Eligibility: Female-identifying biological girls* aged 8-18 years (must be a U.S. Citizen or have Legal Permanent Status).
Â
Funding: Provides 100% full annual tuition funding for three total slots (one each for the Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced tiers) allocated on a first-come, first-served basis upon standard program acceptance.
Â
Instructions:Â
2. Get accepted to the TSO YCP.
3. Complete The Nannerl Fund application.
4. Upon acceptance, we will call and pay your balance.
Â
Why This Exists: Equality Interrupted
Â
The American Maestra Fellowship/The Nannerl Fund was founded following a striking modern observation: Over the course of three standard YCP showcase concerts last year, not a single young woman was featured in the program. This absence mirrors a deep historical pattern.
Â
The fellowship is nicknamed after Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart. Everyone knows about Wolfgang Mozart, but he had an equally talented older sister, affectionately called Nannerl, who was by some considered to be a superior musical talent. When Wolfgang came of age (and famously long before this), he was able to fight for his place in the world as a composer while Nannerl, being marriageable, was forbidden to continue her prodigious career and never permitted to identify as composer up to then. Women were generally not legally permitted to formally study composition or work in official capacity as composers with rare exception; as a result, if Nannerl wrote any compositions (more than her memorable “theft” of a J.M. Haydn minuet), they were lost, uncredited, or absorbed into history.
Â
The modern absence of girls from the composers’ studio is therefore not an isolated event: It represents a continuum that was only briefly interrupted by heavy pushes for women’s equality in the last fifty or so years. As a woman who has experienced being legally denied opportunities in our country simply for being female and who later benefited from the push for equality, I observe that our present social backsliding persists as much from intention as for a, perhaps, unintentional lack of preventative education about why female equality movements happen, why they are important, and what equality should naturally change in us all.
Â
The Nannerl Fund turns my observation at a concert into immediate, local action. The issue is not about defending sex-segregated spaces as a permanent ideal but defending targeted remedial protections for the female sex to dismantle a historical caste system that excludes women from resource competition and cultural production. By fully funding these slots, we ensure that young female voices are actively and equally instructed, encouraged, and seated at the composers’ table today, ensuring they are never again dismissed, phased out, and silenced like Nannerl.
Â
Questions/Instructor Referrals: Contact nannerlfund@gmail.com
Â
Â
*The Nannerl Fund advocates for a return to equal rights frameworks that view gendered femininity and masculinity as social constructs designed to establish caste systems that keep the majority of human population (female biology) out of competition by limiting or restricting their access to resources (such as equal food allotment, equal education, and gainful work for equal pay). By challenging these restrictive definitions, we aim to ensure that all young artists are free to create, compose, and express themselves fully without the constraints of violent and personally limiting gender expectations.
