Exclusive: I’ve just heard Mozart’s dirtiest ditty
mainIt is no secret that Wolfie had a dirty mind and a filthy tongue.
The evidence is there for all to read in his family letters, which are full of body parts and what he’d like to do to them.
But no-one* has ever put on record the music that Mozart wrote to some of his smutty ditties.
Leck mich im Arsch, for instance. Loosely translated it means ‘lick my ass’, but the German is somehow more personal, prescriptive and – in the naughty music that Mozart composed to it – anatomically descriptive.
So no-one’s ever recorded it?
Well, Sabine Devieilhe has, on a new Warner album called ‘Mozart: The Weber Sisters’.
Slipped Disc has been sneaked an early listen of the offensive track, made all the more offensive by following on from a serene and beautiful account of Et Incarnatus Est from the Mass in C Minor, as sacred as it gets.
Sabine waves away the incense, then pitches into Lick My Ass, and with such commitment and gusto that she almost corpses at one point when she realises exactly what she’s singing. The record is out next week and you’d better find the track yourselves because I doubt many classical radio stations are going to be exhorting their listeners to get low down and dirty with one of the – hush – Great Composers. It’s about as low as classical music can go.
We’ll be offering a Slipped Disc prize to the first radio station that plays the track and translates it, fein schmeck and all.
And to the first reviewer that calls it a bummer.
*UPDATE: There is one prior recording. It’s by a straight-faced male choir and, by comparison to what we’ve just heard, totally po-faced.
You know, this euro-trash…
Just recovering from the Vienna Boy’s Choir’s recording of “Silent Night,” where there’s an added ditty sounding by the horn like Mary Poppins is tickling a Buffalo with a rather large umbrella (you know where).
It’s amazing when they have the chance to do something with all of their associations that it instead ends up being like one of those Euro-trash renditions of opera (what was it um whose theatre); and then you have this out of place stuff.
A one and a two and a…..we have AGAIN a dead beat here, it seems.
And, um, I’m sure two very straight “laced” versions, again….without free association or added media.
Norman,
For us in France, Sabine Devieilhe is already a Living National Treasure (as they have in Japan).
To launch the CD at Paris’ Philharmonie, she will perform a live recital on December 14.
I will report back to you, if she sings Leck mich im Arsch, and be on the watch for the public’s reaction!
🙂
Thank you! I’ll be waiting for your report with baited breath!
Excellent, Marc-Antoine. Let’s hope she supplies a translation… N
A little report where the performers talk about the album (minus the naughty ditties, which are merely mentioned as “surprises” at the end of the album). Interesting nonetheless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlnCs5eEZs8
I really do hope they get the German expression correct: ‘Leck mir am Arsch’ and not ‘Leck mir imArsch…….!! Oh dear…
But that’s what Mozart wrote. It would go against Historically Informed Practice to change it.
Oops, just seen that tha’s what our Amadeus in fact wrote!
*im* is even more disturbing than *am*
This whole business leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Bravo Norman! A few days ago I wrote that had Mozart had a smartphone, you would be publishing his home made videos on this blog. Technology wise, this is the closest you can get to that. I am starting to suspect that I have some psychic abilities after all.
The first recording dates from 1967: http://www.worldcat.org/title/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-is-a-dirty-old-man-the-scatological-canons-and-songs-english-version-by-anne-grossman/oclc/30003542?referer=di&ht=edition
I was wondering when someone would mention that one. I’ve never seen it in a CD version.
Absolutely inspiring! Specially the last paragraph.
We need more info…please!
In the interest of complete truth in journalism: The Song Company in Australia also recorded the scatological canons and songs of Mozart with fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster for a CD released back in 1992 on the Tall Poppies label. http://www.fishfinemusic.com.au/products/TP009/The-Song-Company/Mozart-Unexpurgated/CD
The album is on Spotify, but that song is missing. It ends with Et Incarnatus Est
The song was also included in Philips’ Mozart Edition – Arias Vocal Ensebles etc Vol 3, performed by Chorus Viennensis
I have received the CD and can report finding Leck mich im Arsch!
In the booklet, one is driven to believe that Mozart wrote this after “Aloysia’s feelings for him had altered”.
Raphaël Pichon, the conductor who also wrote the booklet text in the CD, adds in the English translated notes: “All the indications are that he (Mozart) sang a personalized version of a tune better known today from the canons Mozart later derived from it: Leck mich am Arsch. The German phrase should be understood here in a context of rejection – in other words, ‘Those who don’t like me can get stuffed’ “.
In the original French text, the note adds that Leck mich am Arsch is “a popular germanic expression”.
So it could mean in French: “Ceux qui ne m’aiment pas, je les emmerde!”.
It is there; it continues after Et Incarnatus Est.
There is something close to the piece under discussion on record: the canon “Difficile lectu mihi Mars” (with its naughty bilingual punning) on the Seraphim LP “The Comic Mozart.”