Everyone knows the personbaby Mozart of Milos Forman’s 1984 biopic Amadeus. As embodied by a personic, braying Thomas Hulce, the precocious and hang-outed composer supposedly cherished nothing greater than scandalizing, amusing, or exasperating mates and enemies alike with juvenile pranks and scatological humor. Positively a fiction, eh? Gross exaggeration, no? Undoubtedly Mozart comported himself with extra dignity? These familiar with the composer’s biography know othersmart.
We now have, for examinationple, a ridiculously soiled letter that the 21-year-old “poop-loving musical genius” wrote to his 19-year-old cousin Marianne—a missive Letters of Notice prefaces with the disclaimer “if you happen to’re easily offended, please don’t learn any further” (oh, however how are you going to resist?). This piece of correspondence is however one in every of many “shockingly crude letters” Mozart wrote to his family. And if these slightly insane documents don’t convince you, we provide as further evidence of Mozart’s exuberantly babyish sensibility the above canon in B flat for six voices, Leck Mich Im Arsch, which translates toughly to “Kiss My Ass.”
Certainly one of three naughty canons composed in 1782 with lyrics like “Good evening, sleep tight, / And stick your ass to your mouth,” this piece was discovered in 1991 at Harvard University. Harvard librarian Michael Ochs, with a transparent penchant for beneathstatement, mentioned on the time: “These are minor works. They’re not the Requiem, or ‘Don Giovanni.’ They have been written for the amusement of Mozart and his mates, and so they present another facet of him.” The primary edition of Mozart’s complete works, published in 1804, bowdlerized the texts and eliminated the racy humor, changing the title of Leck Mich Im Arsch to “Allow us to be glad!”—probably, writes Lucas Reilly at Malestal Floss, “the complete oppowebsite of what this tune means.”
Reilly additionally factors out that Mozart’s “potty mouth” was probably not, as some have supposed, evidence of Tourette’s syndrome, however quite of an especially sturdy curlease in German humor, shared by Johannes Gutenberg, Martin Luther, and Mozart’s equally brilliant contemporary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The truth is, Leck Mich Im Arsch alludes to Goethe’s serious dramatic work, Götz Von Berlichingen. The chorus reads as follows in English:
Kiss my arse!
Goethe, Goethe!
Götz von Berlichingen! Second act;
You already know the scene too effectively!
Let’s sing out now summarily:
Right here is Mozart literary!
Hear two additional soiled choral items—Bona Nox and Difficile Lectu—at Malestal Floss. Some other scatological canons considered Mozart’s, similar to Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber (“Lick my ass proper effectively and clear”), have since been attributed to amateur composer and physician Wenzel Trnka, but it seems that the three featured at Malestal Floss are genuine.
Notice: An earlier version of this put up appeared on our website in 2014.
Related Content:
Hear the Items Mozart Composed When He Was Solely 5 Years Outdated
Watch the First Performance of a Mozart Composition That Had Been Misplaced for Centuries
See Mozart Performed on Mozart’s Personal Fortepiano, the Instrument That Most Authentically Captures the Sound of His Music
Hear the Sounds of the Actual Instruments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Handel Originally Composed Their Music
Josh Jones is a author and musician based mostly in Durham, NC.
