The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

The story of a remarkable singing family and of its devotion to an ideal. This is the adventurous story of one of the most distinguished musical families of the age, the Trapp Family Singers. It is told by one who knows it best, the head of the family, Baroness Maria Augusta von Trapp herself – now Mrs. Trapp, for she and her family have become American citizens. The story begins in Austria after the First World War, in which the baron distinguished himself as a submarine commander. A widower, he had five daughters, two sons, and no one to look after them; and from a neighboring convent he obtained as governess, a young student – Maria. The Baron was expected to marry a certain Princess Yvonne, but so impressed was he with Maria that he proposed to her instead, and they were married. In the dark days of the failure of the Austrian banks which inaugeated the world wide depression, the Baron lost most of his fortune. At that time they met Father Wasner, who has been their musical director ever since, and they started doing professionally, and with amazing success, what they had done previously for their own amusement. The book has much in it of the complexities of life of a large family, the arduous discipline of musical training, the amusing incidents of travel en masse. But The Story of the Trapp Family Singers is more than a dramatic personal story. It is specifically an American one, since it tells of a transportation from the Old World to the New.