she made pianos
Can you imagine your life’s work being credited to someone else?
Nannette Streicher was one of the finest piano builders in Europe. Over 250 years ago, she built them for her good friend Ludwig van Beethoven.
Nannette ran the business. She employed her husband to handle the sales and bookkeeping.
Why, you're surely wondering, haven't you heard of her?
Because Beethoven historians flipped the score. They turned Nannette's successes into her husband's.
She was an accomplished pianist herself who played for Mozart (!) as a child and learned how to manufacture pianos from her father. After his death, she took over the family business. She expanded his designs, taking keyboard octaves from 5 to 6.5, and she developed some of the largest and loudest pianos Austria had ever seen (thanks in part to Beethoven's decline in hearing.)
After her passing, her son and then her grandson continued to build her pianos but the company eventually closed. Barely anyone's written a peep about Nannette since then.
What we go through in the work we do – the struggles, the insights, the successes – often feels like the stuff that happens to no one but us. It’s why we end up leaning into loneliness…or depression…or burnout.
But none of it is new. We’re not the first to try and make our work work. Through the ages there have been plenty of mentors to guide us. We just need to pay attention to them.
And if you’re worried about what people will say about your work after you’re gone, look to Nannette for assurance and stop worrying. You have no control over how historians might rewrite your story.
That’s why, as stories fade with time, it's our responsibility to retell them.