"We all know the man­child Mozart of Milos Forman's 1984 biopic Amadeus. As embod­ied by a man­ic, bray­ing Thomas Hulce, the pre­co­cious and haunt­ed com­pos­er sup­pos­ed­ly loved noth­ing more than scan­dal­iz­ing, amus­ing, or exas­per­at­ing friends and ene­mies alike with juve­nile pranks and scat­o­log&i­cal humor. Sure­ly a fic­tion, eh? Gross exag­ger­a­tion, no? Undoubt­ed­ly Mozart com­port­ed him­self with more dig­ni­ty? Those famil­i­ar with the composer's biog­ra­phy know oth­er­wise."
"We have, for exam­ple, a ridicu­lous­ly dirty let­ter that the 21-year-old "poop-lov­ing musi­cal genius" wrote to his 19-year-old cousin Marianne-a mis­sive Let­ters of Note pref­aces with the dis­claimer "if you're eas­i­ly offend­ed, please do not read any fur­ther" (oh, but how can you resist?). This piece of cor­re­spon­dence is but one of many "shock­ing­ly crude let­ters" Mozart wrote to his fam­i­ly."
Mozart's public image as a precocious, haunted childlike genius belies documented evidence of crude personal behavior. He wrote blatantly scatological, playful letters to family, including a notorious missive to his cousin Marianne that contains explicit bathroom humor. He also composed bawdy canons such as Leck Mich Im Arsch ("Kiss My Ass"), a six-voice canon in B-flat featuring obscene lyrics like "Good night, sleep tight, / And stick your ass to your mouth." One such canon, composed in 1782, was discovered at Harvard in 1991. Harvard librarian Michael Ochs characterized these pieces as minor works intended for private amusement rather than grand public compositions.
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