They also performed in the United States before immigrating there permanently to escape the deteriorating situation in Austria leading up to World War II.

The last surviving of the original seven (born to Captain von Trapp and his wife Agathe Whitehead), Maria Franziska, died in 2014 at the age of 99.

After living for a short time in Philadelphia[3] and then Merion, Pennsylvania, where their youngest child Johannes was born, the family settled in Stowe, Vermont, in 1941.

They purchased a 660-acre (270 ha) farm in 1942 and converted it into the Trapp Family Lodge, initially called "Cor Unum" (Latin for One Heart).

[4] After World War II, they founded the Trapp Family Austrian Relief fund, which sent food and clothing to people impoverished in Austria.

However, their style was a world away from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-created, crowd-pleasing popular numbers as later included in the musical and film versions of their lives.

One of these—again, a Christmas program—identifies an arrangement of three short pieces (for "Antique Instruments") and a Sonata by Sammartini (presented by a "Quintet of Recorders") as the evening's principal instrumental selections; shorter vocal works included Praetorius's "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen," a Monteverdi madrigal, Holst's "Midwinter," and an arrangement of "The Holly and the Ivy."

Another program—unfortunately incomplete, but known to have been presented in 1943 at Boston's Jordan Hall—featured a song by John Dowland, transcriptions by Wasner of Tyrolean folk tunes, and a Trio for two recorders and viola da gamba composed by "Werner von Trapp."

[12]On the other hand, press releases subsequent to 1940 advertised "rollicking folk songs of many lands," "gay, lilting madrigals," and "lusty yodels and mountain calls" as well as "exquisite old motets and masses," and bragged of "record cross-country tour[s]" and large numbers of engagements,[12] which attested to their popular appeal and suggests that the religious content was only one of several contributing elements to this over their main period of popularity in America.

Our program now had five parts: first, sacred music, selections from the ancient masters from the sixteenth and seventh centuries; second, music played on the ancient instruments: recorders, viola da gamba, spinet; third, madrigals and ballads; fourth, Austrian folksongs and mountain calls; fifth, English and American folksongs.