe ; Maria Franziska ; Werner ; Hedwig ; Johanna ; and Martina. The later children were Rosmarie, Eleonore, and Johannes. The eldest daughter, Agathe, published her own account of life in the Trapp family in 2003, entitled Memories Before and After The Sound of Music, which was itself turned into a film entitled .

Later lives

Two members of the group died while the group was still active, Georg in 1947 at age 67, and Martina, who died in childbirth in 1952 at age 30. At the time of its cessation in 1957, the group included a number of non-family members because many of the original family wanted to pursue other endeavors, and only Maria's "iron will" had kept the group together for so long. After the group's demise, Maria, Johannes, Rosmarie, and Maria Franziska went to New Guinea to do missionary work; later Maria returned to run the Trapp Family Lodge for a number of years.
Of the remaining children in their later years, Rupert was already a medical doctor during World War II; Agathe spent many years as a kindergarten teacher in Maryland; Maria Franziska spent thirty years as a missionary in New Guinea; Werner became a farmer; Hedwig a music teacher; Johanna married and returned to Austria; Rosmarie and Eleonore both settled in Vermont; and Johannes followed his mother by managing the Trapp Family Lodge as a tourist resort. Maria died in 1987 and was buried with Georg and Martina in the family cemetery on the property. All of the original seven Trapp children have now died after 2014, while the later three children, Rosmarie, Eleonore and Johannes, are still alive as at June 2020.

Musical style and repertoire

The real-life Trapp family were a respected singing group throughout their career, however their style was a world away from the Broadway and Hollywood crowd-pleasing popular numbers as later included in the musical and film versions of their life. Many of their studio recordings survive and have been reproduced as contemporary CD compilations. As for their live performances, in his 2004 essay Family values: The Trapp Family Singers in North America, 1938-1956, Michael Saffle writes:
On the other hand, press releases subsequent to 1941 advertised "rollicking folk songs of many lands," "gay, lilting madrigals," and "lusty yodels and mountain calls" as well as "exquisite old motets and masses," and bragged of "record cross-country tour" and large numbers of engagements, which attested to their popular appeal and suggests that the religious content was only one of several contributing elements to this over their main period of popularity in America.

Legacy

Four grandchildren of Werner von Trapp formed a singing group "The von Trapps" and recorded five albums in a modern style between 2001 and 2016 before disbanding.

Partial Discography

78 recordings