“Fashion wasn’t anything I wanted to be involved with,” she says. Yet the visually arresting images in “Wonderland,” her new book and collection, may be her strongest work.

Annie Leibovitz would like to make one thing clear upfront: She is not a fashion photographer. Given that her new book, “Wonderland” (Phaidon) is an anthology of fashion images shot mainly for Vogue, that’s curious.

But since the book, which arrives on Nov. 17, was built on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” perhaps it’s not so curious after all. As Alice confronts a cast of bewildering characters, she asks, “Who in the world am I?” Leibovitz, through fashion, poses the same question.

“I’ve grown doing work in this genre,” she said, “but it didn’t go along with my perception about myself and my work. I come from a place where I want things to really matter.”

“Ambivalence and irony are in the book,” she told me later.

As a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Leibovitz was inspired by the gritty, spontaneous photography of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Though she admired the fashion work of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, she had no desire to emulate them. “I thought fashion was silly,” she said.

We met at Studio 525 in Chelsea, where Hauser & Wirth was holding a five-day “Wonderland” pop-up show during Fashion Week in September. (The Southampton outpost of the gallery will be showing some of the same photographs from Nov. 6 through Dec. 23.)

Four gigantic screens projected a selection of Leibovitz’s work, from a pregnant Melania Trump in a gold lamé bikini, to Lady Gaga in Valentino haute couture. Leibovitz, who is 72, was moving gingerly on an aching hip that badly needs replacement surgery, pushing herself the way she did two months earlier when she shot puffers, parkas and jackets near an active volcano in Iceland.

She was dressed in her typical uniform of black pants and matching shirt. That morning she’d asked one of her teenage daughters if she should wear a 20-year-old tattered blue shirt but was promptly told, “Wear the black one.”

“I’m just a creature of comfort,” she said. “I don’t imagine anyone is looking at me.”

Leibovitz is one of the top portrait photographers in the world, but I’ve long been a fan of her fashion photography — in many ways, I think it’s her strongest work. For most people, “Wonderland” will be their first exposure to Leibovitz’s talent in this area.

The 341 images in the book bear the hallmarks of the Leibovitz style — masterly use of color, theatrical staging, artful interplay between artificial and natural light — but the best of them live up to the book’s title. They are enchanting, wrapped in a visual narrative that showcases her gifts as a powerful storyteller.

“When one typically does a fashion shoot the goal is to illustrate the clothes,” explained Phyllis Posnick, Vogue’s contributing editor and a frequent Leibovitz collaborator. “Annie ‘dresses’ the picture.”

When I complimented Leibovitz on the book, she replied, “I’ll believe that as far as I can throw you. I’ve been around the block too long.”

Fifty years, in fact, starting as a photojournalist at Rolling Stone. She captured some of the most defining moments of the era, from President Nixon’s ignoble exit from the White House, to a naked John Lennon curled up in a fetal position around Yoko Ono. At Vanity Fair, she became known for her quirky, conceptual portraits of boldface names, including a nude, seven-months pregnant Demi Moore.

Then, in 1993, the writer Susan Sontag, Leibovitz’s companion, encouraged her to deepen her work by documenting the conflict in Sarajevo. But in 1998, Vogue’s editor in chief, Anna Wintour, now Condé Nast’s global editorial director, approached her about working for the magazine. A year later, she was sent to Paris during the couture shows to shoot a photo essay with its fashion editor, Grace Coddington. The story featured Kate Moss and Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy.

Leibovitz, who had never attended a fashion show before, was “in awe,” she said of the artistry on display. “It was like performance art.” The experience gave her a greater appreciation of fashion. “But I could never be a bona fide fashion photographer,” she added, explaining that she thinks of herself as a “conceptual artist using photography.”

James Danziger, whose gallery represented Leibovitz for over a decade, was the first to show her fashion images in 2006. “It’s likely that historically these images, which are great fashion photographs, will best stand the test of time,” he said. “This is the way it is in photography. Most celebrities are forgotten but fashion lasts.”

Leibovitz continued at Vogue for the next 23 years, creating a substantial body of work but thought it was “too soft” for a book. Then Covid-19 happened, and she found herself quarantined with her three daughters at her 200-acre farm in Rhinebeck, N. Y. She’s owned the property for 25 years; it’s where her large family gathers — she’s one of six children — and where Sontag often used to write.

In lockdown with her daughters for nearly a year, she was grateful for the time together. Two of her most fanciful photo essays in the book, “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wizard of Oz,” were shot when her daughters were young — the oldest is now 20, the twins 16. “At the time I was reading fairy tales to them, so I was really living in that world,” she said.

The book also reawakened memories of Sontag. Leibovitz reminisced about the time Sontag read “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to her. “We had blankets under a tree,” she said. “It was such a beautiful day, and Susan had such a wonderful voice.”

Leibovitz shot the “Alice” pictures with Coddington in 2003, during Condé Nast’s free-spending days, when no one blinked an eye about sending a crew of 30 to 40 people to a chateau in northern France. “When you look at each picture and how much time it took, it’s really mind-boggling,” Coddington said.

The photographs were based on John Tenniel’s original illustrations in the Carroll book, including one of Alice squeezed inside the White Rabbit’s house. The set designer produced a replica, scaling it to the model Natalia Vodianova’s proportions. “The house was really incredible, with a little table and chairs,” Coddington said. “But Annie thought the windows were wrong, so the designer had to rebuild the whole thing.”

Fashion designers were cast as characters in the book, among them John Galliano as the Queen of Hearts, Tom Ford as the White Rabbit and Marc Jacobs as the Caterpillar. Karl Lagerfeld, who had wanted to be the White Rabbit, appeared as himself.

“I’ve always loved the way Annie brings a sense of narrative or storytelling to her fashion images,” Wintour wrote in an email. “She has an eye for character, conflict, romance, drama — you always feel something interesting is happening, or about to happen, or has just happened.”

In another fashion essay Leibovitz offers a hilarious parody of famous couture shoots of the past. In 1963, decades before Photoshop, Melvin Sokolsky took models out of the studio and shot them in a plexiglass bubble over different parts of Paris. Leibovitz placed Ben Stiller, reprising his “Zoolander” role, inside a duplicate bubble and dangled it from a crane over the Seine. Karen Mulligan, Leibovitz’s longtime studio manager, recalled having to reassure Stiller’s worried publicist that if he fell in the river, scuba divers were on standby.

A passionate researcher who loves history, Leibovitz is drawn to the narrative essays because they give her something to focus on besides clothes. In 2007, she traveled to Spain for a story based loosely on Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” Leibovitz had planned to shoot Penélope Cruz and Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, the great-grandson of the famous matador who’d inspired the character of the bullfighter in the Hemingway novel.

“The day before the shoot we heard that Cayetano had been gored by a bull and was heading to the hospital,” Mulligan recalled. “Then he suddenly showed up. He’d bandaged his own leg. We had to get him into those tight matador pants and blood kept seeping through.”

Like Ordóñez, Leibovitz seems to thrive on stress. “She tortures herself and everybody else,” Coddington said. “But she’s unique, and I admire the effort she puts into each picture.” Others who’ve worked with her say that her relentless perfectionism can lead to angry outbursts, but agree that she’s less reactive now.

“I was ruthless in getting the photograph,” Leibovitz admitted. “I haven’t had the best behavior.”

“Working with Annie isn’t for the faint of heart,” said Mary Howard, her set designer of 30 years, adding, “Annie never wants to have regrets.”

She also doesn’t want to lose control over an interview. We sat opposite each other at a long table that was piled with research material — for me and on me. The latter was encased in see-through plastic and, according to Leibovitz, contained an email in which an unnamed person had written “some not very nice things.” I was tempted to ask, “Like what?” and then found myself glancing over to see if I could read it.

Leibovitz kept her notes on her left. I kept my notes on my right. We were like two lawyers squaring off before a jury composed of giant digital celebrities surrounding us in the gallery. “I don’t know if I have the ability to talk about the work while it’s flashing like this,” she said.

But talk she did — right through many of my questions. It was the first interview she’d done about the book and admitted she was nervous.

Instead she discussed all the great work being done in photojournalism, and how she doesn’t understand why every form of photography isn’t embraced. “Isn’t it?” I asked. She replied, “Well, if something’s not real enough….” Earlier when I’d asked her to define the meaning of the word “wonderland,” she said, “It’s the opposite of real — unreal.” As in fashion.

“Maybe it’s the friction that makes the work so good,” I suggested.

She paused. “Possibly.”

Leibovitz was more comfortable discussing the book’s portraits. In 2007, she received the first of three commissions from the royal household to photograph Queen Elizabeth II, who was annoyed that she’d had to wear the full regalia of the ancient Order of the Garter.

Leibovitz thought the queen’s tiara didn’t look right with the ornate robe, and in a BBC documentary, she’s heard saying, “Could we try without the crown? It will look better, less dressy.” The queen says, “Less dressy? What do you think this is?” But she ultimately removed the tiara.

The pictures of Caitlyn Jenner for Vanity Fair represent fashion at its most transformative. The former Olympic decathlon gold medalist sported a number of outfits, including a gold corset and a black Zac Posen dress. “We weren’t trying to do journalism,” she explained. “It was a construction, an acquired look. We were there to support her as she became a woman.”

When working for Vogue Leibovitz has to remind herself that even portraits need a fashion element. “I try to downplay it as much as I can,” she explained. “I’m totally on the subject’s side. Sometimes Vogue will help with the clothing, but Michelle Obama was adamant about wearing her own. ”

When Leibovitz went to photograph Senator Tammy Duckworth, the senator had already selected her outfit: a St. John Knits suit that she’d purchased on eBay. “She explained that she got all her suits off eBay,” Leibovitz said. “I told her, “C’mon, let’s do it. I love that I get to have those little moments.”

Leibovitz had trouble finding the perfect ending for the book, finally selecting a photograph from Alexander McQueen’s last collection in 2010. The brilliant 40-year-old designer committed suicide that year on the first day of New York Fashion Week. “McQueen’s collection had been shipped to New York for Grace and me to shoot,” she recalled. “We took it into a large building in Brooklyn, and as we lifted the pieces out, we thought, Let’s leave them in the shipping boxes.”

Throughout the day, as Coddington and Leibovitz worked in silence, the light moved slowly across the room. Finally, it cast a beatific glow on the model standing in the wooden crate. Dressed in a coat tailored from lacquered gold feathers, she’s like a Renaissance archangel fearsome in her gilded glory.

Leibovitz, the un-fashion photographer, captured the perfect fashion moment.

Patricia Morrisroe is the author of “Mapplethorpe: A Biography” and “The Woman in the Moonlight,” a novel.

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The NextTribe Interview with Patricia Morrisroe, author of the novel The Woman in the Moonlight

We are so fortunate to welcome the acclaimed journalist Patricia Morrisroe (New York magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue) to one of our Thursday evening talks. Morrisroe wrote the definitive biography of Robert Mapplethorpe and Wide Awake, a memoir of insomnia.

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Beethoven and His Muse

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By the time Beethoven completed his Ninth Symphony, he hadn’t presented any major new work in a decade. He was by that point almost completely deaf, and many thought him crazy. The Viennese had become obsessed with Italian opera, and the 53-year-old composer feared that he had gone decisively out of fashion. Still, he wanted to show the world that Beethoven was still Beethoven.

He planned a concert that would take place at the prestigious Theater am Kärntnertor, but first had to get the approval of its temperamental manager, Louis Antoine Duport. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh warned Beethoven that Duport needed to be handled “very gently and courteously” or he could “make things hellacious.”

But it was Duport who ultimately made the event happen. Without his behind-the-scenes assistance, Beethoven’s final symphony might never have entered history on May 7, 1824.

Duport is usually identified merely as a former dancer, but he was the Nureyev of his day — famous for soaring leaps, dazzling footwork and the ability to pirouette 50 times on one leg. He specialized in the role of Zephyr, the west wind, for which he flew across the stage suspended on wires.

Born in Paris in 1781, he was the son of Joseph Robert Duport, a sculptor, and Maria Desseule. He had a sister, also a celebrated dancer, and at least two brothers. Little else is known about his early life, until his sudden appearance as a soloist at the Paris Opera on March 14, 1797.

But researching early ballet in America, the historian Lillian Moore discovered a child prodigy named Louis Duport who arrived in Philadelphia in 1790. This 9-year-old was accompanied by Pierre Landrin, who was dancing master at the Opera and may have taught music and dance to Marie Antoinette’s children.

Eventually based in Charleston, S.C., Louis gained prominence as one of the best young dancers in America. But after a performance in Savannah, Ga., on Aug. 19, 1796, he vanished without a trace. Was this the same Louis Antoine Duport who made his debut at the Paris Opera seven months later? It’s unclear, though they shared the same name, birth year and tour-de-force performance style.

What is certain is that, in 1804, Duport challenged Auguste Vestris, then the most famous dancer in Europe, to a contest of pirouettes and jetés-battus. (Vestris was 20 years Duport’s elder, and critics generously called it a draw.) Duport then began choreographing ballets with the intention of deposing the esteemed ballet master Pierre Gardel at the Opera.

Napoleon admired Duport but was increasingly outraged by his imperious behavior and salary demands. (Just 26, Duport had enticed the Opera’s management into paying him the same amount as the eminent Vestris.) In 1808, facing possible arrest, Duport, disguised as a woman, slipped out of Paris with a star of the Comédie Française, who was also Napoleon’s former mistress. He ended up in St. Petersburg, where he was so popular that Tolstoy would later mention him in “War and Peace.”

In 1812, he became the ballet master at the Kärntnertor in Vienna, choreographing the first dance adaptation of Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella.” After marrying his favorite ballerina, he went on to dance in Munich, London and Italy, performing in several ballets that allowed him to dance Zephyr, his signature role.

While at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Duport met its flamboyant manager, Domenico Barbaja, who was eager to bring his composer discovery Gioachino Rossini to Vienna. Taking over the Kärntnertor’s lease, Barbaja asked Duport to help run it, and when Rossini and his new bride, the diva Isabella Colbran, arrived in 1822, the city greeted them with enthusiasm bordering on idolatry.

By February 1824, Beethoven was ready with both the Ninth Symphony and his “Missa Solemnis.” He had long wanted to set Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to music and had incorporated its call for peace and unity into the symphony’s rousing choral finale. Given the sweeping popularity of Italian opera in Vienna, however, he toyed with the idea of presenting the work elsewhere. It was only after 30 friends and music lovers signed a petition of support that he began to look for a theater in the city.

The Theater am Kärntnertor was his first choice. One of two imperial theaters in Vienna, it was named for its location next to the Kärntnertor, or Carinthian Gate. (The Sacher Hotel now occupies the site.) In March, Beethoven’s brother Johann met with Duport, who was receptive but warned that the concert would need the permission of the Hofmusikgraf, the official in charge of music for the court theaters.

Beethoven’s secretary, Anton Schindler, also began secretly negotiating with the suburban Theater an der Wien. There was talk of the Burgtheater, which was the other imperial house, and the small Landständischer Saal as alternatives.

At the end of March, Schindler visited Duport to request the Great Hall at the Hofburg, or Imperial Palace, for a repeat Beethoven concert. (This hall was also under Barbaja’s administration.) Since plans hadn’t yet been finalized for the first concert, Duport may have been confused, but he agreed. It was an unsettling time for him. Barbaja was in Naples under house arrest, charged with attempting to burn down the Teatro di San Carlo to conceal accounting irregularities. He was eventually exonerated, but Duport, who had spent the previous year in Karlsbad taking the waters for an unknown ailment, was undoubtedly distracted.

For that planned repeat performance, Duport could only offer Beethoven the Hofburg’s smaller hall, prompting the composer to threaten to call off the concerts. As for the initial event, Schindler was still pushing for the Theater an der Wien, but Beethoven wanted Schuppanzigh as concertmaster. When the musicians balked at using outside workers, the An der Wien was out. The Kärntnertor was back in.

On April 24, Duport received a letter from Schindler with a lengthy list of demands. Beethoven wanted the date of the concert to be either May 3 or 4, and expected an immediate response; the situation was “urgent.” One can only imagine what must have gone through Duport’s mind; he had faced down Napoleon and now had to deal with the self-important Schindler. But Duport had deep respect for Beethoven and agreed to hold the first concert at the Kärntnertor and the second in the Hofburg’s Great Hall.

The Ninth required an 82-member orchestra and 80 singers, stunning for that time and more than twice what Duport could offer. As a result, Beethoven had to supplement with amateurs from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. And since Beethoven wanted the full forces onstage, Duport also had to approve the building of scaffolding and risers. The solo singers complained that the high notes were beyond their reach. Government censors interfered with the planned excerpts from the “Missa Solemnis.” Beethoven wanted to open the concert with his “Consecration of the House” Overture, but couldn’t find the score.

With the concert only a week away, Duport had yet to give Beethoven a formal contract; one of the composer’s friends suggested reporting the manager to the police commissioner. But on the evening of May 7, a large crowd began filing into the thousand-seat theater. Though Beethoven had hand-delivered invitations to members of the court, the imperial box was empty; the nobility had already left town for the summer. With only two full rehearsals and little time to study the score, the conductor, Michael Umlauf — with Beethoven at his side — made the sign of the cross before he gave the downbeat.

The concert was far from perfect and received mixed reviews, but the audience realized it had heard something unique. The response was at times rapturous; people applauded and shouted so loudly that a police agent called for quiet. The box office figures, though, were lower than expected. According to Schindler, when Beethoven saw them, he collapsed to the floor and accused Duport of swindling him.

True to his word, though, Duport went ahead with the second concert on May 23, insisting only that a Rossini aria be substituted for one of the “Missa Solemnis” sections. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and the hall was only half full. Duport lost money, but made sure that Beethoven received his full fee.

Duport eventually assumed the lease of the Kärntnertor, managing it until 1836, when he retired to Paris. He died in 1853 and was buried at Père Lachaise, where his tombstone is decorated with two female nudes, one appearing to sprout wings. Few who pass the monument probably realize that he was among the greatest dancers of his generation. Or that he played a major role in bringing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to the world. But whenever voices rise up to sing “Ode to Joy,” we have Zephyr to thank.

Patricia Morrisroe is the author of the novel “The Woman in the Moonlight.”

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In the past, we’ve asked some of our favorite artists to choose the five minutes or so they would play to make their friends fall in love classical music, the piano, opera, the cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, the violin, Baroque music and sopranos.

Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the stormy, tender music of Beethoven, who was born 250 years ago this month. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your choices in the comments.

Click here listen to the best of the stormy, tender work of the composer who changed music.

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Courtesy of Woman Around Town

What more captivating homage to Ludwig van Beethoven, especially in this year that marks the 250^th anniversary of his birth, than Patricia Morrisroe’s recently-published novel, The Woman in the Moonlight? Her tale of music and passion woven with finely-tuned historical details has, at its heart, the “Moonlight” Sonata and Beethoven’s love for his piano student to whom he dedicated the Sonata.

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With his nasty temper and squalid lifestyle, Beethoven was not an easy genius. Writing from the perspective of his lover, an author explores the appeal

I swore off difficult men after writing Robert Mapplethorpe’s biography. When my book was published 25 years ago, it elicited violent criticism from some of his friends. They felt I’d been too hard on the controversial photographer whose S&M pictures had created a firestorm in the early 90s. One bombarded me with profanities. Another threatened to kill me. My publisher wondered if I should hire an armed guard.

When an editor floated the idea of a novel about Beethoven, my first thought was, “Another difficult man.” My second thought: “At least all his friends are dead.”

Beethoven was petty, paranoid, and had a volcanic temper. His various lodgings were filthy and chaotic. Pieces of Verona salami and red herring vied for space with the scribbled sketches of great symphonies. He hired and fired a succession of housekeepers and cooks, claiming they were trying to steal or poison him. His colorful vocabulary consisted of such putdowns as “arch-swine,” “arch-villain,” and “troglodyte.” In one of his ugliest episodes, he engaged in a protracted court battle to wrest his nephew Karl away from his “immoral” sister-in-law. Karl, buckling under the pressure, attempted suicide.

It’s Complicated

My book is narrated by Countess Julie Guicciardi, the dedicatee of the “Moonlight” Sonata and the “dear, enchanting girl” he fell in love with in 1801. In a letter to a friend, he confessed that she loved him too and that for the first time his thoughts had turned to marriage. When I first began writing I worried that I wouldn’t be able to access Julie’s emotions. There were times when he was so impossible that I wanted to slap her across the face and shout, “Snap out of it!”

But then I began to fall in love with him. My heart broke for the small boy whose alcoholic father would pull him out of bed at night to practice piano. I agonized when he confronted the reality of his hearing loss, knowing that it would end his dazzling performing career. I cheered him on through various re-writes of Fidelio, because he had the audacity to create such a valiant female heroine. I laughed at his stupid puns, ignored his awkward attempts at dancing, and suffered through his numerous love affairs with women he could never have. They were usually married or, like Julie, above him in station. He claimed that all he wanted was a pretty face to sigh at his compositions, but I knew that wasn’t true.

Beethoven was petty, paranoid, and had a volcanic temper. But I began to fall in love with him.

He lived completely in his music, and, for a time, so did I. I admired the powerful Eroica and the Ninth Symphony, but the Beethoven I loved was to be found in quieter moments—the “Moonlight’s” plaintive first movement, the sublime Cavatina and Heiliger Dankgesang from his late string quartets.

The Cavatina was included on the Voyager Golden Record that was sent into outer space. So, aliens, if you’re reading this, listen to the Cavatina. If you have a heart, you will lose it.

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Nannette Streicher has been marginalized by history, but she was one of Europe’s finest keyboard manufacturers.

The Morgan Library & Museum owns part of an original sketch of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Piano Sonata. In the margin, the British publisher Vincent Novello writes that the document was given to him by “Mrs. Streiker” — “one of Beethoven’s oldest and most sincere friends.”

Nannette Streicher’s marginalized place in history is encapsulated in these scribbled lines. While she was indeed one of the closest friends of Beethoven, whose 250th birthday will be celebrated this December, she was also one of the finest piano builders in Europe. She owned her own company — employing her husband, Andreas Streicher, a pianist and teacher, to handle sales, bookkeeping and business correspondence. But many Beethoven scholars, perhaps finding it inconceivable that an 18th-century woman could build a piano, have turned Andreas into the manufacturer and Nannette into his shadowy helpmate.

Born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1769, Nannette was the sixth child of Johann Andreas Stein, a renowned manufacturer who developed an innovative piano action, improving on the mechanism that causes the hammers to strike the strings. It became known as the “Viennese action.”
At 8, Nannette played in front of Mozart, who criticized her posture and grimacing, but admitted that she had “genius.” Two years later, she had mastered many of her father’s building techniques, earning a reputation as a mechanical wunderkind.

After her father’s death in 1792, Nannette, then 23 and recently married, transported the pianos by raft and set up the business in Vienna. She partnered with her 16-year-old brother, Matthäus, changing the company’s name from J.A. Stein to Geschwister (siblings) Stein. It was a time of rapid developments in piano design. With concerts moving beyond aristocratic salons into larger halls, manufacturers were under pressure to produce heavier, more resonant instruments.

Beethoven, who had met Nannette in Augsburg years earlier, asked to borrow one of her pianos for a 1796 concert in Pressburg (now Bratislava). Writing to Andreas, Beethoven joked that it was too “good” for him, because he wanted the “freedom to create his own tone.” In a follow-up letter, he complained that the piano was still the least developed of all the instruments and that it sounded too much like a harp.

The elegant Stein piano, with its light touch and silvery tone, wasn’t ideally suited to Beethoven’s wild and forceful performance style. Taking an obvious swipe at the composer, Andreas wrote an essay describing an unnamed pianist as a brutal murderer at the keyboard, “bent on revenge.”
“Already the first chords will have been played with such violence that you wonder whether the player is deaf,” he wrote.

The comment was sadly prescient. Beethoven had just begun to notice a decline in his hearing, but had told no one. Though he would later need a louder instrument to compensate for his deafness, he was at this point mainly concerned with finding a piano that accommodated his dynamic extremes.

Nannette had already expanded her keyboards’ range from five octaves to six and a half, but she was slow to make other major alterations to her father’s original design. It was a stressful time. By 1802, she was the mother of two small children, and a 6-year-old son had recently died. She was also engaged in a dispute with her brother; the siblings eventually decided to dissolve the company and strike out separately.

Matthäus took an ad in a local newspaper positioning himself as the rightful heir to the Stein name. Nannette, unwilling to relinquish her own claim, established Streicher née Stein. She faced stiff competition from local builders, such as Anton Walter, as well as French and English manufacturers. Beethoven had purchased a French Erard in 1803, but he never stopped pressuring the Streichers to keep pace with his increasingly ambitious compositions.

By 1809, Nannette had considerably reworked her father’s design, turning out some of the largest, loudest and sturdiest pianos in Vienna. With a warehouse that produced 50 to 65 grand pianos a year, the Streicher firm was considered by many to be the finest in the city.

In 1812, the Streichers built a 300-seat concert hall adjacent to their showroom; it was decorated with busts of well-known pianists, including a life mask of Beethoven by the sculptor Franz Klein. Concerts there, which attracted the likes of Archduke Rudolf, Beethoven and Andreas’s piano students, became a hub of Vienna’s musical life.

Nannette added another job when, in August 1817, she agreed to manage Beethoven’s chaotic household. The composer was going through one of the many crises that marked his life. His hearing had worsened and he was in a creative slump. Having wrested control of his young nephew from his sister-in-law, he needed to give the appearance that he was providing the boy a good home.

Over the next 18 months, Beethoven wrote Nannette over 60 letters, ordering her to take care of his laundry, mend his socks and buy groceries, dusters and shoe polish. Increasingly paranoid, he was convinced that the “beastly” servants were out to rob and poison him, and that they were colluding with his “immoral” sister-in-law.

Beethoven’s relationships with women had always been fraught. He fell in love with pretty aristocrats who would never marry a commoner, or else he developed filial attachments to married women. Nannette, with her plain, angular face and hawklike eyes, wasn’t beautiful or highborn. But she was kind and generous; he called her his “good Samaritan.”

Beethoven’s relationship with her may have been his most successful with a woman. She wasn’t oblivious to his shortcomings, telling Vincent Novello, the publisher, that he was “avaricious and always mistrustful.” But by that point, the pianist and piano builder had known each other for over two decades; they had a connection, and were united in their devotion to the piano.

By assuming his household duties, Nannette cleared the way for Beethoven to write his most ambitious piano sonata, the colossal “Hammerklavier.” It was longer and more difficult than any of his other piano works, ending with a wild fugue. It ushered in some of his greatest works: the “Missa Solemnis,” “Diabelli” Variations and Ninth Symphony. Though he was now using an English Broadwood piano, he confided to Nannette in a letter that the post-1809 Streicher had always been his favorite.

Nannette outlived Beethoven by five years, dying in 1833, at 64. The Streicher firm continued to thrive under her son, Johann Baptiste, and then her grandson, Emil, who built pianos for Brahms. When Emil retired, in 1896, the company closed.

That would seem to have been the end of Nannette’s legacy. But her instruments live on, in museums around the world and in the strong, nimble hands of women she inspired. In the mid-1960s, as Margaret Hood, an artist and calligrapher, raised two young children, she started making harpsichords. After doing research in Europe, she began specializing in reproductions of Streicher pianos, producing them in her Platteville, Wis., workshop. She was building an 1816 Streicher six-and-a-half-octave grand when she died, in 2008.

Anne Acker, who trained as a concert pianist before studying mathematics and computer science, met Ms. Hood in Wisconsin. They bonded over their love of music, and Ms. Hood became Ms. Acker’s mentor. While caring for her children, Ms. Acker began building and repairing harpsichords and antique pianos, and after her friend’s death, she purchased the reproduction Streicher from Ms. Hood’s husband.

“I explained to him that a piano researched and begun by a woman, that is a replica of a piano designed and built by a woman, needs to be finished by a woman,” Ms. Acker said in an interview.

The piano — the work of three women over two centuries — had its debut at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2019. It was the year of Nannette’s 250th birthday.

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