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MOZART'S BAWDY CANONS, VULGARITY AND DEBAUCHERY AT THE WIEDNERTHEATER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2016

Abstract

Mozart's bawdy canons and use of scatalogical parlance in his letters have been described as indicative of a personality given to crass expression. Moreover, his association with Emanuel Schikaneder's supposedly dissolute Theater auf der Wieden, a boisterous venue for German stage works, has been taken as further evidence of his profligate tendencies. A review of the original source materials reveals that these views are apocryphal, originating after Mozart's death and embellished in nineteenth-century commentary and scholarship. Examples of even raunchier canons, composed by musicians with connections to Mozart, Schikaneder and the Theater auf der Wieden, provide new insight into the genre. An examination of surviving bawdy Viennese canons in their social context, together with a reconsideration of the Mozart family letters and attitudes toward vulgarity in Viennese popular theatre, reveals that lewd expressions on the stage were relatively uncommon in this period, that Mozart's use of scatalogical language was relatively mild for the time and that accounts of the composer's debauchery in his last years have little evidentiary basis.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2016 

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References

1 Schroeder, David P., Mozart in Revolt: Strategies of Resistance, Mischief, and Deception (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 180 Google Scholar: ‘Mozart and Schikaneder spent their time together clearly doing more than collaborating on Die Zauberflöte; the depiction of this by Peter Shaffer and Milos Forman in Amadeus was probably not too far off the mark . . .’.

2 Carnivalesque is a concept introduced by Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984)Google Scholar. The scene in Amadeus also depicts inversions that mock political power and social conventions.

3 Deutsch, Otto Erich, Das Freihaustheater auf der Wieden 1787–1801, second edition (Vienna and Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1937)Google Scholar, gives a fairly comprehensive list of the theatre's repertory and there is no trace of any kind of improvised farce. Moreover, the biographical account of Carl Joseph Schikaneder challenges the assertion that his uncle selected only low comic characters for his roles: ‘Dort erfährt nebst andern Unrichtigkeiten aus: daß mein Oheim nur Thadädis und Charaktere gemein-komischer Gattung zu seinem Rollenfache gewählt’ (There we learn, along with other mistakes, that my uncle selected for his typical type of role only Thadädis (a Hanswurst-like comic role) and characters of a common comic type). See Schikaneder, Carl Joseph, ‘Emanuel Schikaneder. Geschildert von seinem Neffen: Joseph Carl Schikaneder’, Der Gesellschafter oder Blätter für Geist und Herz 18 (3–9 May 1834): 71 Google Scholar (3 May), 353–355; 72 (5 May), 358–359; 73 (7 May), 361–362; 74 (9 May), 370–371.

4 Gutman, Robert, Mozart: A Cultural Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 721 Google Scholar: ‘He [Schikaneder] inserted fairy, magic, and chivalric tales into popular peasant farces abounding in outhouse humour, the unembarrassed mixture of romance and vulgarity composing the main traffic of the Freihaus theatre's stage – its very specialty.’

5 See Johnson, David, ‘Catch’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, ed. Sadie, Stanley and Tyrrell, John (London: Macmillan, 2001)Google Scholar, volume 5, 280–281.

6 For an overview of Mozart's canons see Zaslaw, Neal, ‘The Non-Canonic Status of Mozart's Canons’, Eighteenth-Century Music 3/1 (2006), 109123 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The prudish editors of Oeuvres complettes de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1804), volume 16, replaced the canons’ texts; the editors of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Werke: Kritisch durchgesehene Gesammtausgabe (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1876–1907), series 7, volume 2 (1877), ed. Gustav Nottebohm, continued this bowdlerizing with their own texts. For a discussion of the first edition see Michael Ochs, ‘L. m. i. a.: Mozart's Suppressed Canon Texts’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1991), 254–261. Early biographers like Nissen (discussed below) also provided euphemistic replacements for these kinds of expressions.

8 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (NMA) III/10: Kanons, ed. Dunning, Albert (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974)Google Scholar; Kritischer Bericht, ed. Holger M. Stüwe (2007). See Winternitz, Emanuel, ‘Gnagflow Trazom: An Essay on Mozart's Script, Pastimes, and Nonsense Letters’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 11/2–3 (1958), 200216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hildesheimer, Wolfgang, Mozart, trans. Faber, Marion (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982), 52 Google Scholar; and Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt, passim.

9 For example, Gunne, L. M., ‘Hatte Mozart Tourettes Syndrom?’, Läkartidningen 88 (1991), 43254326 Google Scholar; Simkin, Benjamin, Medical and Musical Byways of Mozartiana (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Aterman, K. A., ‘Should Mozart Have Been Psychoanalyzed? Some Comments on Mozart's Language in his Letters’, Dalhousie Review 73 (1993), 175186 Google Scholar; and Schaub, Stefan, ‘Mozart und das Tourette-Syndrom’, Acta Mozartiana 41 (1994), 1520 Google Scholar. Karhausen, L[ucien] R., ‘Letter to the Editor’, British Medical Journal 306 (1993), 522 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses problems with the Tourette's-syndrome hypothesis.

10 Dundes, Alan, Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: Studies of German National Character through Folklore (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, shows that this type of language had been a part of German culture for centuries, as in the writings of Luther, Goethe and Heine, among others.

11 Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung [henceforth D-B], Mus. ms. Autograph J. B. Henneberg 2. The leaf, a partial sheet of paper, bears the stamp ‘Ex Bibl. Regia Berolin’, indicating that it belonged to the Royal Prussian Library in Berlin. A section of the watermark is visible: three crescent moons over the letters REAL, with thin braided chain lines. This is northern Italian paper of the type used by Viennese composers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The leaf belonged to a manuscript collection owned by Fuchs (1799–1853) that the library acquired in 1879 as part of the Friedrich August Grasnick estate. For details see Schaal, Richard, Quellen und Forschungen zur Wiener Musiksammlung von Aloys Fuchs (Graz and Vienna: Böhlau, 1966)Google Scholar, and Schaal, ‘Neues zur Biographie von Friedrich August Grasnick’, Im Dienst der Quellen zur Musik: Festschrift Gertraut Haberkamp zum 65. Geburtstag (Tützing: Schneider, 2002), 521–526. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.

12 A vocal quartet with the text of a drinking song is attributed to Henneberg in a manuscript belonging to Brno's Moravian Music Museum, shelf mark A 16.031 (originally from Náměšt nad Oslavou): ‘Trinklied in Quarttet v[on] Henneberg. Beym Gläserklang und Rundgesang laßt uns heut fröhlich seÿn’ (Drinking song quartet by Henneberg. With glasses clinking and a roundelay let us be cheerful today). ‘Nass’ (wet) could mean soused or inebriated. See Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. in 32 Teilbänden. Leipzig 1854–1961. Quellenverzeichnis Leipzig 1971. <http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GN03103#XGN03103> (31 March 2013).

13 A surviving theatre poster in the archive of Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde indicates that Mayer first appeared at the Wiednertheater on 9 September 1793 as Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. See Lorenz, Michael, ‘Neue Forschungsergebnisse zum Theater auf der Wieden und Emanuel Schikaneder’, Wiener Geschichtsblätter 4 (2008), 1536 Google Scholar.

14 Peter Branscombe and David J. Buch, ‘Henneberg, Johann Baptist’, Grove Music Online <www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (12 May 2013).

15 The motet Tantum ergo is preserved in D-B, Mus. ms. autograph J. B. Henneberg 1, along with Notturni Nos 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 (Mus. ms. autograph J. B. Henneberg 3). Autograph scores of the Notturni Nos 1 and 3 are in the music department of the Bibliothèque de France, Ms. 6953, whereaas Notturno No. 9 is in the music department of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (henceforth A-WbR), M.H. 10682/c. An autograph fragment of the opera Die Eisenkönigin (1793) is in the music department of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek [henceforth A-ÖNB], Mus. Hs. [S.m.] 3843, along with a duet ‘Schau Mädel, jetzt wär halt die hübscheste Zeit’, Mus. Hs. 19145, and the ‘2. Benedictus von Henneberg, Part.’ in Peter Winter's Missa in D minor for two choruses and orchestra, hk1584.

16 Otto Hatwig Stammbücher, A-WbR, Handschriften, 74841 JA, volume 1, folio 37: ‘495. | Freund! | Vereinfache deine Bedürfnisse – deine Lebensweise – deinen Glauben, so wirst du, was übrig bleibt mit Besonnenheit geniessen. | Wien | Den 12ten Februar 1800. Fried. Seb. Meier mp | Schauspieler am K. K. | priv. Wiedner=Theater.’

17 For example, the so-called ‘Pa-pa-pa’ letter from Schikaneder to Mozart in A-WbR, Handschriften, Ja N 8.355. See Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe. Erweiterte Ausgabe, ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch, Joseph Heinz Eibl and Ulrich Konrad (Kassel: Bärenreiter/Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), volume 4, 532, volume 6, 676–677 and 728, and Branscombe, Peter, ‘ Die Zauberflöte: Some Textual and Interpretive Problems’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 92/1 (1965–1966), 4751 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 As Pauken means timpani, this might refer to a loud sound associated with flatulence. The word could also be an alternative spelling of Pocken, meaning pocks.

19 In 1799 Constanze Mozart referred to her husband's bawdy canons as having ‘boisterous texts’ (‘ausgelassene Texte’). See Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 4, 229.

20 On Mozart's use of this type of humour see Blümml, Emil Karl, Aus Mozarts Freundes- und Familienkreis (Vienna: Strache, 1923), 163179 Google Scholar; Winternitz, ‘Gnagflow Trazom’; Dundes, Life is like a Chicken Coop Ladder; Simkin, Medical and Musical Byways; Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt; and Mieder, Wolfgang, ‘“Now I Sit Like a Rabbit in the Pepper”: Proverbial Language in the Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, Journal of Folklore Research 40/1 (2003), 3370 Google Scholar.

21 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 2, 70–71.

22 Lewicki, Rudolf, ‘Aus Nissens Kollektaneen’, Mozarteums Mitteilungen 2/1 (1919), 2830 Google Scholar.

23 Blümml, Aus Mozarts Freundes- und Familienkreis, 172.

24 Hocquard, Jean-Victor, Mozart ou la voix du comique (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1999), 203 Google Scholar.

25 Winternitz, ‘Gnagflow Trazom’, 208. Jahn, Otto, W. A. Mozart (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1858)Google Scholar, volume 3, 337, points out that the word is heard as cujoni but does not explain its meaning.

26 Weber, Gottfried, ‘Originalhandschrift von Mozart’, Caecilia: Eine Zeitschrift für die musikalische Welt 1/2 (Mainz, 1824), 179182 Google Scholar: ‘Die Geschichte aber ist folgende. Der sonst treffliche Peierl hatte einige wunderliche Eigenheiten der Wortaussprache, über welche Mozart in freundlichem Umgange mit ihm und anderen Freunden, oft schertzte. Am einem Abende solchen fröhlichen Beisammenseins kam Mozarten der Einfall, ein Paar lateinische Wörter “Difficile lectu mihi” u.s.w. bei deren Absingen Peierls Aussprache in komischem Lichte hervortreten musste, zu einem Canon zu verarbeiten; und, in der Erwartung, dass dieser die Absicht nicht merken und in die Falle gehen werde, schrieb er gleich auf der Rückseite desselben Blattes den Spottkanon: O! du eselhafter Peierl!. Der Scherz gelang, und kaum waren jene wunderlichen lateinischen Worte aus Peierls Munde in der erwarteten komischen Weise zu allgemeinem Behagen gehört worden, so drehete Mozart das Blatt um, und liess nun die Gesellschaft, statt Applaus, den kanonischen Triumph- und Spottgesang anstimmen: O! du eselhafter Peierl!’ [The story is as follows. The otherwise excellent Peierl had some strange peculiarities in his pronunciation, at which Mozart often poked fun in friendly exchanges with him and other friends. On one evening in such cheerful company Mozart came up with the idea to prepare a canon with a few Latin words ‘Difficile lectu mihi’, etc., in which Peierl's pronunciation would, as the piece was sung, emerge in a comic light; and, in the expectation that Peierl would not notice his intent and instead fall into the trap, Mozart quickly wrote on the back of the same sheet the mocking canon: O! you ass-like Peierl! The joke succeeded, and hardly were those whimsical Latin words heard from Peierl's mouth in the expected comic way, to universal pleasure, when Mozart flipped over the sheet and the company, instead of applauding, broke into the canonic triumphal and mocking song: O! you ass-like Peierl!).

27 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 2, 14.

28 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 2, 104.

29 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 2, 246.

30 von Köchel, Ludwig Ritter, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts, eighth edition, ed. Giegling, Franz, Sievers, Gerd and Weinmann, Alexander (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1964)Google Scholar, appendix C 9 (Mehrstimmige Gesänge) and appendix C 10 (Kanons), 848–857.

31 von Köchel, Ludwig Ritter, Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amade Mozart's: Nebst Angabe der verloren gegangenen, angefangenen, übertragenen, zweifelhaften und unterschobenen Compositionen desselben (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1862), 529 Google Scholar.

32 See Sherman, Charles H. and Thomas, T. Donley, Johann Michael Haydn (1737–1806): A Chronological Thematic Catalogue of His Works (Stuyvesant: Pendragon, 1993), 223227 Google Scholar, Nos 700–726 (twenty-seven canons).

33 Sherman and Thomas, Johann Michael Haydn, 224 (No. 707).

34 Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt, 127–132.

35 The sources of many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century musical comedies are listed and discussed in Buch, David J., Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in the Eighteenth-Century Musical Theatre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 A wide variety of German comic texts from the eighteenth century is reproduced in Pirker, Max, Teutsche Arien, welche auf dem Kayserlich-privilegirten Wienerischen Theatro in unterschiedlich producirten Comoedien, deren Titul hier jedesmahl beigeruket, gesungen worden: Cod. ms. 12706–12709 der Wiener Nationalbibliothek (Vienna, Prague and Leipzig: Strache, 1927)Google Scholar.

37 Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt, 35–36.

38 Schikaneder, Emanuel, Der Spiegel von Arkadien: Eine grosse heroisch-komische Oper in zwey Aufzügen (Vienna: Ochß, 1795)Google Scholar, v–vi.

39 The censor from 1770 to 1804 was Franz Karl Hägelin. On Viennese censorship in this period see Glossy, Karl, ‘Zur Geschichte der Wiener Theatercensur. I’, Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft 7 (1897), 238340 Google Scholar; Schembor, Friedrich Wilhem, Meinungsbeeinflussung durch Zensur und Druckförderung in der Napoleonischen Zeit: Eine Dokumentation auf Grund der Akten der Obersten Polizei- und Zensurhofstelle (Vienna: author and die Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2010), 225245 Google Scholar; and Lisa de Alwis, ‘Censorship and Magical Opera in Early Nineteenth-Century Vienna’ (PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 2012).

40 See Buch, David J., ed., Two Operas from the Series ‘Die zween Anton’, Part 2: Die verdeckten Sachen (Vienna, 1789), Recent Researches in the Classical Era 98 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2016)Google Scholar, lvii and 225–228.

41 See Buch, David J., ed., Der Stein der Weisen, Recent Researches in the Classical Era 76 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2007)Google Scholar.

42 Mandolino's line, along with many others, is missing in a Berlin manuscript libretto that reduces the dialogue overall. For details on the opera's sources see Buch, David J., ed., Der wohltätige Derwisch (Vienna, 1791), Recent Researches in the Classical Era 81 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2010)Google Scholar.

43 Vulpius, Christian August, Die neuen Arkadier: Eine heroisch-komische Oper in zwei Aufzügen. Nach dem Spiegel von Arkadien gearbeitet (Weimar: Hoffmann, 1796)Google Scholar, Preface (unpaginated).

44 Schickaneder, Emanuel, Der Königssohn aus Ithaka. Eine grosse heroisch-komische Oper in 2 Aufzügen. Verfasst von Hrn. Emanuel Schikaneder. In Musik gesetzt von Hrn. Franz Anton Hoffmeister (Vienna: Hoffmeister, 1797)Google Scholar, Preface (unpaginated).

45 Schickaneder, Der Spiegel von Arkadien, 25.

46 Schikaneder, Emanuel, Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil unter dem Titel: Das Labyrinth oder der Kampf mit den Elementen . . . Vollständiges Textbuch, ed. Jahrmärker, Manuela and Waidelich, Till Gerrit (Tutzing: Schneider, 1992), 73 Google Scholar.

47 Johann Pezzl, Skizze von Wien, volume 5 (Vienna and Leipzig: Kraus, 1788), 802–803. Meyer, Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm, Friedrich Ludwig Schröder: Beitrag zur Kunde des Menschen und des Künstlers (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1819), 8586 Google Scholar. Allgemeines Theaterjournal 1/2 (Frankfurt am Main, 1792), 148–149. Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung 36 (12 October 1793), 141–142. Owen, John, Travels into Different Parts of Europe, in the Years 1791 and 1792 with Familiar Remarks on Places – Me – and Manners (London: Cadell and Davies, 1796)Google Scholar, volume 2, 430–431, quoted in Eisen, Cliff, ed., New Mozart Documents: A Supplement to O. E. Deutsch's Documentary Biography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 7677 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Richter, Josef, Die Eipeldauer Briefe 1785–1797, introduced and annotated by Eugen von Paunel, two volumes (Munich: Müller, 1917)Google Scholar, volume 1, 48 and 248–249. Ignaz von Seyfried, Skizze meines Lebens: Theilnehmenden Freunden zum Andenken gereicht, undated manuscript of 1824–1841, Vienna, Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Künste, shelfmark I. N. 36561, 6–7. Neukäufler, Jacob, Aus dem Leben eines Wanderschauspielers, ed. Schiffmann, Konrad (Linz: Flechtingers Erben, 1930), 94105 Google Scholar. Towson, Robert, Travels in Hungary with a Short Account of Vienna in the Year 1793 (London: Robinson, 1797), 16 Google Scholar. Bäuerle, Adolf, Bäuerle's Memoiren (Vienna: author, 1858)Google Scholar, volume 1, 29–36. Arndt, Ernst Moritz, Reisen durch einen Theil Teutschlands, Ungarns, Italiens und Frankreichs in den Jahren 1798 und 1799 (Leipzig: Gräff, 1804)Google Scholar, part 1, 242–243. Carl Joseph Schikaneder, ‘Emanuel Schikaneder’. Ignaz von Seyfried, ‘Commentar zur Erzählung’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 12/45–46 (1840), 179–180 and 183–184.

48 Kritisches Theater Journal von Wien: Eine Wochenschrift (Vienna: Ludwig, 1788–1789) and Allgemeines europäisches Journal (Brno: Trassler, 1794–1798).

49 Owen, Travels into Different Parts of Europe, 430.

50 Arndt, Reisen durch einen Theil Teutschlands, part 1, 242–243: ‘Er fröhnt geradezu seinem Publikum, und haut durch allen Geschmack und alle Sitten durch . . . . Es ist unglaublich, welche Zoten man für Witz und Albernheit verkauft’ (He perfectly indulges his audience, and violates all taste and all good manners . . . . It is incredible what vulgar jokes one can peddle as wit and tomfoolery); ‘Er spielt selbst zuweilen mit, mit seinem dicklichen und bäuchigen Körper, und macht Zoten und Schweinereyen, wofür er nur zu gewöhnlich beklatscht wird’ (He acts himself sometimes, with his plump and big-bellied body, and makes vulgar jokes and swinishness, for which he is only too commonly applauded).

51 von Seyfried, Ignaz, ‘Commentar zur Erzählung,’ Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 12/45 (2 June 1840), 180 Google Scholar.

52 Towson, Travels in Hungary, 16.

53 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 4, 110, 134–135 and 145.

54 Jahn, Otto, W. A. Mozart (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1859)Google Scholar, volume 4, 564–565; Jahn, , W. A. Mozart, second edition (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1867), volume 2, 466 Google Scholar.

55 Schlichtegroll, Friedrich, Nekrolog auf das Jahr 1791 (Gotha: Perthes, 1793)Google Scholar, volume 2, 82–112. Revised as Mozarts Leben (Graz: Hubeck, 1794; facsimile edition, ed. Joseph Heinz Eibl, Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1974), 30–31. My discussion of Schichtegroll's sources is based on Bruce Cooper Clarke, ‘Albert von Mölk: Mozart Myth-Maker? Study of an 18th-Century Correspondence’, Mozart-Jahrbuch (1995), 155–191.

56 See Anna Maria Mozart (and probably Albert von Mölk's) comments in letters of 1792 to Breitkopf & Härtel intended to help Schlichtegroll, in Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 4, 199–203: ‘blieb er fast immer ein Kind; und dies ist ein HauptZug seines Charakters auf der schattigten Seite; immer hätte er eines Vatters, einer Mutter, oder eines Aufsehers bedarfen; er konnte das Geld nicht regieren, heyrathete ein für ihn gar nicht passendes Mädchen gegen den Willen seines Vaters, und daher die große häusliche Unordnung bei und nach seinem Tod. . . . er das Geld nicht zu dirigiren wusste, wer ihm schmeichelte, der konnte alles von ihm erhalten’ (He was almost always a child, and this is a main feature of his character on the shady side; he always needed a father's or a mother's or a supervisor's care; he could not manage money, married a girl not at all suited for him against his father's will and thus [created] the greatest domestic chaos during and after his death. . . . He did not know how to manage money; whoever flattered him could get anything they wanted from him).

57 Schlichtegroll had contacted the important official and writer Baron Joseph Friedrich von Retzer, who served as secretary to the court censor and was a member of the masonic lodge Zur wahren Eintracht. It does not appear that Retzer responded. For details on Retzer see Hausner, Henry, ‘Bemerkungen zu Schlichtegrolls Mozart-Biographie’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 26 (1978), 2124 Google Scholar.

58 Schlichtegroll, Mozarts Leben, 30–31.

59 Friedrich Rochlitz, ‘Verbürgte Anekdoten aus Wolfgang Mozarts Leben, ein Beytrag zur richtigern Kenntnis dieses Mannes, als Mensch und Künstler’, Allegemeine Musikalische Zeitung 10 (5 December 1798), columns 148–149, anecdote No. 19. In his biography, Georg Nissen repeats Rochlitz's account almost literally. See Nissen, Georg Nikolaus, Biographie W. A. Mozart's: Nach Originalbriefen, Sammlungen alles über ihn Geschriebenen, mit vielen neuen Beylagen, Steindrücken, Musikblättern und einem Fac-simile (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1828 Google Scholar; reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1964), 547–548. Other eighteenth-century sources do not mention excesses or debauchery. For example, the notorious handwritten gossip sheet Der heimliche Botschafter (13 December 1791) referred to Mozart's ‘indifference to family circumstances’ (‘Sorglosigkeit für seine häuslichen Umstände’). See Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch, NMA X/34 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1961), 373.

60 Rochlitz, ‘Verbürgte Anekdoten’, Allegemeine Musikalische Zeitung 6 (7 November 1798), column 81, anecdote 9.

61 Franz Niemtschek, Leben des K. K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart (1798), 63: ‘Aber Mozart hatte auch Feinde, zahlreiche, unversöhnliche Feinde, die ihn auch nach seinem Tode noch verfolgten. Wie hätten ihm auch diese mangeln können, da er ein so großer Künstler und ein so gerader Mann war? Und diese sind die unlautere Quelle, aus welcher so viel häßliche Erzahlungen von seinem Leichtsinne, seinen Ausschweifungen gefloßen sind’ (But Mozart also had enemies, numerous irreconcilable enemies, who attacked him even after his death. How could he be lacking in them, for he was such a great artist and upright man? And these are the dishonest sources from which flowed so many ugly tales of his levity, his debauchery).

62 Arnold, Ignaz Ferdinand Cajetan, Mozarts Geist: Seine kurze Biographie und ästhetische Darstellung seiner Werke. Ein Bildungsbuch für junge Tonkünstler (Erfurt: Hennin, 1803), 6566 Google Scholar. Arnold was a lawyer, organist and writer of fantastic fiction.

63 In his autobiography, Reminiscences of Michael Kelly: Of the King's Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Including a Period of Nearly Half a Century, with Original Anecdotes of Many Distinguished Persons, Political, Literary, and Musical (London: Colburn, 1826), volume 1, 226, Kelly reported that Mozart was ‘remarkably fond of punch’ and he had seen him take ‘copious draughts’. Kelly also remarks on his own enjoyment of punch in other parts of his book.

64 Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard, ‘Anecdotes sur Mozart’, Mélanges de littérature 10 (1804; reprinted Geneva: Slatkine, 1971), 339: ‘J'ai entendu dire qu'il n'avait fait La Flûte enchantée que pour plaire à une femme de théâtre dont il était devenu amoureux, et qui avait mis ses faveurs à ce prix. On ajoute que son triomphe eut des suites bien cruelles, et qu'il en contracta une maladie incurable dont il mourut peu temp après. Ce fait me paraît peu vraisemblable: la “Flûte Enchantée” n'est pas le dernier de ses operas, et lorsque'il l'a composée sa santé était déjà fort altérée.’ (I heard it said that he had only written The Magic Flute to please the woman of the theatre with whom he had fallen in love, and who offered him her favours at this price. It is added that his triumph had very cruel consequences, and that he contracted from her an incurable disease and died soon after. This fact seems a bit unlikely to me: the ‘Magic Flute’ is not the last of his operas, and when he composed it, his health was already very much impaired.)

65 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 27 (25 May 1825), columns 349–350.

66 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (25 July 1827), column 519. Maximilian Keller probably wrote the obituary, although Anton Jähndl is also a possibility. Both were instrumental in transmitting Nissen's appeal to Schack, discussed below. See Robert Münster, ‘Nissens “Biographie W. A. Mozarts”: Zu ihrer Entstehungsgeschichte’, Acta Mozartiana 9/1 (1962), 2–14, and Rudolph Angermüller, ‘Aus dem Briefwechsel M. Kellers mit A. Jähndl: Neues zu Nissens Mozartbiographie’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 31/1–2 (1971), 25–27.

67 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (25 July 1827), column 521.

68 Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozart's, 672–673.

69 Nissen, Biographie W. A. Mozart's, 592.

70 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1858), volume 3, 233–234.

71 Max Johann Seidel, Biographische Notizen aus dem Leben des am 17.ten October 1837: Verstorbenen Großherzoglich-Sachsen-Weimarischen Kapellmeister und Ritter mehrer Orden Johann Nepomuk Hummel ersten Klavierspieler seiner Zeit, manuscript in Weimar, Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, shelf mark Q619, 38. Jahn cites Hummel's statement only in the second edition of W. A. Mozart (1867), volume 1, 710.

72 Bibliotheca Mozartiana der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, shelf mark A-Sm, Doc 1840c/1.

73 A number of studies have been devoted to Mozart's relations with Viennese Freemasons: for example, Landon, H. C. Robbins, Mozart and the Masons (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991)Google Scholar, and Irmen, Hans-Josef, Mozart: Mitglied geheimer Gesellschaften (Zülpich: Prisca, 1988)Google Scholar, trans. Ohm, Ruth and Speake, Chantal as Mozart's Masonry and the Magic Flute (Zülpich: Prisca, 1996)Google Scholar.

74 Pichler, Caroline, Denkwürdigkeiten aus meinem Leben (Vienna: author, 1844), ed. Blümml, Emil Karl, two volumes (Munich: Georg Müller, 1914)Google Scholar, volume 1 (1798–1813), 293–294.

75 Anonymous, ‘Die Entstehung der “Zauberflöte”’, Monatsschrift für Theater und Musik 2 (1857), 444–446. Reproduced in Nohl, Ludwig, Mozart nach den Schilderungen seiner Zeitgenossen (Leipzig: Thiel, 1880), 374379.Google Scholar Castelli, Ignaz F., Memoiren meines Lebens: Gefundenes und Empfundenes, Erlebtes und Erstrebtes (Vienna and Prague: Kober & Markgraf, 1861)Google Scholar, volume 1, 51, recalls that in the Freihaus courtyard there was a Gasthaus or Bierkneipe with a small garden where people would meet, play cards, carouse and joke, and where he heard anecdotes of earlier times. This would have been several years after Mozart's death. Later (page 111) Castelli mentions two Gasthäuser visited by the Wiednertheater actors and musicians (probably in the years 1797–1801).

76 Anonymous, ‘Die Entstehung der “Zauberflöte”’, 445.

77 On the friendship of Mozart and Gerl see Buch, David J., ‘Three Posthumous Reports Concerning Mozart in His Late Viennese Years’, Eighteenth-Century Music 2/1 (2005), 125126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1859), volume 4, 564–565.

79 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1867), volume 2, 466.

80 In the first English translation of Jahn's biography, Pauline Townsend rendered the term Ausschweifungen in this passage as ‘dissipation’, making it clear that she understood it as debauchery. See Otto Jahn, Life of Mozart, trans. Pauline Townsend, three volumes (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1882), volume 3, 281.

81 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1859), volume 4, 560. Stafford, William, The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, 121 and 124, briefly mentions Jahn's reference to the Barbara Gerl story, but does not appear to be aware of its origins.

82 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1859), volume 4, 563.

83 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1858), volume 3, 72–73, note 19.

84 Jahn, W. A. Mozart (1859), volume 4, 562. This description was possibly derived from Seyfried, ‘Commentar zur Erzählung’, 180, who describes Schikaneder as a ‘playboy, reveller, womanizer, parasite, frivolous spendthrift, and was often cornered by his debtors’ (‘Lebemann, Schwelger, Mädchenfreund, Parasit, leichtsinniger Verschwender, und oftmals arg von Schuldnern in die Enge getrieben’). It is important to note that one cannot find contemporary terms like dissoluto (as in Mozart's opera Il dissoluto punito ossai Il Don Giovanni), Schwelger (reveller), zügellos (wanton or without moral restraint) or unzüchtig (licentious) applied to Mozart during his lifetime or by anyone who knew him.

85 Schikaneder's character has been the subject of highly exaggerated claims as well. Schroeder, Mozart in Revolt, 180, states: ‘It appears that he [Schikaneder] left a trail of illegitimate children across Germany and Austria to women of various social ranks from actresses to the highest nobility.’ There are in fact only two documented illegitimate children, one with an actress and another with his maid. See Price, Henry, ‘Emanuel Schikaneder and Jakob Neukäufler: Family Affairs’, Mozart Studien 17 (2008), 347358 Google Scholar, and Lorenz, ‘Neue Forschungsergebnisse’.

86 For example, Solomon, Maynard, Mozart: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 479481 Google Scholar, accepts infidelity stories and refers to ‘Mozart's driving sexuality [and his] apparent inability to remain faithful to Constanze’.

87 Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 1, 275: ‘Ich möchte vor Pomeranschen sch: - - -’, and 400: ‘das man Pomeranzen scheißen möchte’.

88 Although examples of such word play are found in Mozart's intimate sexual references in letters to his wife (see, for example, Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, volume 4, 80–81), these should not be considered in the same category as his bawdy remarks and canons.

89 For example, the canon in the Act 2 finale of Mozart's Così fan tutte, ‘E nel tuo, mio bicchiero’, which may represent diegetic rather than non-diegetic music. Fiordiligi, Dorabella and Ferrando may actually sing a canon for their wedding toast as an appropriate stage action in the scene.