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

Figure 1 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

Figure 2 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

Figure 3 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.

Figure 4 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):

Example 1 Canon 1. di [Johann Baptist] Henneberg. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2

Example 2 Canon 2. di [Johann Baptist] Henneberg. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2

Example 3 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 k231/382^c 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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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