Milos Forman's 1984 film Amadeus presents a striking picture of Mozart in Emanuel Schikaneder's theatrical circle at the Freihaus auf der Wieden, a depiction that has been accepted to a degree in some academic commentary.Footnote 1 The company appears as a lusty troupe of young actors, musicians and circus-like performers regularly indulging in bacchanals. Sexual freedom is the rule, and Mozart, already portrayed as given to lewd public speech, participates with gusto. One scene depicts a ‘vaudeville’ performance at the theatre, a kaleidoscopic pasticcio not of separate numbers, but of short, parodied phrases from Mozart's Italian and German operas. A giant stage horse from Don Giovanni defecates sausages, champagne and a live bird to the delight of the intoxicated and demonstrative audience. It may be that this strange production, an invocation of carnivalesque revelry, was loosely based on nineteenth-century accounts of the theatre as a kind of operatic house of ill repute and a site for lascivious behaviour.Footnote 2 In reality, Schikaneder never staged a semi-improvised low farce at the Wiednertheater like the blatantly crass one depicted in Amadeus.Footnote 3 This was simply unthinkable for a ‘Royal Imperial Privileged Theatre’, where all productions required scripts to be approved by the official censor. Robert Gutman's assertion that this theatre specialized in ‘outhouse humour’ is unsubstantiated and almost certainly false.Footnote 4
Only one musical genre in this period had the degree of vulgarity depicted in Forman's scene: the bawdy canon. In this genre, a brief vocal piece often notated in one musical line, humour resides chiefly in the shock of crude language and scabrous topics rather than in the wit characteristic of English songs such as the catch.Footnote 5 Modern scholars know the bawdy canon mainly through a handful of examples by Mozart, listed in Table 1, but have yet to identify the social context for them.Footnote 6 Their coarse language caused embarrassment among nineteenth-century editors and biographers, who consequently bowdlerized the texts.Footnote 7 The restoration of the original texts in the Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke allowed a reassessment of the canons, usually as the musical correlate to scatological humour in Mozart's letters.Footnote 8 In recent decades, a number of writers have attempted to gain insight into the composer's personality, or to discover a medical abnormality (such as Tourette's syndrome), by examining the anal and fecal parlance of his canons and correspondence.Footnote 9 Yet, as Alan Dundes has demonstrated, such expressions were not uncommon at the time in informal speech and writing.Footnote 10 Moreover, there are even raunchier canons by Johann Baptist Henneberg and Friedrich Sebastian Mayer, two musicians with connections to Mozart, Schikaneder and the Theater auf der Wieden. These previously unknown works contextualize the scatalogical humour in Mozart's canons and letters and help us assess the putative vulgarity of contemporary Viennese theatre. In this article I discuss Henneberg's and Mayer's canons alongside similar pieces, examine attitudes toward ribald speech and song in Viennese popular theatre and evaluate views of Mozart as a debauchee. The evidence reveals that scatological expressions on the stage were relatively uncommon and that the evidence for Mozart as a profligate is scanty and ultimately unconvincing.
Mozart's scatological canons
THREE ‘LASCIVIOUS’ CANONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE WIEDNERTHEATER COMPANY
Three remarkably lewd canons are preserved in Berlin on two sides of single manuscript leaf with a cover page bearing a nineteenth-century inscription by Aloys Fuchs (Figures 1–3):Footnote 11
3 sehr laszive Canons [‘3’ is written in black ink over the original ‘2’ in pink]
nicht vor Jedermanns Einsicht geeignet –
wohl aber
bei nassen Gesellschaften unter Männern gut zu gebrauchen.
________. ________
1. die beiden Canons auf der 1ten Seite sind vom † Theater kapellmeister Johann v Henneberg /: intimmer Freund von Mozart – componirt u geschrieben.
2. der 3te Canon auf der Rückseite, ist von dem Hofopernsänger Sebastian Maÿer (†) Schwager Mozarts. aufgeschrieben; und das Ganze höchst wahrscheinlich an einem lustigen Abend in Mozarts Beisein, improvisirt worden.
3 very lascivious canons
not proper for everyone’s perusal –
but
good for use in inebriated [literally ‘wet’] company among men.
________. ________
1. the two canons on the 1st page are composed and written out by the late theatre Kapellmeister Johann v Henneberg [born 5 December 1768 in Vienna; died 27 November 1822] /: intimate friend of Mozart.
2. der 3rd canon on the reverse side is written out by the late court opera singer [Friedrich] Sebastian Maÿer [also spelled Mayer, Meier and Meyer, born 1773; died May 1835], brother-in-law of Mozart; and the whole was most probably improvised on a merry evening in Mozart's presence.
Aloys Fuchs, cover page to ‘3 sehr laszive Canons’ by Johann Baptist Henneberg and Friedrich Sebastian Mayer, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2, cover page. Used by permission
Canons 1–2 by Johann Baptist Henneberg, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2, page [1]. Used by permission
Canon 3 by Friedrich Sebastian Mayer, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2, page [2]. Used by permission
All three canons have lewd texts written from a male perspective, and as such Fuchs found them inappropriate for mixed company. Fuchs adapted Henneberg's own inscription over his two canons: ‘gut in nassen Gesellschaften zu gebrauchen’ (good for use in inebriated company).Footnote 12 Fuchs's statement that these canons were ‘most probably improvised on a merry evening in Mozart's presence’ is likely to be a figment of his imagination. Although the works may date from Mozart's lifetime, there is no evidence that he ever met Friedrich Sebastian Mayer, who started working at the Wiednertheater almost two years after the composer's death in 1791 and did not marry Mozart's sister-in-law Josepha Hofer until 1797.Footnote 13
Henneberg was the Kapellmeister or music director at the Theater auf der Wieden starting around 1789. He was a skilled organist, serving at Vienna's Schottenkirche, and a successful composer of both sacred and secular music. He collaborated with Mozart and others on the opera Der Stein der Weisen for the Wiednertheater in 1790, and rehearsed and later directed performances of Die Zauberflöte.Footnote 14 The handwriting on the first page of the leaf containing the canons is clearly the same as that in Henneberg's other autograph manuscripts.Footnote 15 Mayer's handwriting is more difficult to identify, since there are no readily available scores in his hand. But Mayer, who was Beethoven's first Pizarro in Fidelio, made an entry in one of Otto Hatwig's Stammbücher (personal albums) dated 12 February 1800 in Vienna, and the handwriting is very similar to that of the canon's text (Figure 4).Footnote 16 Still, this identification cannot be considered definitive, for while Fuchs collected numerous autograph manuscripts and was considered an expert on Mozart in his lifetime and after, he occasionally made errors in identification, and his attributions should be independently verified.Footnote 17 Moreover, Mayer is not otherwise known to have composed music. He sang, wrote and arranged librettos and later served as a stage manager, and in this instance may simply have been the copyist of the canon.
Friedrich Sebastian Mayer, entry of 12 February 1800 in Otto Hatwig's Stammbuch, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Handschriften, 74841 JA, volume 1, f. 37. Used by permission
Here are the texts of the canons, in the original Viennese dialect and English translation. The music is realized in Examples 1–3.
These three texts have a degree of vulgarity beyond anything attributed to Mozart. Moreover, the Mayer text is sexual, a topic not broached in Mozart's bawdy canons. Unlike Mozart's language, which mostly relies on trite expressions, the texts here seem not to be clichés but short, rhymed bawdy narratives, more puerile and perhaps intentionally shocking. This may be why Fuchs chose the adjective ‘jocular’ (‘scherzhaft’) to describe a late eighteenth-century copy of O du eselhafter Martin, k560b/560 (one of ‘2 Scherzhafte Canons’), rather than ‘very lascivious’.Footnote 19 Fuchs's suggestion that the Henneberg and Mayer canons were only for male company seems plausible, but we know that Mozart's mother, sister and cousin occasionally enjoyed scatological humour.Footnote 20 In a letter of 17 October 1777 from Augsburg to his father in Salzburg, Mozart described a small gathering with his mother during which he spontaneously added vulgar words to a canon directed at his cousin Maria Anna Thekla (Bäsle):
Ein gewisser P: Emilian ein hofärtiger Esel und ein einfältiger wizling seiner Profeßion war gar herzig. er wollte immer seinen spaß mit der bäsle haben, sie hatte aber ihren spaß mit ihm – – endlich als er rauschig war (welches bald erfolgte) fieng er von der Musick an. er sang einen Canon, und sagte ich habe in meinem leben nichts schöners gehört. ich sagte, mir ist leid, ich kann nicht mitsingen, dann ich kann vonn Natur aus nicht intoniren. daß thut nichts, sagte er. er fing an. ich war der Dritte. ich machte aber einen ganz andern Text drauf, P: E: o du schwanz du, leck du mich im arsch. sotto voce: zu meiner base. dann lachten wir wieder eine halbe stunde.Footnote 21
A certain Father Emilian, a conceited ass and a sorry wit of his profession, was very sweet on Bäsle and wanted to jest with her, but she made fun of him – finally when he was a bit tipsy, which soon happened, he began to talk about music and sang a canon, saying: ‘In my life I have never heard anything more beautiful.’ I said: ‘I am sorry that I cannot join in, but nature has not bestowed on me the gift of intoning.’ ‘That does not matter’, he said. He began. I took the third voice, but I invented quite a different text, ‘Father Emilian, oh you prick, lick me in the ass’; this, sotto voce to my cousin. Then we laughed for another half hour.
Canon 1. di [Johann Baptist] Henneberg. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2
Canon 2. di [Johann Baptist] Henneberg. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2
Canon 3. Friedrich Sebastian Mayer. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2
Mozart added his vulgar line to this canon only when the singer became tipsy. Henneberg's own commentary, ‘good for use in inebriated company’, is further evidence for the social context of these kinds of pieces, which might not be received well by sober companions.
As for the music, only Henneberg's pieces are strict canons, and the endings, with the third voice singing alone, may have enhanced the humorous effect (see Figure 2 and Examples 1–2). The music in Mayer's handwriting is not imitative; rather, the voices are coordinated in homorhythmic motion not unlike a chorale. Perhaps, then, the humour of this music resided in the music's ironically non-imitative texture (see Figure 3 and Example 3).
THE TEXTS OF MOZART'S VULGAR CANONS IN CONTEXT
As already mentioned, Mozart's texts are tame in comparison to those of Henneberg and Mayer. The text of k231/382c has only one line, ‘Leck mich im Arsch’, a common expression that frequently occurs in Mozart's family circle. According to Georg Nissen's original manuscripts of his Mozart biography, the composer sang of Aloysia Weber ‘Leck mich das Mensch im Arsch, das mich nicht will’ (The one who doesn't want me can lick my ass) on the occasion of being romantically rejected by her.Footnote 22 He was evidently singing an existing folk tune, not a song of his own invention.Footnote 23 Grechtelt's enk (k556) uses only one mildly harsh expression, ‘izt halt's Maul! I gib’ d'ra Tetschen!’ (now shut your trap, I'll give you a whack!). Likewise, Gehn wir im Prater (k558) has one crude line: ‘Im Prater gibt's Gelsen und Haufen voll Dreck’ (in the Prater there are gnats and heaps of muck).
Difficile lectu mihi Mars et jonicu difficile (k559) is somewhat exceptional in its cleverness; the text is disguised German in the form of pseudo-Latin. Jean-Victor Hocquard has pointed out that the words ‘lectu mini Mars’ resemble the Bavarian ‘leck du mi im Arsch’.Footnote 24 Another oddity is found in the strange word ‘jonicu’. Emanuel Winternitz explains that when this word is sung repeatedly and rapidly (as in the canon), the syllables are liable to be heard rearranged as the taboo Italian word cujoni, which means balls or testicles, akin to Spanish cojones.Footnote 25 Thus the sense of the entire line appears to be ‘It is difficult to lick my ass and balls’. In 1824 Gottfried Weber published a facsimile of this canon and an account of its origin, claiming that Mozart wrote the piece during a social gathering to poke fun at a friend's poor Latin pronunciation. When that friend, a singer named Johann Nepomuk Peierl, sang the false Latin without understanding the joke, Mozart wrote another vulgar canon to ridicule his slow-witted reaction, O du eselhafter Peierl (Oh, you asinine Peierl), k560a/559a, which Mozart inscribed on the reverse side of the same sheet.Footnote 26 While Weber's account may be apocryphal, the surviving autograph of these two canons in the British Museum (shelf mark Zweig MS. 58) places the pieces on opposite sides of a single page. Indeed, k560a/559a mocks Peierl, and uses crude language in the last lines along with an apology:
Mozart later recycled the canon by simply replacing Peierl's name with Martin, then with Jakob (k560b/560 of 1788).
The canon Bona nox! bist a recht Ox, k561 (1788), also uses two formulaic vulgar expressions:
These rhymed verses are also found in the letters of the Mozart family. Anna Maria wrote a postscript to her son's letter to Leopold of 26 September 1777, including these rhymed verses:
And in a letter of 5 November 1777 to his cousin Bäsle, Mozart also rhymed the same ideas:
The verb krachen has often been taken to refer to breaking the bed, but actually refers to the loud cracking sound associated with flatulence. This is clear in Mozart's letter of 31 January 1778 to his mother:
The meaning of the verb is also confirmed by the noun ‘Kracher’ in Henneberg's second canon, Brüderl laß kein schleichen thu (‘Kracher’ here is like the English ‘cracker’ in the word ‘firecracker’):
As for the social context of Mozart's bawdy canons, the evidence suggests that they were for private humour and buffoonery in a closed, inebriated social circle. 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.
Whether or not Henneberg and Mayer's canons date from Mozart's lifetime, it is clear that other contemporary composers wrote raunchy canons. Several of these works were falsely attributed to Mozart, including the anonymous canon Beim Arsch ists finster. Vivat Branntwein dich lieb ich allein (It's dark near the arse. Long live brandy, I love only you), k Anhang C 9.03, and Wenzel Müller's Die verdammten Heuraten, wenn's nur alleweil grathen thaten (The damned marriages, if only they would always turn out well), k Anhang C 10.01.Footnote 30 The first Köchel catalogue (1862) claimed that Michael Haydn set the same text.Footnote 31 One of his surviving canons employs more prominent scatological language:
Also probably by Michael Haydn, but attributed to both Mozart (k Anhang C 10.12) and Müller, is Hätt's nit ’dacht, daß Fischkraten dieß thaten, das thaten, daß sie an so stechen thaten, die verdammten Fischkraten (I wouldn't have thought that fishbones would do this and that, that they would prick like this, those damned fishbones).Footnote 33 Since all these vulgar canons are occasional pieces, it would stand to reason that they constitute only a fraction of what once existed.
VULGARITY IN THE THEATER AUF DER WIEDEN
Although David Schroeder has linked Mozart's use of vulgar language to Viennese theatre and its roots in the commedia dell'arte, there is little direct evidence to support such an assertion.Footnote 34 Most surviving semi-improvised Italian and German comedies do not include dialogues, and thus one cannot know the degree of vulgarity in general.Footnote 35 Moreover, the nature of such plays allows for adjustments in language to fit the audience. None of the playbooks and librettos that I have examined has lewd language.Footnote 36 While bans on extemporized dialogue and action were often justified on moralistic grounds, the early Viennese censor Joseph von Sonnenfels was just as concerned with the potential for seditious expression that would undermine the authority of the state as he was with vulgarity. By the time Mozart moved to Vienna, improvised comedy no longer existed there, and theatrical sources from that time show no evidence of the kind of language found in his private letters or bawdy canons.
There is also no evidentiary basis for the idea that Emanuel Schikaneder's Viennese stage roles such as Papageno were latter-day versions of the vulgar Hanswurst comedian.Footnote 37 Schikaneder himself specifically refuted this claim in his Preface to the printed libretto of his opera Der Spiegel von Arkadien (1795, with music by Franz Xaver Süssmayr): ‘Ich wollte wünschen, man spielte meinen Papageno als einen launichten Menschen, nicht als einen Hannswurst, wie es leider auf so vielen Bühnen geschieht’ (I would wish one played my Papageno as a capricious person, not as a Hanswurst, as unfortunately happens upon so many stages).Footnote 38 However, the comic companion of a noble hero was a staple in musical and non-musical comedy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While such characters were often uneducated commoners, they generally did not use anal or sexual expletives.
As for sexual euphemism and mild sexual innuendo, these were apparently occasional elements until about 1800, when censorship of such expressions seems to have increased.Footnote 39 Among the few such passages I have found in Viennese musical comedies is one in Schikaneder's successful comic opera Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge, oder Die verdeckten Sachen (1789), where one finds the following two lines in the comic aria ‘Au weh'l, au weh'l, der Drache ist mein’, sung by the title character (played by Schikaneder) after discovering that his bride-to-be is a wizened hag:
Infidelity and seduction are implied but never explicit in Schikaneder's libretto to Der Stein der Weisen (1790).Footnote 41 A more provocative example is found in the dialogue of Schikaneder's successful fairy-tale comic opera Der wohltätitge Derwisch (1791). Once again it is Schikaneder's own leading comic character that speaks the lines. In Act 2 Scene 7 Prince Sofrano expresses his rapture after hearing the beautiful but evil fairy Zenomide sing an aria. His comic companion Mandolino replies with a sexual innuendo:
This mildly risqué line is found in the Hamburg manuscript libretto, which is probably of Viennese origin, but was cancelled and replaced by a Hamburg reviser or censor along with other, less controversial, lines.Footnote 42
Charges of vulgarity in Schikaneder's librettos may have originated with Christian August Vulpius of Weimar, who arranged a number of them for north German audiences. In the Preface to his published arrangement of Schikaneder's Der Spiegel von Arkadien (1795), retitled as Die neuen Arkadier, Vulpius states that ‘I'll leave Metallio's smutty jokes to the author of the original setting!’ (‘Metallios Zoten gebe ich dem Verfasser des Originals zurück!’).Footnote 43 Schikaneder answered in a preface (entitled ‘Pro memoria’) to a subsequent opera, Der Königssohn aus Ithaka (1796): ‘The local censor is as vigilant and rigorous in regard to good morals as anyone in Germany and allows no obscene jokes to occur; of course, to the impure everything is impure!’ (‘Die hiesige Censur ist so wachsam und strenge auf gute Sitten als irgend eine in Deutschland, und läßt keine Zoten statt finden, freylich dem Unreinen ist alles unrein!’).Footnote 44 He goes on to accuse Vulpius of obscenity in his comedies Glücksproben, Liebesproben and Ehestandsproben. Clearly Schikaneder found the charge of vulgarity worrisome and worth refuting.
Vulpius was probably referring to a dialogue in Act 1 Scene 17 of Der Spiegel von Arkadien in which two small genies, disguised as farm boys, appear with magic gifts.Footnote 45 This arouses curiosity and suspicion in Prince Ballamo and his comic companion Metallio (Schikaneder), who intimates the possibility that one of them may have fathered these children:
A final example comes from Schikaneder's 1798 sequel to Die Zauberflöte, Das Labyrinth, with music by Peter Winter. In the finale of Act 2 (Scene 22), Papageno and Papagena sing the line: ‘Ich zeige dem Schwarzen die Feigen’ (I show the black one the fig) in reference to giving Monostatos an obscene gesture (in ‘showing the fig’, one's thumb is inserted between the second and third fingers).Footnote 46
The many opera librettos and plays I have read from the Leopoldstadt, Josephstadt, Landstrasse and Kärntertor theatres are fairly consistent with those of the Wiednertheater in their absence of vulgar speech and light use of sexual innuendo. In all instances, the degree of vulgarity is mild compared to that found in bawdy canons, and thus the Viennese popular theatre of Mozart's time cannot be considered a corollary to them. Opera was the most public musical genre of the time, subject to the constraints of morality and censorship and to the scrutiny of reviewers, sometimes in places far removed from the work's point of origin. By contrast, bawdy canons were perhaps the most private of musical genres, and as such were virtually free of such constraints and scrutiny.
What of the possibility that scatalogical humour was a regular feature in improvised speech and gesture at the theatre? Schikaneder was acknowledged as a comic actor capable of improvisation, and he often played weak-willed individuals given to earthly pleasures, such as Papageno. Yet of some thirteen eyewitness reports of productions at the Wiednertheater from 1788 to 1799, not one makes specific mention of scatological humour.Footnote 47 Neither do the various reports of productions given in contemporary journals.Footnote 48 One witness, John Owen, even states that the ‘stile of the composition, though perfectly unnatural, and even monstrous, was yet, by the ingenuity of the author [Schikaneder] neither uninteresting nor inelegant’.Footnote 49 Most criticism refers to confusing, inferior librettos and bad performances, not to foul language. Only a report by Ernst Moritz Arndt refers to Schikaneder's ‘vulgar jokes [Zoten] and swinishness’ in an unspecified late production (1798–1799).Footnote 50
Several reports, including the biography by Schikaneder's own actor nephew Carl, mention his numerous love affairs. Ignaz von Seyfried, a rather priggish type, attacked his former director as an incompetent writer, an uneducated spendthrift and a womanizer, but never mentioned a tendency toward smutty speech on stage or in texts.Footnote 51 Rather, he praises Schikaneder for his ‘richtiger Tact’ (proper tact). Thus it seems possible that later writers conflated Schikaneder's apparently well-known marital infidelities, and the roles he played on stage, with the moral character of librettos they had not read and performances they had not witnessed. Another possible reason for the association of Schikaneder's theatre with low humour and speech was the reputation of the Wieden, along with other Viennese suburbs. The traveller Robert Towson described the area as housing ‘those kinds of resorts, which serve as places of relaxation and debauch to the inferior ranks of life’.Footnote 52 But Towson specifically exempts the Wiednertheater from this state of debauchery in his narration. While the language of Schikaneder's texts in Vienna was not generally lewd, the modern notion of a debauched Wiednertheater company contributed to an impression that it was. This notion can be directly traced to nineteenth-century commentary.
MOZART'S SUPPOSED EXCESSES AND DEBAUCHERY AT THE WIEDNERTHEATER
The primary sources offer no evidence of debauchery or excessive revelry in Mozart's relations with Schikaneder and his theatrical company. Mozart's letters mention attending two performances at the theatre in May or June 1790 and in June 1791, along with two meals with Schikaneder in June and July 1791.Footnote 53 There is nothing more before the premiere of Die Zauberflöte on 30 September 1791, and while the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is significant that no one who actually knew Mozart described him as man given to debauchery. The still frequently encountered picture of a dissolute Mozart was formed later from dubious secondary sources, integrated and elaborated upon by his first scholarly biographer, Otto Jahn.Footnote 54 Although troubled by the contradictory reports he examined, Jahn ultimately wove a dramatic account of Mozart's profligacy at the Wiednertheater based on the speculation and second-hand innuendo detailed below.
For his description of Mozart's sensual and self-indulgent character, Jahn seems to have relied mostly on earlier publications that derive from a passage in Friedrich Schlichtegroll's Nekrolog of 1793, itself an elaboration of material supplied by the composer's sister Anna Maria, Baroness von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, and someone else, probably the consistorial councillor from Salzburg, Albert von Mölk.Footnote 55 Anna Maria wrote that Mozart's only fault was having a soft heart, so that he could not deal with money and was susceptible to flattery (‘das er ein gutes Herz hatte, er das Geld nicht zu dirigiren wusste, wer ihm schmeichelte, der konnte alles von ihm erhalten’). She declined to comment on the last ten years of her brother's life. The other writer (von Mölk?) added to her letter that the prevailing aspect of his ‘shady side’ (‘schattigen Seite’) was that all his life he remained a child in need of supervision and married a woman not suited to him against the will of his father, causing domestic disorder when he died and afterwards.Footnote 56 From these statements Schlichtegroll embellished and exaggerated the account substantially, perhaps using other, unnamed sources:Footnote 57
Er lernte nie sich selbst regiren; für häusliche Ordnung, für gehörigen Gebrauch des Geldes, für Mäßigung und vernünftige Wahl im Genuß hatte er keinen Sinn. Immer bedurfte er eines Führers, eines Vormundes, der an seiner Statt die häuslichen Angelegenheiten besorgte, da sein eigener Geist beständig mit einer Menge ganz anderer Vorstellungen beschäfftigt war, und dadurch überhaupt alle Empfänglichkeit für andere ernsthafte Überlegung verlor. . . . In Wien verheirathete er sich mit Constanza Weber, und fand in ihr eine gute Mutter von zwey mit ihr erzeugten Kindern, und eine würdige Gattinn, die ihn noch von manchen Thorheiten und Ausschweifungen abzuhalten suchte. So beträchtlich sein Einkommen war, so hinterließ er doch, bey seiner überwiegenden Sinnlichkeit und häuslichen Unordnung, den Seinigen weiter nichts als den Ruhm seines Nahmens, und die Aufmerksamkeit eines großen Publicums auf sie. . . . Aber dieser immer zerstreute, immer tändelnde Mensch schien ein ganz anderes, ein höheres Wesen zu werden, sobald er sich an das Klavier setzte.Footnote 58
He [Mozart] never learned self-control, and he had no sense of domestic order, the appropriate use of money, moderation and sensible choices in his pleasures. He always needed a leader, a guardian, who in his stead could take care of his domestic concerns because his own mind was constantly occupied with a mass of very different ideas, and thus was generally unresponsive to other serious matters. . . . In Vienna he married Constanze Weber, and found in her a good mother for their two children and a worthy spouse who tried to restrain him from many follies and excesses. As sizeable as his income was, he bequeathed to his family nothing but the glory of his name and the attention of a large public, owing to his overwhelming sensuality and domestic disorder. . . . But this always distracted, always trifling man seemed to be quite different, a higher being, as soon as he sat down at the piano.
Von Mölk and Mozart's sister had little or no direct contact with the composer in the last decade of his life, and their negative remarks seem to reflect the disapproval of Mozart's father and the Salzburg circle. Schlichtegroll too had no personal contact with Mozart or his Viennese circle. Thus these views should not be considered authoritative regarding the composer's later years in Vienna. Still, Jahn accepted them along with an unsubstantiated report of Friedrich Rochlitz in 1798, which recounts that during the composition of Die Zauberflöte ‘day and night were the same to him [Mozart] when [he was] seized by inspiration, [and] he often fell into spells of exhaustion and blackouts lasting several minutes’ (‘dem Tag und Nacht gleich war, wenn ihn der Genius ergriff – in öftere Ermattung und minutenlange halbohnmächtige Bewußtlosigkeit’).Footnote 59 Rochlitz appears to be following Schlichtegroll when he writes that ‘Mozart was often condemned for his negligence, frivolity and recklessness in money matters. The matter is indeed as true as the fact that it cannot be separated from such a man's individuality’ (‘Man hat Mozarten oft seine Nachlässigkeit, seine Flüchtigkeit, seinen Leichtsinn in Anwendung des Geldes vorgeworfen. Die Sache ist freylich eben so wahr, als das ist, dass sie von der Individualität eines solchen Mannes nicht getrennet gedacht werden kann’).Footnote 60 Schlichtegroll's use of the locution ‘follies and excesses’ (‘Thorheiten und Ausschweiflungen’) would have unintended consequences in the future. These terms in a necrology in 1793 do not necessarily mean debauchery of a self-destructive or sexual nature. Schlichtegroll almost certainly means extravagance or excessive exuberance and passion for entertainment and pastimes.
In his 1798 Mozart biography Franz Niemtschek defends the composer against charges attributed to his ‘numerous irreconcilable enemies’ who have disseminated ‘tales of his frivolity and excesses’. He states that Mozart's faults were not excessive; his wife Constanze acted as a restraining influence (‘ihn oft von Übereilungen abzuhalten’) and forgave his ‘small sins’ (‘kleinen Sünden’).Footnote 61 This more favourable account, probably originating with Constanze (she sent her son Carl to live with the Niemtschek family in Prague), is the first of several by various writers asserting that Mozart's reputation for excess and folly was an unfair exaggeration.
We have examples of such exaggerations in early nineteenth-century biographies, most by authors with no direct connection to the Mozart circle or Vienna. Ignaz Arnold's biography of 1803 gives credence to reports of Mozart's galanteries with women, particularly lively actresses, which his wife tolerated (‘auch ausser der Ehe gab es manche Galanterie mit artigen Schauspielerinnen, und sonstigen feinen Mädchen und Weibern, was ihm seine gute Frau gern übersah’ (There were also many flirtations with skilled actresses outside of marriage, and also attractive girls and women, which his good wife readily overlooked)).Footnote 62 Arnold was the first author to mention Mozart's excessive drinking and revelling (‘Mozart betrank sich in Champagner und Tokayer, lebte locker’ (Mozart imbibed champagne and Tokaji wine, lived loosely)), particularly with Schikaneder (‘Man weiß, wie oft er in seine Gesundheit stürmte, wie manchen Morgen er mit Schikaneder verchampagnerte, wie manche Nacht er verpunschte’ (We know how often he abused his health, how many mornings he drank champagne with Schikaneder, how many nights he drank punch)). The Irish tenor Michael Kelly wrote of Mozart's fondness for punch in 1826, the only mention of Mozart's preference by someone who knew the composer.Footnote 63 In 1804 Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard in Paris reported an even more scandalous ‘Anecdote’ that Die Zauberflöte was composed for a ‘woman of the theatre’ with whom Mozart had fallen in love. Even Suard could not give credence to the rest of the tale in which Mozart died of a disease that he contracted from the same woman.Footnote 64
Two decades later, anonymous and vague reports of Mozart's aberrant behaviour began appearing in Germany. One anecdote attributed the composer's poor health to ‘strenuous work and fast living in poorly chosen company’ (‘angestrengtes Arbeiten und Geschwindleben in übelgewählter Gesellschaft’).Footnote 65 In a 1827 obituary of the tenor Benedikt Schack (the first Tamino), the anonymous author states that Schack described the circumstances of Mozart's life during the years 1789–1791, when they worked together at the theatre, in the following way: ‘One learned about which byways and wrong paths even the greatest talent wandered through the harsh reality of life’ (‘Man erfuhr, welche Wege und Irrwege auch das grösste Talent in der rauhen Wirklichkeit des Lebens zu durchwandern hat’).Footnote 66 Another vague intimation of an ominous nature closes the obituary:
Noch gegen Ende von 1825 hatte sich der bekannte Herr v. Nyssen von Salzburg aus mit vielen Anfragen und dringendem Ersuchen an Schack gewendet, um von ihm Aufsätze, Erörterungen, die ihm zu seiner grossen Mozart'schen Biographie noch fehlten, zu erhalten. . . . Der Schreiber dieses Artikels, der ihm die Papiere zugestellt, konnte ihn vorerst nicht bewegen, in jene Vorzeit zurückzukehren. Er hätte so Vieles berühren müssen, was er schon erzählt und man nicht immer wieder aufwärmen sollte.Footnote 67
Toward the end of 1825 the well-known Herr von Nissen of Salzburg turned to Schack with many questions and urgent requests for essays and explanations that he lacked for his great Mozart biography. . . . The writer of this article, who delivered the documents to him, could not persuade him to turn back momentarily to that time in the past. He would have had to touch upon so many things that he already had narrated, things that one should never again rehash.
Like Mozart's ‘wrong paths’, the nature of these ‘things that one should never again rehash’ is left to the imagination of the reader.
Georg Nissen's biography of 1828 repeats Niemtschek's comments concerning Mozart's ‘small sins’ and forgiving wife.Footnote 68 He cites Constanze's younger sister Sophie to refute the charge of Mozart's excessive drinking and to affirm his naive character, which led to manipulation by false friends and parasites (‘falsche Freunde und Blutsauger ohne sein Wissen, werthlose Menschen; die ihm zu Tischnarren dienten’). One oft-cited sentence attributed to Sophie in the biography has been used as evidence of debauchery: ‘In order to keep him from awkward situations, she [Constanze] patiently attempted to do everything with him’ (‘Um ihn vom Umgange misslicher Art abzuhalten, versuchte seine Frau geduldig Alles mit ihm’). Yet the previous sentence makes clear this refers to his passion for hobbies like riding and billiards (‘In seinen Unterhaltungen war er für eine jede neue sehr passionirt, wie für's Reiten und auch für Billard’). Nissen also repeats exact phrases from Arnold's 1803 biography, with its charges of galanteries with women, drinking and revelling with Schikaneder.Footnote 69 Jahn expressed dismay that Nissen did not comment on this account, as it was an obvious contradiction of Niemtschek and Sophie.Footnote 70 Similar problems in Nissen's biography are not uncommon, given that it was a patchwork of writings assembled by several editors after the death of the author, Constanze Mozart's second husband.
In 1831 Mozart's reputation was again defended, this time by his former student Johann Nepomuk Hummel: ‘I declare it to be untrue that Mozart abandoned himself to excess, except on those rare occasions on which he was enticed by Schikaneder, which had chiefly to do with Die Zauberflöte’ (‘Daß Mozart sich Schwelgerei überlassen habe erkläre ich (außer den wenigen Gelegenheiten, zu denen Schikaneder ihn verlockte, dem es um die Zauberflöte zu thun war) als unwahr’).Footnote 71 With regard to Schikaneder, Hummel cannot be relying on his first-hand experience, since he left Vienna in late 1788 and would have had no direct knowledge of the creation of Die Zauberflöte. Schikaneder arrived in Vienna to assume the direction of the Wiednertheater in the summer of 1789.
A fragmentary letter of 1840–1841 from Ignaz von Seyfried to Georg Friedrich Treischke mentions Mozart's revelry with the Wiednertheater circle in yet another second-hand account, attributed to Karl Ludwig Giesecke, an actor and author in Schikaneder's company and a member of Mozart's masonic lodge. Seyfried (1776–1841) had been a music director and composer at the Wiednertheater (and later at the Theater an der Wien), starting some six years after Mozart's death. He writes that:
Schikaneders persönliche Bekanntschaft mit Mozart, so wie auch jene spätere mit Zitterbarth, – datirt sich aus einer FreymaurerLoge her, – freylich nicht jene hochberühmte Born'sche, welche Wien's erste Dignitäten, u: die Elite der damaligen literarischen Kaste unter ihre Mitglieder gezählt haben soll, – sondern schlechtweg eine sogenannte Winkel- oder Freß=Loge, woselbst man sich in den wöchentlichen Abendzusammenkünften mit Spiel, Musik, u: den vielen Freuden einer wohlbesetzten Tafel beschäftigte, wie Gieseke mir oftmals erzählte. . . . Meistens schrieb er in Gerl's Wohnung, oder in Sch:s Garten, nur wenige Schritte am Theater; ich selbst war oft Gast an demselben Tische, u: hielt viele Proben im nehmlichen Salon, oder auf deutsch: Holzhütte.Footnote 72
Schikaneder's personal acquaintance with Mozart, and also later with Zitterbarth, came from a masonic lodge, certainly not the highly praised Born lodge, which numbered among its members Vienna's first dignitaries and the elite of the contemporary literary castes, but simply a so-called marginal or gorging lodge, where one occupied oneself in weekly evening gatherings with gambling, music and the many joys of a well-set table, as Giesecke often narrated to me. . . . He wrote most of [Die Zauberflöte] in Gerl's residence, or in Schikaneder's garden, just a few steps from the theatre; I myself was often a guest at this same table, and held many rehearsals in the same salon, or in German: wooden shack.
This report contradicts everything we know about Mozart and Schikaneder's association with Viennese masonic lodges.Footnote 73 Around the same time (a half-century after Mozart's death) another vague insinuation of Mozart's character flaws appeared in Caroline Pichler's autobiography, where the author wrote that Mozart led a ‘frivolous life’ (‘ein leichtsinniges Leben’).Footnote 74
An anonymous author recycled old assertions of carousing at the Freihaus auf der Wieden in an 1857 article on the origins of Die Zauberflöte, writing that the opera was composed in Mozart's house on Rauhensteingasse and in a half-ruined pavilion in the Freihaus garden: ‘It was during lunch (it was high summer), which Mozart most often took there with Schikaneder, that he intrepidly worked, laughed and drank champagne. In these circumstances the great work Die Zauberflöte’ originated (‘Während des Mittagmahls (es war hoher Sommer), das Mozart meistens mit Schikaneder daselbst einnahm, ward wacker gearbeitet, gelacht und Champagner getrunken. Unter diesen Umständen entstand das große Werk: “Die Zauberflöte”’).Footnote 75 While this account adds just a few details to Seyfried's letter, the author goes on to add a new vignette of a more promiscuous nature, namely that Barbara Gerl, the first Papagena and wife of the leading bass singer and first Sarastro Franz Xaver Gerl, helped Schikaneder to induce Mozart to compose the opera:
Schikaneder. . . flog er von der Rauhensteingasse nach der Wieden in die Kapaunergasse zum sogenannten, damals bestandenen ‘Kapäundl’. Da wohnte Mad. Gerl, welche sammt ihrem Gatten, dem Bassisten Gerl, bei Schikaneder engagirt war, und wie man sagte, großen Einfluß aus Mozart ausübte. Diese gewann der schlaue Schikaneder für sein Interesse. . .Footnote 76
Schikaneder. . . flew from Rauhensteingasse to Kapaunergasse [now Schäffergasse] in the Wieden district, to the so-called ‘Kapäundl’ house. There resided Madame Gerl, who along with her husband, the bass singer Gerl, was engaged in Schikaneder's company, and as has been said, exerted great influence on Mozart. The sly Schikaneder won her over for his interest. . .
One wonders if this author was influenced by Arnold's and Suard's accounts of Mozart's involvement with actresses; perhaps Barbara Gerl's role as the first Papagena made her seem like a good candidate for a seductress. In reality she was an actress, singer, dancer and spouse of Mozart's friend Franz Gerl.Footnote 77
Jahn attempted to make sense of these intimations in devising a still more elaborate tale of Schikaneder seducing the vulnerable Mozart into his dissolute theatrical circle:
Schikaneder war auch dafür besorgt seinen Componisten bei guter Laune zu erhalten. Nicht allein zu Mittag, wo gut gegessen und getrunken wurde, mußte er häufig sein Gast sein, er zog ihn überhaupt in das Genußleben der lockeren und leichten Gesellschaft, in welcher er verkehrte,. . . der sich Mozarts Nähe zu drängen wußte und seine Gutmüthigkeit auf so schmähliche Weise mißbrauchte. Man kann sich wohl erklären, wie der Druck der äußeren Verhältnisse, die wachsende Noth im Hause, die bittere Stimmung über die Erfolglosigkeit aller seiner Bestrebung den leicht erregbaren und für gesellige heitere Unterhaltung an sich empfänglichen Mozart für den Augenblick noch geneigter machen konnte sich in den Strudel des genußsüchtigen Lebens hineinziehen zu lassen, welchem die Gesellschaft, mit der er durch seine Oper näher zusammengeführt wurde, ergeben war, selbst die Abwesenheit seiner Frau, welch auch diesen Sommer in Baden zubrachte. . . mochte dazu beitragen. Und doch sind es diese Monate des Verkehrs mit Schikaneder, welche zu den übertriebenen Schilderungen von Mozarts lockerem Leben die Veranlassung gegeben und seinem Namen einen unverdienten Makel angehängt haben.Footnote 78
Schikaneder took care to keep his composer in good spirits. Not only by having him as a frequent supper guest, where fine eating and drinking were the rule, but also by drawing him into the pleasure-seeking life of the seductive and free-living society in which he himself moved. . . he knew how to take advantage of Mozart's proclivities and good nature in an ignominious manner. This can well explain how the pressure of external circumstances, of growing domestic troubles, and the bitter feeling of failure in all his aspirations, combined with his easily excitable nature, caused the susceptible Mozart to seek convivial and jovial diversion in the vortex of the pleasure-seeking life to which the company was addicted, and to which he, through his opera, would be drawn closer; even the absence of his wife who spent that summer in Baden. . . might have contributed to it. And yet these are the months of association with Schikaneder that gave inducement to the exaggerated accounts of Mozart's life of enticements and have attached an undeserved blemish to his name.
Jahn revised part of this passage for the 1867 second edition of his biography, adding even more vivid (and almost certainly imagined) details to the narrative, and using Schlichtegroll's locution ‘follies and excesses’ (‘Thorheiten und Ausschweifungen’) to suggest debauchery:
Der Druck der äußeren Verhältnisse, die wachsende Noth im Hause, die bittere Stimmung über die Erfolglosigkeit aller seiner Bestrebungen wirkten mit, daß der leicht erregbare und für heitere Unterhaltung empfängliche Mozart sich in den Strudel dieses genußsüchtigen Lebens hineinziehen ließ. Seine Frau war in Baden, wo am 26. Juli der jüngste Sohn Wolfgang geboren wurde; ihre Abwesenheit machte seine häusliche Exitenz sehr unbehaglich und ließ ihn um so lieber die lustige Theatercompagnie aufsuchen. Thorheiten und Ausschweifungen, wie sie in diesem Verkehr nicht ausblieben konnten, drangen ins Publicum und übertriebene Schilderungen von dem lockeren Leben mit Schikaneder während einiger Monate haben Mozarts Namen einen so nicht verdienten Makel angehängt.Footnote 79
The pressure of external circumstances, the growing indigence in the household, the bitter mood about the failure of all his strivings converged so that Mozart, easily excitable and susceptible to lively diversions, was drawn into the vortex of this pleasure-seeking life. His wife was in Baden, where on July 26 their youngest son Wolfgang was born. Her absence made his domestic existence very unhappy and allowed him to seek out the frolicsome theatre company. Follies and excesses, which could not fail to materialize in this circle, became public, and exaggerated accounts of the loose life with Schikaneder over several months attached an underserved blemish to Mozart's name.
Jahn does not cite the sources of this public scandal, but he certainly drew this inference from earlier reports.Footnote 80 In any event, more specific sources have not emerged. Jahn went on to recount the dubious tale of Barbara Gerl as Mozart's muse or temptress:
der berühmte Contrabaßspieler Pischlberger war im Orchester Schikaneders angestellt, auf dessem Theater Gerl Sänger und seine sehr artige und liebenswürdige Frau, früher Dem. Reisinger Sängerin war; man behauptet, daß Mozart dieselbe sehr gern gesehn und ihr den Hof gemacht habe.Footnote 81
The celebrated double-bass player Pischlberger was employed in Schikaneder's orchestra, and at the same theatre Gerl was a singer, along with his very agreeable and charming wife, formerly Mlle Reisinger. It has been asserted that Mozart very willingly saw her and paid court to her.
A few pages later he repeats the deprecatory innuendo: ‘Mozarts unwiderstehliche Neigung für die dramatische Musik kam seine natürliche Gutmüthigkeit und Bereitwilligkeit zu helfen und wie man sagt auch der Einfluß der Mad. Gerl zu Hülfe, er erklärte sich bereit den Versuch zu machen’ (Mozart's irresistible inclination for dramatic music, his inherent good nature and willingness to help, and, as it was said, the influence of Madame Gerl, all combined to induce him to make the effort).Footnote 82
Despite accepting that jealous and malicious contemporaries exaggerated Mozart's faults, in the end Jahn finds the composer to have been an unfaithful husband and debauchee in the summer of 1791. He accompanies this conclusion by a long discussion of the distinction between weakness and vice, and a justification of Mozart's failings by his circumstances and upbringing. However, his mysterious final source of evidence for infidelity was ‘reliable Salzburg friends who orally confirmed the intimations of Niemtschek and Nissen’ (‘Ich bin mündlichen Mittheilungen bewährter Salzburger Freunde gefolgt, welche durch die Andeutung bei Niemtschek S. 64 (Nissen, S. 690) bestätigt werden’).Footnote 83 What rigorous historian would accept and publish anonymous, spoken hearsay about a person some sixty-five years after his death? Jahn's description of Schikaneder completes the picture of a companion who would exert the worst influence on the defenceless composer: ‘Er war dem sinnlichen Genuß sehr ergeben, ein Schwelger und Mädchenfreund, je nach Umständen ein Parasit und ein leichtsinniger Verschwender’ (‘He was addicted to sensual gratification, a reveller and womanizer, and according to circumstances, a parasite and an irresponsible spendthrift’).Footnote 84
The connection of Mozart's putative physical decline (as reported by Rochlitz) to an imagined moral decay in the summer of 1791 seems to have had an appeal to the romantic imagination of Jahn's time. But Jahn assembled his vivid narrative of a dissolute, corrupted Mozart from sources with little or no first-hand authority, and it is not particularly fair to Mozart, Schikaneder or Barbara Gerl.Footnote 85 It was Jahn's account that provided a model for later depictions of debauchery at the theatre and of Mozart's libertine indulgence in the revelry, depictions that have retained a place in modern film, music literature and the popular imagination.Footnote 86
CONCLUSIONS
Every member of Mozart's family engaged in formulaic scatological humour. Even the relatively straight-laced Leopold used the expression to ‘shit bitter oranges’, meaning ‘to get upset’, which he wrote to Lorenz Hagenauer on 13 September 1768 and to his wife on 3 November 1770.Footnote 87 Wolfgang certainly took this family propensity further in his letters, combining scatology with wordplay.Footnote 88 There is no evidence that such intimate epistolary writing was abnormal or even unusual.
Mozart's bawdy canons stand at the periphery of the composer's output, but are highlighted by those who want to emphasize Mozart's humanity and marginalized by those who are perhaps also embarrassed by them. But viewing these canons as indicative of Mozart's personality seems unwarranted in light of the evidence. Contemporaries composed canons with more vulgar texts, one of them, Johann Baptist Henneberg, a respected and established Viennese church musician and organist. Understanding the social function of such canons requires knowledge of their role in eighteenth-century society as a private form of musical recreation, as ribald songs in like company, as drinking songs to be sung when intoxicated. In comparison to other genres, their music is relatively primitive; they may even have been composed on the spot. The canons’ use as a participatory, recreational kind of vocal music helps us understand the meaning of more elevated examples, such as those found in some opera scenes.Footnote 89
While no evidence exists of scatological humour in Wiednertheater performances, light sexual innuendo was present to a small degree in the dialogues of some comic characters, particularly before about 1800. Explicitly bawdy musical expression in Vienna was restricted mainly to certain private spheres in which lewd canons amused musicians, theatre people and their friends. Finally, there is no compelling evidence that Mozart engaged in any behaviour in his last year that one could consider dissolute or self-destructive. This idea appears to be an embellishment developed from vague assertions of missteps and character flaws made years after the composer's death, and at the same time that his bawdy canons were being provided with bowdlerized texts. The notion of a dissolute Mozart whose bawdy canons needed to be cleansed of their vulgar texts is not contradictory. In making Mozart a Byronic hero who produced elevated and pure art, his devotees had a more romantic view of the man than is apparent from the historical record.
