How The Sound of Music Came to Be: A Timeline

1880: Georg von Trapp is born in Dalmatia (present-day Croatia), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He grows up to become a Captain in the Austrian Navy.

1905: Maria Augusta Kutschera is born in Vienna, Austria. Two years later her mother dies, and she is raised by her father’s cousin. As a young woman she decides to become a nun.

1911: Georg von Trapp marries his first wife, Agathe Whitehead. They go on to have seven children. Agathe dies from scarlet fever in 1922.

1926. Maria joins the family as a tutor (not a governess, as later portrayed) at their villa near Salzburg, Vienna. She never returns to the convent. 

1927: Georg and Maria von Trapp marry. 

1929: Georg and Maria have their first child, followed by two more, in 1931 and 1939. (That’s right—there were ultimately 10 von Trapp children, not 7.) 

1936: The family begins touring Europe, performing concerts for pay, as most of their inherited fortune has been wiped out.  

1938: The Germans annex Austria, and Georg is offered a commission in the German Navy, which he declines, as he is fiercely opposed to the Nazis.  

1938: The family flees (by train, not over a mountain) to Italy, the Netherlands, and England, before eventually emigrating to the U.S. and, in 1942, settling in Stowe, Vermont.

1947: Georg von Trapp passes away.

1949: Maria von Trapp publishes The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, a memoir. 

1956: A German movie based on the book, The Trapp Family, is released, followed by a 1958 sequel, The Trapp Family in America.  

1956: The Trapp Family Singers take their final tour. 

1959: The story’s musical adaptation—with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse—opens on Broadway. The Sound of Music, starring Mary Martin as Maria, goes on to win five Tony Awards.  

1960: Hammerstein passes away, making The Sound of Music his final of many successful collaborations with Rodgers—including The King and I, South Pacific, Oklahoma!, and Carousel.  

1963: The Broadway musical closes after 1,443 performances.  

1965: The film version of The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews, is released. It wins five Academy Awards and, for five years, holds the crown as the highest-grossing film of all time.

1987: Maria von Trapp passes away.