Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart displayed scatological humour in his letters and multiple recreational compositions. This material has long been a puzzle for Mozart scholarship. Some scholars try to understand it in terms of its role in Mozart's family, his society and his times; others attempt to understand it as a result of an "impressive list" [2] of psychiatric conditions from which Mozart is claimed to have suffered.
A letter dated 5 November 1777 [3] to Mozart's cousin (and probable love-interest) Maria Anna Thekla Mozart is an example of Mozart's use of scatology. The German original [4] is in rhymed verse.
Well, I wish you good night, but first,
Shit in your bed and make it burst.
Sleep soundly, my love
Into your mouth your arse you'll shove. [5]
Mozart's canon "Leck mich im Arsch" K. 231 (K6 382c) includes the lyrics:
Leck mich im A[rsch] g'schwindi, g'schwindi!
This would be translated into English as "lick me in the arse, quickly, quickly!"
"Leck mich im Arsch" is a standard vulgarism in German, euphemistically called the Swabian salute (German : schwäbischer Gruß). Although contemporary German would rather say "Leck mich am Arsch." [6] The closest English counterpart is "Kiss my arse".
Musicologist David Schroeder writes:
The passage of time has created an almost unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and Mozart's time, forcing us to misread his scatological letters even more drastically than his other letters. Very simply, these letters embarrass us, and we have tried to suppress them, trivialize them, or explain them out of the epistolary canon with pathological excuses. [7]
For example, when Margaret Thatcher was apprised of Mozart's scatology during a visit to the theatre to see Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus , director Peter Hall relates:
She was not pleased. In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. It was inconceivable, she said, that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foul-mouthed. I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour ... "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister. "He couldn't have been like that". I offered (and sent) a copy of Mozart's letters to Number Ten the next day; I was even thanked by the appropriate Private Secretary. But it was useless: the Prime Minister said I was wrong, so wrong I was. [8]
Benjamin Simkin, an endocrinologist, [9] estimates that 39 of Mozart's letters include scatological passages. Almost all of these are directed to Mozart's own family, specifically his father Leopold, his mother Anna Maria, his sister Nannerl, and his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart. According to Simkin, Leopold, Anna Maria and Nannerl also included scatological humour in their own letters. [10] Thus, Anna Maria wrote to her husband (26 September 1777; original is in rhyme):
Addio, ben mio. Keep well, my love.
Into your mouth your arse you'll shove.
I wish you good night, my dear,
But first, shit in your bed and make it burst. [11]
Even the relatively straitlaced Leopold used a scatological expression in one letter. [12]
Several of Mozart's scatological letters were written to Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, his cousin (and probable love interest, according to the musicologist Maynard Solomon). [13] These are often called the "Bäsle letters", after the German word Bäsle, a diminutive form meaning "little cousin". In these letters, written after Mozart had spent a pleasant two weeks with his cousin in her native Augsburg, [14] the scatology is combined with word play and sexual references. American academic Robert Spaethling's rendered translation of part of a letter Mozart sent from Mannheim 5 November 1777:
Dearest cozz buzz!
I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted thy my uncle Garfuncle, my aunt Slant, and you too, are all well mell. We, too thank God, are in good fettle kettle ... You write further, indeed you let it all out, you expose yourself, you let yourself be heard, you give me notice, you declare yourself, you indicate to me, you bring me the news, you announce unto me, you state in broad daylight, you demand, you desire, you wish, you want, you like, you command that I, too, should could send you my Portrait. Eh bien, I shall mail fail it for sure. Oui, by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin... [15]
One of the letters Mozart wrote to his father while visiting Augsburg reports an encounter Mozart and his cousin had with a priest named Father Emilian:
[He was] an arrogant ass and a simple-minded little wit of his profession ... finally when he was a little drunk, which happened soon, he started on about music. He sang a canon, and said: I have never in my life heard anything more beautiful ... He started. I took the third voice, but I slipped in an entirely different text: 'P[ater] E: o du schwanz, leck mich im arsch' ["Father Emilian, oh you prick, lick me in the arse"]. Sotto voce , to my cousin. Then we laughed together for another half hour. [16]
Mozart's scatological music was most likely recreational and shared among a closed group of inebriated friends. All of it takes the form of canons (rounds), in which each voice enters with the same words and music following a delay after the previous voice. Musicologist David J. Buch writes:
It may seem strange that Mozart made fair copies, entered these items into his personal works catalogue (in which he tended to omit ephemeral works) and allowed them to be copied. The reason he favored these small and crude pieces in ways similar to his more serious and important works remains a mystery. [17]
Historian Lucy Coatman argues that Maria Anna Thekla and Mozart likely had a shared sense of humour, something which she believes has been "discounted throughout much of the historiography on this set of correspondence". [18] : 3 While scholars are not aware of her replies to her cousin, it can be assumed from what is known of their relationship and his continued correspondence that she was likely not offended by Mozart's vulgar references.
In 1798, Constanze sent her late husband's Bäsle letters to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel, who at the time were gathering material in hopes of preparing a Mozart biography. [19] In the accompanying letter she wrote "Although in dubious taste, the letters to his cousin are full of wit and deserve mentioning, although they cannot of course be published in their entirety." [20] K.A. Aterman suggests that this ambivalence is a result of the "change in the taste and the 'refinement' spreading to, and in, the rising middle class" in the early 19th century. [21]
Schroeder (1999) suggests that in the 18th century scatological humour was far more public and "mainstream". The German-language popular theatre of Mozart's time was influenced by the Italian commedia dell'arte and emphasized the stock character of Hanswurst, a coarse and robust character who would entertain his audience by pretending to eat large and unlikely objects (for instance, a whole calf), then defecating them. [22]
Schroeder suggests a political underlay to the scatology in popular theatre: its viewers lived under a system of hereditary aristocracy that excluded them from political participation. The vulgarity of scatological popular theatre was a counterpoint to the refined culture imposed from above. [23] One of Mozart's own letters describes aristocrats in scatological terms; he identified the aristocrats present at a concert in Augsburg (1777) as "the Duchess Smackarse, the Countess Pleasurepisser, the Princess Stinkmess, and the two Princes Potbelly von Pigdick". [24]
The folklorist and cultural anthropologist Alan Dundes suggested that interest in or tolerance for scatological matters is a specific trait of German national culture, one which is retained to this day: [25]
In German folklore, one finds an inordinate number of texts concerned with anality. Scheiße (shit), Dreck (dirt), Mist (manure), Arsch (ass), and other locutions are commonplace. Folksongs, folktales, proverbs, folk speech—all attest to the Germans' longstanding special interest in this area of human activity. I am not claiming that other peoples of the world do not express a healthy concern for this area, but rather that the Germans appear to be preoccupied with such themes. It is thus not so much a matter of difference as it is of degree. [26]
Dundes (1984) provides ample coverage of scatological humor in Mozart, but also cites scatological texts from Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, and others who helped shape German culture. Karhausen (1993) asserts that "scatology was common in Mitteleuropa [central Europe]", noting for instance that Mozart's Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn also wrote a scatological canon. [27]
Some of the phrases used by Mozart in his scatological material were not original with him but were part of the folklore and culture of his day: professor of German Mieder (2003) describes the Bäsle letters as involving "Mozart's intentional play with what is for the most part preformulated folk speech". [28] An example given by Robert Spaethling is the folkloric origin of a phrase seen above, "Gute Nacht, scheiß ins Bett dass' Kracht", claimed by Spaethling to be a "children's rhyme that is still current in south German language areas today". [29] Likewise, when Mozart sang to Aloysia Weber the words "Leck mich das Mensch im Arsch, das mich nicht will" ("Whoever doesn't want me can lick my arse") on the occasion of being romantically rejected by her, he was evidently singing an existing folk tune, not a song of his own invention. [30]
Coatman, who supports a social and philological explanation of Mozart's scatology, has suggested that any retrospective diagnoses reveal a problem with the perusal of letters as a genre. Following ethicist Osamu Muramoto, [31] she states that "retrospective diagnosis can be challenged not only on an epistemic level but also on the ontological and ethical ones". [18] : 5 She notes that by projecting modern sensibilities back onto the letters, scholars from a range of fields have "failed to understand the historical context, language usage of eighteenth-century Salzburg, and indeed, the personality of Mozart". [18] : 2
Benjamin Simkin's compilation lists scatological letters by Mozart to the following individuals: [32]
The canons were first published after Mozart's death with bowdlerized lyrics;[ citation needed ] for instance, "Leck mir den Arsch fein rein" ("Lick me in the arse nice and clean") became "Nichts labt mich mehr als Wein" ("Nothing refreshes me more than wine"). In some cases, only the first line of the original scatological lyrics is preserved. The following list is ordered by Köchel catalog number. Voices and conjectured dates are from Zaslaw & Cowdery (1990 :101–105); and links marked "score" lead to the online edition of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe .
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture".
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, violinist, and music theorist. He is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (1756).
The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went by many different names in his lifetime. This resulted partly from the church traditions of the day, and partly from Mozart being multilingual and freely adapting his name to other languages.
Maria Aloysia Antonia Weber Lange was a German soprano, remembered primarily for her association with the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was a composer during the Classical period.
Anna Maria Walburga Mozart was the mother of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Maria Anna Mozart.
Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, called Marianne, known as Bäsle, was the cousin and friend of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Societal and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome include legal advocacy and health insurance issues, awareness of notable individuals with Tourette syndrome, and treatment of TS in the media and popular culture.
"Leck mich im Arsch" is a canon in B-flat major composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, K. 231 (K. 382c), with lyrics in German. It was one of a set of at least six canons probably written in Vienna in 1782. Sung by six voices as a three-part round, it is thought to be a party piece for his friends.
Götz von Berlichingen is a successful 1773 drama by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, based on the memoirs of the historical adventurer-poet Gottfried or Götz von Berlichingen. It first appeared in English in 1799 as Goetz of Berlichingen of the Iron Hand in a rather free version by Walter Scott.
"Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber" is a canon for three voices in B-flat major, K. 233/382d/Anh.A 39. The music was long thought to have been composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart during 1782 in Vienna, but now thought to be the work of Wenzel Trnka. The lyrics appear to stem from Mozart.
"Difficile lectu", K. 559, is a canon composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The music, in F major, is set for three singers. The words are most likely written by Mozart himself.
"O du eselhafter Peierl", K. 559a, is a canon composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The music, originally in F major, is set for four singers. The words are probably by Mozart himself.
Bona nox! bist a rechta Ox, K. 561, is a canon in A major for four voices a cappella by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Mozart entered this work into his catalogue on 1788 as part of a set of ten canons.
LMIA refers to Labour Market Impact Assessment, as issued by Service Canada.
The term Swabian salute is a partly humorous, partly euphemistic reference to the expression Leck mich am Arsch which is a common profanity.
The Mozart family were the ancestors, relatives, and descendants of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The earliest documents mentioning the name "Mozart", then spelled "Motzhart" or "Motzhardt", are from the Bavarian part of Swabia.
Bölzlschiessen was a form of domestic recreation that involved shooting darts at decorated targets with an air gun. It is remembered as an activity of Leopold Mozart, his family, and their friends. The most famous participant was Leopold's son Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who began playing at the age of ten or earlier.
Wenzel Trnka von Krzowitz was an Austrian-Czech physician, professor, and amateur composer of the 18th century. He is thought to have composed the canons Bei der Hitz im Sommer eß ich and Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber, which were previously attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
"Leck mich im Arsch" is a song by Insane Clown Posse and Jack White. The lyrics are inspired by Leck mich im Arsch, a scatological canon by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, while the music is based on a canon called Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber. The latter has for two centuries been attributed to Mozart but evidence has shown that the music of the piece was composed by Wenzel Trnka and Mozart merely replaced the original lyrics with his own.
The following articles have advanced the theory that Mozart had Tourette syndrome:
The following articles direct criticism at the hypothesis:
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