Family Choir

Twenty years ago a patch-mustached Austrian nobleman, Captain Georg von Trapp, commander of an Austrian submarine, came home from the War to his family castle near Salzburg. There he and his buxom wife, Frau Maria Augusta, settled down to the serious business of raising their family. The family flourished. By 1921 it included seven small von Trapps; and there were more to come.

Because the aristocratic von Trapps had a good deal of time on their hands, and because Father & Mother von Trapp were both good amateur musicians, the family developed the pleasant habit of making music together. On crisp Tirolese evenings they all gathered in the hall of their mountain castle to sing and play hoary Latin masses and lusty Tirolese folk songs.

The musical von Trapps always sang and played just for the fun of it, never thought of turning professional. When Soprano Lotte Lehmann heard them, she suggested concerts. When Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg heard them over the radio, he invited them to sing in Vienna. Soon the von Trapps were touring the whole map of Europe.

Last autumn they decided to go to the U. S. Traveling all together in a specially chartered bus, Papa von Trapp, Mama von Trapp and the seven young singing von Trapps barnstormed the Middle West and South, surprised many a gas-station attendant with their dirndl dresses and Lederhosen. Last week they wound up in Manhattan, singing a program of Renaissance music and Austrian folk songs at Town Hall. Manhattan critics found their singing the last word in freshness and refinement.

One of the world's most musical families, the von Trapp family is also one of the world's most self-sufficient. Their Austrian peasant clothes, which they never exchange for citified dress, are all homemade. They even weave some of the cloth themselves. Says ample, athletic Frau von Trapp: ''We are having the time of our lives in God's own country.''

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