Mozart and scatology

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart displayed scatological humour in his letters and a few recreational compositions. This material has long been a puzzle for Mozart scholarship. One view held by scholars deals with the scatology by seeking an understanding of the role of it in Mozart's family, his society and his times, while another view holds that such humor was the result of an "impressive list" of psychiatric conditions from which Mozart is claimed to have suffered.

A letter of 5 November 1777 to Mozart's cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart is an example of Mozart's use of scatology. The German original 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.

Mozart's canon "Leck mich im Arsch" K. 231 (K⁶ 382c) includes the lyrics:

This would be translated into English as "lick me in the arse/ass, quickly, quickly!".

"Leck mich im Arsch" is a standard vulgarism in German. The closest English counterpart is "Kiss my arse/ass".

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.

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.

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