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IMACe BOOK A DOUBLEDAY $3.95 THE STORY OF THE TRAPP FAMILY SINGERS THE STORY WHICH INSPIRED THE SOUND OF MUSIC By MARIA AUGUSTA TRAPP COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED IMAGE Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/storyoftrappfamiOOtrap Readers and Reviewers All Sing the Praises of This Delightful Book! "Told with such wonderful skill that it compels interest from the first page until the last. It is an absorbing and fascinating human document . . . especially timely in its significance for our days when family life is becoming a thing to be remem- bered rather than to be lived. It presents a real example of a family in which Christian traditions and Christian faith il- lumine and enliven every event has everything the reader . . . can require in a good story—entertainment, inspiration and enough to think about after the book has been laid aside." Brooklyn Tablet "This book not only moved me sometimes to tears—it also made me laugh a lot. . . . If a book can make one weep and laugh—what more can one ask?" Lotte Lehmann ''Thoroughly entertaining personal history of a woman worth meeting and worth knowing. Maria and her book will make a friend of you in the first half-dozen paragraphs, and keep you as a friend to the final page. You're missing something if you don't get hold of it right away." San Francisco Chronicle "Engrossing, humorous, poignant." Boston Traveler A mother: "It makes me tackle my homemaker's job with re- newed vigor and love." "Like no other book we have read ... an altogether charming picture of family life." Worcester Sunday Telegram A businesswoman: "Delightful story, charmingly written, and has a lot of humor and good common sense." J'he Story of the J^rapp yamily Singers Maria Augusta Trapp Image Books A Diyision of Doubleday 6 Company, Inc. Garden City, New York Image Books edition 1957 by special arrangement with B. Lippincott Company J. PRINTING HISTORY J. B. Lippincott Company edition published November, 1949 1st printing October, 1949 2nd printing January, 1950 3rd printing January, 1950 4th printing February, 1950 5th printing March, 1950 6th printing April, 1950 7th printing October, 1950 8th printing December, 1950 9th printing January, 1951 10th printing October, 1951 11th printing February, 1953 12th printing February, 1954 A selection of the Catholic Book Club, December, 1949 A selection of the Catholic Literary Foundation British edition published by Geoffrey Bles, November, 1952 German edition published by Wilhelm Frick Verlag, September, 1952 Image Books edition published February, 1957 1st printing January, 1957 Copyright, 1949, by Maria Augusta Trapp Printed in the United States of America COVER DESIGN BY REISIE LONETTE TYPOGRAPHY BY EDWARD GOREY CONTENTS Part One 6 " The Chapter Before the First To BE quite honest, this really is a foreword or an introduc- tion, but I'm so afraid that if I say so, you won't read it, as I never read forewords, and being so anxious that you do listen to what I want to tell you about the book before it starts, I ask you, foreword or no foreword, please read it just the same. About fifteen years ago my family and I were visiting in Tirol. Our hostess was a famous writer. ^'Isn't it funny," she said one day, "I never wrote a word in my life until after I was forty!" "That's quite incredible," we mused. The next day we all went into a picturesque valley. On the way we saw a chapel greeting us from one of the wooded slopes. *'Let's climb up there," said our hostess. **That's an interest- ing place." And so it was. The ancient building was of quaint architecture. Through the roof came a rope dangling down, which belonged to the bell in the little steeple. Playfully I took the rope to try out the sound of the bell. Looking at our friend, I said: "I wish I could become a vmter, too, after I'm fortyl" I meant that as a joke, and felt a little embarrassed when she didn't smile. She looked at me rather queerly and said: "Did you know the story?" I let the rope go and asked: *Which story?" "Well," she said, "the people say that once in a hundred years it happens if someone rings this bell while pronouncing a wish, that wish, whatever it may be, will come true, provided the person is unaware of the legend. The people of this valley call it the 'wishing bell.' "No—I didn't know tliis story," said I. This was fifteen years ago. 8 The Story of the Trapp Family Singers While working on this book and writing down the memo- ries of a family, it astonished, amazed, almost overwhelmed me to see how much love—genuine, real love—was stored up in one short lifetime: first, God's love for us His children, the leading, guiding, protecting love of a Father; and as every real love calls forth love in return, it couldn't be any different here. As we are singers, this story turned into a song, a canticle. "Cantate Domino canticum novum," sings King David in one of his Psalms: "Sing unto the Lord a new song." God has become for our age the great Unknown One. Things are blamed on the weather, on politics, on circumstances, on lack of vitamins, on inheritance; but they are rarely attributed to their one source. **The Story of the Trapp Family Singers" wants to be a canticle of love and gratitude to the Heavenly Father in His Divine Providence. Cor Unum Stowe, Vermont Pentecost Sunday, 1949