Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci DOI 10.1007/s00406-013-0474-4

ORIGINAL PAPER

Do features of Mozart’s letter-writing style indicate the presence of a neuropsychiatric disorder? Controversies about the Ba¨sle letters H.-J. Mo¨ller

Received: 26 July 2013 / Accepted: 12 November 2013  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Abstract In recent decades, several scientific publications have come to the conclusion that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart might have had a Tourette syndrome. Other papers, however, have questioned this hypothetical diagnosis. The evidence for this diagnosis was mostly based on the socalled Ba¨sle letters, letters that Mozart wrote to his cousin when aged around 20 years. The letters have common stylistic characteristics such as frequent mention of erotic topics and, in particular, intensive use of scatological terms. However, these characteristics cannot be interpreted as clearly indicating a Tourette syndrome but may rather be related to psychosocial and cultural aspects of that time. There is little evidence for a Tourette syndrome from other sources, such as reports of behavioural abnormalities, and the evidence is not convincing. Keywords Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Tourette syndrome
Ba¨sle letters
Language abnormalities

Introduction The ‘Ba¨sle Briefe’ (Ba¨sle letters), conspicuous for their excessive wordplay, were often omitted from the editions of Mozart’s letters, Mozart biographies and research on Mozart because of their silliness, obscenities and coprolalia. They were considered indecent and not fitting to the dignity of Mozart’s genius. Although the 1914 critical complete edition by L. Schiedemaier, ‘Erste Briefe W.A.

H.-J. Mo¨ller (&) Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Nussbaumstrasse 7, 80336 Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

Mozarts und seiner Familie’ [‘First letters by W.A. Mozart and his Family’, author’s translation], published the letters, it omitted the offensive parts. The letters were only published in full later on in the twentieth century [6, 14, 40, 53], also in English editions [2, 49]. The Ba¨sle letters are nine surviving letters (another 2 were lost or purposefully destroyed) that Mozart sent between 1777 and 1781 to his 3-year younger cousin AnnaMaria Thekla Mozart in Augsburg. Mozart had met his cousin on his concert tours as a child and then again as a young man. She clearly must have very much impressed and erotically fascinated him in a biographically highly sensitive period of his life. Unfortunately, her letters of reply have not been preserved. One can conclude from respective statements in Mozart’s letters, however, that she replied and obviously had no objections to the sometimes very crude content. The peculiarities in style and content of the Ba¨sle letters have been interpreted in various ways. Stefan Zweig, who drew Sigmund Freud’s attention to the Ba¨sle letters in a letter dated 16 June 1931, suggested a sexual neurosis in terms of ‘infantilism’ and ‘passionate coprolalia’, in accordance with Freud’s psychoanalytical theory [8]. Humanistic literature referred among other things to Mozart’s pleasure in playing with words and the rhythm of language. This interpretation was developed further by suggestions that Mozart dealt with language primarily from a musical standpoint [4, 23, 46], and various musical forms, such as the sonata, toccata and rondo, were even proposed as the stylistic device. In recent years, the Ba¨sle letters have been interpreted from a medical–psychiatric viewpoint as the expression of a possible underlying neuropsychiatric disorder, a Gilles de La Tourette syndrome [27, 47, 48]. However, the medical– psychiatric literature has argued about Mozart just as intensively as the humanistic literature has [4, 25, 32, 47].

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In view of the lack of adequate documents on Mozart’s medical history and of clear biographical indications, every hypothesis about Mozart’s illnesses, in particular the Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, has to be considered very carefully since it cannot be adequately proven [9, 10, 27, 38]. The interpretations of the Ba¨sle letters as an indication of a Gilles de la Tourette syndrome cannot be justified on the basis of individual characteristics consistent with Tourette symptoms. Instead, a much further reaching analysis of the following aspects, among others, is required: •

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Mozart’s personality: Do the stylistic characteristics of his letters perhaps derive simply from certain structures in Mozart’s personality? Styles and modes of expression typical for the time: Was Mozart alone in his tendency towards obscenities and playfulness in his style of expression? Contextual situational conditions: Do the peculiarities only appear in the Ba¨sle letters or also in a similar form in other letters? Expressive and intentional aspects: What did Mozart want to say or achieve with these peculiarities of content and expression? Aspects of his biography and medical history: What indications from biographical sources support the hypothesis that Mozart had Tourette syndrome?

A careful analysis of the above points may reach conclusions that contradict interpreting Mozart’s means of expression/behaviour patterns as involuntary or absurd (and also experienced as absurd by Mozart) and requiring explanation as symptoms of a neuropsychiatric disorder. It is therefore not only a matter of describing the characteristics of the Ba¨sle letters but also of both clarifying whether there is any justification for interpreting features of style and content as psychopathological phenomena and examining whether they are prototypical for a particular neuropsychiatric disorder. A careful analysis of the abovementioned aspects guarantees that a neuropsychiatric explanation is not given over-hastily and one-sidedly.

Brief characterization of Mozart’s personality It is difficult to gain a uniform picture of Mozart’s personality [33]. The inadequate historical sources and the often subjectivistic idealizations or representations marked by the respective spirit of the time prevent us from achieving a consistent and realistic picture of his character. Therefore, important older and newer Mozart biographies [1, 12, 15, 18, 21, 22, 35, 36, 44, 54] can only give an approximate description of Mozart’s personality. Mozart’s external appearance appears to have been less striking than in some of the portraits of Mozart we are

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familiar with, which tend to idealize him. Thus, when Tieck saw him in Berlin in 1789, for example, he described him as ‘small, quick, agile, with funny eyes and an unsightly figure’. He was taller than 150 cm, rather corpulent in his later years, had a large head, plump nose and skin marred by smallpox scars and was obviously not very attractive [26]. Mozart’s gaze, described as erratic and darting, may have been related to myopia. He loved strong colours, above all red. His constant inner restlessness was reflected in external activity: his hands in constant nervous movement, his hasty way of talking, his inclination to dance, go bowling and play billiards and other games. His naivety in many practical aspects of life is described on the one hand as a pleasant characteristic trait, but on the other hand, it surely limited him in the effective implementation of his interests. His ability to surrender to all earthly pleasures is emphasized time and again. Several testimonials describe his incompetence or generosity with money. He obviously lived according to the maxim ‘Easy come, easy go’. Some authors even suspect that he was a gambler. The main argument to support this theory is that he had a large income but still became impoverished [30]. Mozart’s oft-cited love of coquetry and frivolities was perhaps mainly an expression of the standard of living and way of life of the rococo period [14]. Overall, only very little is known about Mozart’s relationship with women. Even his relationship with his wife Constanze, who apparently showed very little interest in his genius, remains largely in the dark [7]. We also know hardly anything about Mozart in his role as a father. Some documents make it clear that Mozart, probably like most of the people at that time, was much more aware of death than we are today. Death at a young age was part of everyday life (several of Mozart’s children died young). People therefore dealt with death completely differently than today, when people reach a significantly higher age on average [23]. This may have resulted in the psychologically understandable counter-reaction that Mozart, like his contemporaries, tried to enjoy every minute of life all the more intensively. His love of life and high spirits, which strongly contrasted his rather achievement-oriented father, were discussed in detail in the Mozart biography by Leonhart [30], among others. He was the exuberant genius who did not feel comfortable merely in regulated service as a court musician or when completing a daily workload of music as a concert musician or composer. He generally did not like being committed to family and social purposes and control systems [23], which resulted in many short- and long-term conflicts. Despite his early successes, which were supported by his father, in the long term Mozart did not manage to create an adequate economic base from his brilliant creative abilities. Unfortunately, he obviously lacked the necessary talent to

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adapt socially and the ruthless sense of purpose that he would have needed to remain permanently at the forefront of the musical ranks. However, Mozart was fully aware of his own worth and was proud in the original meaning of the word, which may have made him a number of personal enemies. Aterman [4] places special emphasis on Mozart’s love of fun and clownery, which was particularly relevant as concern the Ba¨sle letters. He notes the following: ‘… For another striking characteristic of Mozart’s personality was his love of ‘‘fun’’, his pleasure in being ‘‘merry’’ (20 December 1777), and his inclination to play the ‘‘clown’’, the ‘‘fool’’ (‘‘der na¨hmliche Narr’’, 25 October 1777), the ‘‘Hanswurst’’, as Nannerl called him [16]. It is immaterial whether this was an innate tendency or merely a mask to conceal his inner personality, as some have suggested [14, 22]. What matters here is that, despite his tendency towards depressive mood fluctuations, which appear not to have fulfilled the criteria for major depression [33], Mozart had, in von Nissen’s words, ‘‘an excessive inclination to frolic, to be merry’’ and he ‘‘retained this youthful waggery to his death’’ [14, 54]. Whether these and similar personality traits or behaviour characteristics (see also below!) are sufficient to diagnose a hyperthymic personality or even a bipolar II disorder [10] at least requires further investigation. Already in 1763, when his son was 8 years old, Leopold had remarked that Wolfgang was ‘‘quite extraordinarily merry but also naughty’’ [15], and Mozart retained ‘‘to the end of his life the delight in the twisting words, childish nicknames, funny nonsense, merry filth’’ [15]. This ‘‘excessively developed sense of the comic…’’, this ‘‘unruly and untamed’’ though ‘‘not sublime’’ humour [22] was served well by another significant trait of Mozart’s intellect—his mastery of language. Mozart had an extraordinary ability to express his verbal phantasy, an enjoyment of, and facility in the formation of associations [22] and the ‘‘varied differentiation and staggering of the scale of plays on words and puns’’ [14]. But this ‘‘phenomenal’’ [22] verbal agility in turn was helped, indeed conditioned and determined, by Mozart’s all-pervading, all-dominating musical creativity’ [4, pp. 252–253]. Kubba and Young [27] mention various linguistic features that they think indicate that Mozart may have had Tourette syndrome. They write that 45 of 371 letters (12.1 %) written by Mozart contained scatalogical text. The letters mention buttocks, defaecation, faeces, anus, etc., i.e. coprolalia. Wordplays and twisting of words occur often in Mozart’s letters and conversations. Other peculiarities include repetitions of words heard or written by others (echolalia) or repetitions of his own words (palilalia). Simkin [48] reaches similar conclusions and refers to various life phases in which scatology is particularly

common. These life phases are marked by strong emotions. He also makes clear that the scatological letters pertain almost exclusively to the direct family environment and not to outsiders.

Features of the content and style of the Ba¨sle letters and of Mozart’s letters to others The Ba¨sle letters have a special position among Mozart’s letters, for one reason because almost all of them have scatological content or other peculiarities of language. Mozart researchers have therefore long been interested in them, and their interest continues [14, 21, 28, 29, 37, 42, 52, 55, 56]. An excerpt of the concluding section of the sixth letter is reprinted below to give readers not familiar with the Ba¨sle letters an impression of their stylistic peculiarities [49]: But all jokinggg aside – it’s precisely for this reason that I need you to come and stay – for you might have an important role to play; – so be sure to come, even for a bit, otherwise we’ll be in deep shit. I shall greet you high and nobly with pizazz and put my personal seal on your ass, I will kiss your hands and have such fun shooting off my rear-end gun, I shall Embrace you with a smack and wash you down front and back, I shall pay up all I owed you from the start and then let go a resounding fart, and perhaps even drop something hard – well, adieu, my Angel, my heart, I’m waiting for you with a smart, please send me right at this moment a little note of about 24 pages to Munich, Poste restante, but don’t tell me where in Munich you will be, so I won’t find you and you can’t find me; – votre sincere Cousin, W.A. P.S. Shit-dibatare, shit-dibitate, the pastor of Rodempl, he licked the ass of his kitchen maid, to set a good example; Vivat – vivat – This letter gives an example of some of the peculiarities in style and content of the Ba¨sle letters. The actual subject matter of the letter is repeatedly interrupted by different characteristics of style and content, such as repetitions, twisting of words, reversing of letter order, alliterations, rhymes, vulgar language, obscenities and faecal language. This becomes much more predominant than the actual subject matter of the letters, particularly at the end of each letter. Mozart often refers to himself with other names, such as ‘Rosenkranz’ (rosary), for example. This style of letter writing is more or less strongly pronounced in the other Ba¨sle letters. When reading them, one can feel the erotic charge that clearly characterized

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Mozart’s relationship with his cousin. One can assume, to the extent that the available sources provide any information at all, that his cousin was a young woman brimming over with a love of life and erotic vibrancy who was completely open towards the erotic. In this respect, she may have had similarities with Mozart’s later wife Constanze. At the time of their correspondence, Mozart was a young man aged 21–25 years and his sexual-erotic ardour must have made him particularly receptive to his cousin’s charms. A careful inspection and exact analysis of all of Mozart’s remaining letters show that such stylistic peculiarities are particularly pronounced in the Ba¨sle letters, especially obscenities and elements of faecal language. Ortheil [37] also points this out. He carefully examines the content and style of Mozart’s letters and the context of Mozart’s respective life situation. On the basis of his exact analysis of the Mozart letters, he clearly shows that Mozart adapted the stylistic and linguistic characteristics of his letters, depending on the addressee and situation, and that he used certain styles and language at least in part intentionally. Ortheil makes this clear by describing Mozart’s completely different letter-writing style when corresponding to his father [37]. Mozart’s numerous letters to his father, apparently the largest group of surviving letters, represent a completely different style of Mozart letters than the Ba¨sle letters. Most of them are relatively matter-of-fact reports, for instance reports about experiences during concert tours, and about his own compositions and their performance. Faecal language and obscene elements are relatively seldom. Wordplays do appear, although only in some of the letters, and are sometimes extremely concentrated, so much so that they are completely in the foreground in comparison with the actual subject matter of the letter: … but I don’t want to talk about things before their time. Everything will turn out fine. Maybe I can report to you in my next letter about something that is very good for you but only good for me, or something that is very bad in your eyes, but Acceptable in mine, perhaps also something Acceptable to you, however, very good, dear, and precious for me! That is all rather like an oracle, isn’t it? – well, it sounds mysterious but can be understood. (November 22, 1777) [49]. One gets the impression that Mozart specifically uses these stylistic devices to keep his father at bay—his father repeatedly put pressure on his son to give him exact details about travel plans, future plans, financial matters, etc.—and to avoid this outside control of his lifestyle, which he perceived as being an unpleasant meddling in his autonomy. However, some of the letters to his father are

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completely the opposite and contain absolutely no stylistic escapades, such as the famous letter from 9 July 1778, for example, in which Mozart writes to his father from his concert tour to Paris, on which he was accompanied by his mother, and informs him completely seriously and with suitable diction about his mother’s unexpected death. This letter is impressive because it expresses pain and sorrow— which break through musically in a positively eruptive manner in his piano sonata in A minor that was written at the same time—in a rather tempered and linguistically subdued style that is more suited to an elegant style of letter writing. This letter in particular is an example of how Mozart far from always used the described linguistic peculiarities that are suspected of indicating a Tourette syndrome, let alone was overwhelmed by them in terms of tics or automatisms. Mozart’s letters to his father are written in a different style than those to his wife. In the letters to his wife, particularly the later letters that he wrote to her during her frequent stays at the health resort in Baden (near Vienna, Austria)—a time in which the relationship between the couple had clearly become very difficult, among other things because of the increasingly catastrophic outward circumstances—Mozart often appears as a tender, yearning husband who is worried about his wife. He hardly uses coprolalia and obscenities at all, even though he makes very clear erotic insinuations in some of his letters. Some of the letters are characterized among other things by the repetition of teasing pet names and other endearments and by stylistic features that conjure up the couple’s closeness and intimacy. He almost appears to be like Papageno in the Magic Flute, who had all kinds of colourful ideas to win over his ‘little woman’. In addition to this content, which is presented with corresponding stylistic devices, the letters also express concerns about his wife’s fidelity (justified concerns, as we know from other documents!), concerns about his wife’s health and reports about current, often burdensome everyday occurrences. The respective sections of the letters mostly do not contain any conspicuous stylistic features. The letters addressed to other people differ in style, depending on the type and closeness of the relationship to these people. These letters rarely contain as many stylistic peculiarities, and in such density, as the Ba¨sle letters. In particular, excesses of obscenity and faecal language— which are almost exclusively found in the Ba¨sle letters— are mostly lacking. If faecal language is used, then in a way that, although drastic, is not completely unusual in everyday language, i.e. it is not used with the excessive creativity of the Ba¨sle letters. Two letters (from the end of May 1791 and from 12 July 1791) to the choir director Stoll from Baden near Vienna (for whom Mozart probably wrote the ‘Ave Verum’,

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another famous sacral work from the last year of Mozart’s life, besides the Requiem) illustrate the above. The letters talk about performance materials from two of Mozart’s masses, which had been performed in Baden, as well as the fact that Stoll should rent an apartment for Constanze Mozart in Baden. The highly pregnant woman, who was supposed to give birth to their youngest son Franz Xaver Mozart (whom she later renamed Wolfgang Amadeus the second) on 26 July, stayed once in a while in the spa town 20 km south of Vienna. Mozart visited her there several times and is sure to have become acquainted with Stoll during the visits. Both letters do, however, contain verbal jokes, obscenities of Mozart’s, which make it so difficult for us to understand how immortal masterpieces could have been created at the same time. The first letter—with the heading ‘Dear old Stoll! Don’t be a poll!’ and the postscript ‘This is the silliest letter I have ever written in my life; but it is just the very thing for you’ [2]—can still be described as harmless, but the second is coarser. At the start, Mozart rhymes in the style of a drinking companion: ‘Stoll, my dear, You’re a little bit queer, And an ass, I fear. You’ve been swilling some beer! The minor, I hear, Is what tickles your ear!’, but he writes on the reverse side of the letter in feigned handwriting and dates and signs it as follows: Shitting-house, July12th/Franz Su¨ssmayer/Muckshitter [2]. The coarseness of this letter reminds one of the ways that drinking companions in a pub talk to each other. Both musicians clearly enjoyed alcohol, knew each other quite well and cultivated this mode of communication. Su¨ssmayer was a pupil of Mozart who often stayed in Baden and is suspected to have been his wife’s lover. Aterman [4] points out the differences in Mozart’s style of letter writing when one compares his letters to his first great love, the soprano Aloisia Weber, his supporter Baroness Waldsta¨tter and his cousin Anna Maria Thekla: ‘He adores Aloisia and writes to her with the restraint of an ‘‘honneˆte homme’’ [a perfect gentleman] [45]—no trace of vulgarity in his cultivated language. He is on easy terms with his friend, the Baroness Waldsta¨tten of questionable repute, but the language of his allusions, although not subtle, is not as ‘‘outspoken’’ as it is in the letters to his cousin, where his ‘‘coprolalia’’ has become a focal point of attention. Anna Maria Thekla was a young girl of his social standing who seemed to understand and enjoy his humour, for she ‘‘is also a little naughty. Together we have fun teasing people…’’ [23]. In other words, he felt at ease with Thekla. Despite their notoriety, these letters to her contain only few sexual allusions; again, their ‘‘smut’’ deals mainly—to use Leopold Mozart’s circumlocution—with ‘‘crepitus ventri’’ and its accompaniments. In his letter to his mother of 31 January 1778, Mozart uses almost all the notorious and indecent words and phrases that can be found in the Ba¨sle letters [14]—another indication that Mozart

knew what language he could use with whom, for his mother too could understand and use the Mozartian lingo’ [4, p. 257]. Exactly, this differentiation in style and content in Mozart’s letters, depending on the addressee, situation and intention, makes clear that he was an expert in using language and obviously did not go off the rails in his letters or was forced to use these peculiarities of language or style because of tics or other neuropsychiatric symptoms. Aterman counters the proposed neuropsychiatric symptoms with an artistic/musical interpretation of the Mozart letters: ‘‘‘For Mozart language was only an instrument with which he could make music’’ [55]. At times Mozart’s letters read as if they were libretti, as Hildesheimer’s [23] analysis of one of the ‘‘Ba¨sle-Briefe’’ (13 November 1777) shows; the letter is opera seria written in Mozartian colloquilisms! Some of his other letters—Hildesheimer gives the example of the ‘‘Ba¨sle Brief’’ of 28 February 1778— read as if they had been composed and written in sounds— word music, recalling his style of composition and producing ‘‘by their disparate and seemingly arbitrary combination of sounds… euphonia and rhythm…’’ [23], rather than conveying information. This fusion of certain personality traits—the ‘‘untamed humour’’, the ‘‘verbal phantasy’’, the proclivity to form ‘‘chains of associations’’, and the extension of musical creativity and style onto the written word—may offer us another key to understanding some features that have led to the putative diagnosis of Mozart’s affliction by Tourette syndrome, namely his ‘‘echolalia’’, ‘‘palilalia’’ and ‘‘love of nonsense words’’’ [4, p. 253, 43].

Faecal and vulgar language as a mode of expression typical of the time It should be noted that in earlier times all matters of digestion and excretion were mentioned in everyday conversation much more openly than today—one only needs to think of the famous Luther citation—and such references can therefore not necessarily be interpreted as expressing the coarsening of a personality or even as a psychopathological symptom. One must also remember that coarseness was nothing unusual in the language used outside the courts and was common as an intended contrast to courtly language, particularly in private settings. This reminds us of the ‘Hans Wurst’, a well-known figure on the stage whose foolishness and coarseness and frequent talent for basic jokes and shrewdness contrasted the stilted courtly figures on the stage. If one considers the above, it is not surprising that Mozart even composed pieces of music with coarse language, such as the canons ‘Lick me in the arse’ and ‘Good night! You are quite an ox’, which were clearly

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meant for sociable drinking sessions or set in the context of such drinking sessions. In 1992 Simkin, who attempted to deduce the hypothesis of a Tourette disorder from Mozart’s letters, wrote an interesting essay [48] in which he reported the frequency of scatological letters among the letters by Mozart and his family. He came to the conclusion that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used elements of faecal language most often in his letters. His results and his subsequent conclusion regarding a Tourette syndrome were critically commented on by Aterman in 1994. Some of the important points made by Aterman [4] are as follows: ‘Of Anna Maria Mozart’s [Mozart’s mother] 40 letters, for instance, only one (2.5 %) is stated by Simkin to be scatalogical, compared with 39 out of 371 (10.5 %) of Wolfgang’s letters. Since, however, ‘‘few letters from her pen… have been preserved’’ [45], this figure tell us little about the possible scatological propensities of Mozart’s mother. Leopold Mozart, the father, who ‘‘for anger could shit oranges’’ (13 September 1768, 3rd November 1770) [14] and who repeatedly taunts the printer of the ‘‘Violin-Schule’’ about of his ‘‘daily and nightly fiddling exercises with his wife’’ [14, 23], is similarly stated as having written only one scatalogical letter in his extensive correspondence (0.3 %)’. [4]. Aterman questions this finding by referring to several such letters, e.g. ‘… the letter in which he described to his daughter Nannerl how his grandson Leopold ‘‘eats, shits and pisses for the fatherland’’ (5 January 1786) or the letter in which Leopoldl merely ‘‘pisses, shits and vomits’’ (19 November 1775) [14]’ as well as the letter to his wife dated 29 June 1778, which he concluded with the words ‘… a million kisses and lickings but not on your a—’ [4]. Aterman mentions another letter in which ‘Old Mozart commiserated with Wolfgang’s complaint about the discomfort of coach travel by describing (11 November 1780) how his own ‘‘poor arse’’ had once suffered so from the ‘‘terrible blows’’ of the mail coach that, out of regard for his own two ‘‘plum pits’’ (testicles), Leopold would never again use the coach [4, p. 249, 23]’. Aterman refers to the analysis of Mozart’s language by Eibl and Senn [14], which contains other examples of the importance of elements of faecal language in Mozart’s family. This analysis allows Aterman ‘… to pinpoint another—crucial—fallacy in Simkin’s assertions: his statement that Emily Anderson was wrong when she maintained that ‘‘…. certainly his [Mozart’s] mother and very probably the whole family and indeed many of their Salzburg friends were given to these indelicate jests’’’ [4, p. 249]. Aterman continues that ‘Anderson [3] was not alone in expressing this view. Mozart’s scatological humour ‘‘… corresponded to a social norm even indulged in by his severe father’’ [51] and ‘‘certainly his family enjoyed scatological humour of a crude kind’’ [50]. Eleven

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years after Anna Maria, Mozart’s mother, wrote a scatological poem to her husband (26 September 1777), Mozart included a remembered version of it in his canon (KV 561), ‘‘bona nox, bist a rechta ox’’ (‘‘Bona nox, you’re a real ox’’) [14]. On no occasion were Mozart’s scatologies met with parental opprobrium, not even when he, for instance, in some letters encoded ‘‘Papa’’ by ‘‘Pfeif mir im Arsch, pfeif mir im Arsch’’ (‘‘Blow in my arse, blow in my arse’’)—probably an allusion to a toy, a little horse with a pipe in its rear, given to Leopoldl [14]. On the contrary: When Wolfgang in a letter to his father (17 October 1777) characterized the visitors to his concert in Augsburg by bestowing on them scatological names—‘‘the Duchess Arsebuzz, the Countess Liketopiss, the Princess Smellmuck’’—Leopold (20 October 1777) requested a ‘‘continuation… of the Duchess Arsebuzz etc.’’ [14]. In another letter (5 February 1778) Leopold reminded Mozart of the occasion when Nannerl, invited to a supper in society, ‘‘let go a little fart’’ [4, pp. 249–250, 14]’. According to Aterman, this ‘robust’ language was not ‘limited to the inner family circle… as evidenced by the designs and descriptions of the painted target disks that the Mozarts prepared for their bow-and-arrows competitions and gatherings of friends’ [4, p. 250, 14]. As another example, Aterman refers to a poem [16] that Rosalie Joly, a friend of Mozart’s sister Nannerl, wrote for Mozart on the occasion of his name day (Patron Saint’s Day). It starts with the sentence: ‘Fortuna, who here has shown you only her arse, her lower face…’. On the basis of examples such as this one, Aterman reaches the conclusion that to view Simkin’s interpretations of Mozart’s language peculiarities ‘… as a personal character trait rather than a group characteristic is not quite convincing’ [4, p. 250]. This was attempted in some detail in another analysis by Aterman [5]. ‘For instance, it is important to keep in mind, as Hildesheimer [23] remarked, that in the eighteenth century bodily functions and their appropriate organs were not generally referred to by their Latin names but by colloquial expressions, which only later came to be perceived as ‘‘vulgar’’. This language was not limited to the ‘‘lower classes’’, as Einstein [15] emphasized when he pointed out that ‘‘uninhibited allusion to intimate acts was not limited to the lower or middle layers of society… Things were called by their proper names…’’. Eibl und Senn [14] similarly drew attention to the ‘‘robust expressions’’ used by the nobility of Salzburg in daily language; they cited verbatim relevant parts of the discussion between Counts Starhemberg and Arco pertaining to Mozart’s dismissal from service. With the gradual refinement of the tastes and notions of propriety held by the rising middle class (Constanze Mozart’s assessment of her husband’s ‘‘Ba¨sleBriefe’’ as ‘‘lacking in taste, but nevertheless very witty’’ [14, 23] can serve as an example), the language changed.

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This change, however, affected mainly the upper layers of society; the rest of the population—including musicians, the ‘‘court toadies’’ [16]—persisted in using the traditional ‘‘homegrown’’ vocabulary used by their forebears, some of which lives on in parts of the Salzburg-Bavarian plain [34]. When, for instance, Mozart realized that Aloisia Weber had rejected him, he sang a ditty… whose scatological punch line much later recurred in a popular Bavarian four-liner and is still used as a ‘‘friendly, naive-joking invitation’’ [14] known to many students of German as the famous, truculent exclamation from Goethe’s ‘‘Go¨tz von Berlichingen’’ (‘‘Tell him, to kiss my—’’)’ [4, pp. 250–251]. Aterman points out some parallels ‘… between the ‘‘eccentricities’’ of Mozart’s letters and Goethe’s ‘‘unseemly’’ writings, although Goethe’s elegance of language and style cannot be compared! Like Mozart’s Ba¨sle Briefe, Goethe’s Roman Elegies and Epigrams were not published during his lifetime because of their uninhibited language [24]. In their Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch [German dictionary] (1854) the brothers Grimm [19] repeatedly cite Goethe when they want to illustrate a point. Under ‘‘Schwanz’’ (tail), for instance, they describe the obvious meaning of ‘‘cauda’’, but also point out that the term was also used colloquially by some as a deprecating, not necessarily offensive expression for a man, a miserable little fellow, and by others for a blustering fop and boasting fool…. Despite his proclivity to ‘‘robust banter’’, it is not always clear from Mozart’s letters—he repeatedly used the term ‘‘Schwanz’’—which of the several meanings he wanted to convey. Another parallel between the ‘‘vulgar’’ of these two men is Mozart’s ‘‘Urscherl with the cold arse’’ (17 February 1770) and ‘‘Ursula with the cold hole’’ (13 August 1784), who appears also in Goethe’s Hanswursts Hochzeit oder Der Lauf der Welt [Hanswurst’s Wedding or the Way of the World] (1775) [14]. The numerous characters in this farce, also published only after Goethe’s death [24], are endowed with names of the type that led Leopold to request from Mozart a ‘‘continuation of the…. Duchesss of Arsebuzz’’. It should be obvious from these examples that ‘‘vulgar’’ language of the Mozart stamp was by no means an unusual occurrence and did not embarrass his contemporaries—witness the reception given to his Sauereyen [45] (sheer filfth) at one of the gatherings in the Cannabich’s house, when his hostess Elisabeth ‘‘animated’’ and ‘‘incited’’ Mozart to ‘‘rhyme away’’. Nor was this vulgar language limited to the Mozart family or to Salzburg. For the use of ‘‘robust’’ language with Mozartian ‘‘colloquialisms’’ was a characteristic of the times, not of the countries…. Of interest also is that the coarse language can still be heard today…’ [4, pp. 251–252]. A hypothesis presented in the afterword of an edition of the Ba¨sle letters published by Vogel [53, p. 57] is of interest in this context. Vogel assumes that the letters were

not of the generic letter type but were stage appearances. Following from this assumption, she then arrives at the Hanswurst character and similar figures such as Harlequin and his jokes and coarseness and their function in the events on the stage: ‘The role of the ‘‘funny figure’’, which aims to diminish dignified and representative art forms, ensures with obscene gestures and lewd speeches that the main and stately actions are loosened up and constantly ensures that basic human needs are satisfied. It forms the ‘‘oratorical contrapposto’’ which combats fictile alexandrines, the tedious, pompous speeches of virtuous stage heroes. Whenever dignified conventions—be they rhythms, vocabulary, social interactions or art—need to be knocked down from their hybrid pedestals, Hanswurst enters the theatre. He does not care about the dignity of form, he causes their downfall by putting them in front of the incorruptible tribunal of the human body. The anthropological power of persuasion of comedians like ‘‘Peter Sauschwanz’’ destroys all the civilizing, moral and artistic efforts with which people strive beyond the status of the natural. Instead of the eloquence of the tongue rules the eloquence of bodily functions, which plays into the field of mimic’ [53, p. 58] (author’s translation). Vogel continues: ‘Like Hanswurst, Mozart drives his ‘‘Ollapatrida’’—a technical term for interludes dedicated to improvisations with faecal humour—with the verbal expressions of feudal society. Salutations, polite phrases, greetings, operatic arias, alexandrines—the whole collection of courtly decorum was newly parodied in every letter. Mozart uses faecal jokes to work against the extreme seriousness of formal behaviour, but he also knows other burlesque methods. He not only criticizes the linguistic fossils of the ancient regime by reawakening them, after their fall, in the undignified surroundings of the ‘‘cottager’’, but also by exposing their mechanics to laughter. Mozart’s mockery targets the wasted effort of civilities. For example, if he starts to say goodbye to the Ba¨sle, he repeats and varies ad nauseam the phrases that can be used for this purpose. Exactly the excess with which he devotes himself to them brings to the surface the automatism on which their use is based, their naked formality’ [53, p. 59] (author’s translation). However, in Vogel’s opinion Hanswurst’s brutish language not only appears in the cousins’ letters. It serves as the verbal relief of a whole class of society. When Mozart’s correspondence lacks restraint, when he puts the feudal treasure trove of phrases on a par with coarse jokes, he is definitely in alignment with the linguistic habits of his social environment. According to Vogel, the Ba¨sle letters do not represent the derailment of a personality but artistic and pointed variations of widely used behaviour. They are based on the Mozart family code and also on the manners of the Salzburg bourgeoisie. The celebrated conviviality of

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southern German circles around a faecal focus with obstinate words and gestures. ‘Both the letters by the Mozart family and the linguistic evidence from social life bear witness to a preference for matters of digestion that is no longer fully comprehensible by later generations’ [53, p. 61] (author’s translation). Vogel points out that Mozart provides special bravura pieces in the field of rhymes. By relentlessly (as is characteristic of comedians) adding a rhyme for almost every concluding word—suitable or unsuitable, decent or indecent, common or unheard of—he passes through one of the most famous realms of a childlike love of words. ‘This is not about the sensible rhyme, which aims for both consonance and the legitimation of matching in content. He yields without a fight to the low pun, which relies solely on the ‘‘obvious similarity’’ of two words, on the loose pairing of the incoherent. Mozart generously ‘‘prescinds from the requirement that when words or thoughts are joined they should also make sense’’. Nevertheless the chosen rhymes have an almost universal semantic reach. The animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, the church, nonsense, faeces—all kinds of things are equally available to the rhymer. One can assume also in this case that he successfully completes his work of belittlement on the deceptive, catchy level of consonance. The echo of the Ba¨sle letters robs the words of their seriousness. The rhymes subsequently form a disrespectful between-the-lines version of formulaic polite phrases’ [53, pp. 63–64] (author’s translation). ‘However, in this case the ‘‘pleasurable effects of nonsense’’, usually dismissed as a lower degree of intellectual power, by far exceed the pleasure that a child affords itself by ‘‘repeating similar things, by rediscovering things it is familiar with’’. Animalistic, blasphemic, neologistic antonyms systematically work against the conventions of polite enquiry—they do not even stop at the misfortune of the prelate, who could surely claim a right to lenience’ [53, p. 65] (author’s translation). At the end of her analysis, Vogel comes to the conclusion that Mozart’s letters are true testimonies to absurdity and do not provide any information about the state of his soul. Therefore, they are not sentimental documents between corresponding contemporaries. The Hanswurst role that Mozart chooses towards Ba¨sle leaves no room for personal concerns. It knows only the body as the place of anarchic desire. ‘Whenever the ‘‘funny person’’ reaches for his pen, use of ‘‘the physical as the place in which comic appears’’ guarantees ‘‘the greatest possible elimination of the emotions’’. Beyond individuality it expends itself in the artistic presentation of its obsessions and neglects the expression of those feelings that join others but not itself. Female and male cousins, actors in a letter-based ‘‘Ollapatrida’’, celebrate together childishness, whose liturgical language ignites from physical presence’ [53, pp. 73–74] (author’s translation).

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Critical discussion about the putative diagnosis of a Tourette syndrome ‘For physicians, retrospective anamnesis is a tempting game with many possibilities. But of course it remains speculative. Nothing more can be demonstrated on the object, let alone proven, so that the researcher—depending on the evaluation of the material—can aim to develop or refute competing theories. The result doubtless provides informative, often fascinating reading material, but does not want to and will not comply with any interpretation as evidential completeness’ [23, p. 358] (author’s translation). These remarks need to be considered when discussing the putative diagnosis of a Tourette syndrome. Tourette syndrome consists of vocal and motor tics. It begins at an age of 5–15 years. Inheritance is autosomal dominant, and the syndrome is three times more common in men than in women. The syndrome is often characterized by utterances of obscene or faecal words that occur in a tic-like pattern and often coincide with phases of strong emotions. These involuntary utterances often lead to the diagnosis. They are present in 35–50 % of cases but are not absolutely essential for the diagnosis. Other symptoms described as belonging to the Tourette syndrome include coprolalia, echolalia, palilalia, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, compulsive symptoms and self-mutilations. In addition to the peculiarities in content and style found mainly in the Ba¨sle letters, Kubba and Young [27] present several indications, compiled from reports by contemporaries of Mozart’s, which could be indicative of peculiarities in behaviour concurrent with a Tourette syndrome. (1) Schlichtegroll 1793 : ‘His features would alter from one instant to another, yet never revealing anything save the pleasure or distress that he happened to feel in that immediate instant… his body was perpetually in motion; he would play incessantly with his hands, or tap restlessly on the floor with his feet’ [48]. (2) von Nissen’s Biography: Quote from Sophie Haibel (Mozart‘s sister-in-law): ‘Even when he was washing his hands in the morning, he walked up and down… never standing still, tapped one heel against the other… and was always deep in thought…. At the table he would often twist the corner of a napkin and rub his upper lip with it, without appearing to know what he was doing, and he often made extraordinary grimaces with his mouth… Also, his hands and feet were always in motion, he was always playing with something, e.g. his hat, pockets, watch-fob, tables, chairs, as if they were a clavier’ [54]

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(3) Karoline Pichler’s report: ‘For he hummed the melody (from Figaro)… suddenly moved a chair up, sat down, told me to carry on playing the bass, and began to improvise beautiful variations… But then he suddenly tired of it, jumped up, and, in the mad mood that so often came over him, he began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat and turn somersaults like an unruly boy’ [39]. (4) Joseph Lange (1782 & 1789): ‘Either he intentionally concealed his inner tension behind superficial frivolity… or he took delight in throwing into sharp contrast the divine ideas of his music and these sudden outbursts of vulgar platitudes’ [13]. Gunne [20] published an essay in a Swedish journal at the end of 1991 in which he presented the hypothesis that Mozart suffered from Tourette syndrome. He based his assumption on a number of reports about Mozart’s hyperactivity, a sufficient number of compulsions and a noticeable propensity for obscenities. One year later, B. Simkin [48], an endocrinologist from California, published a detailed essay in the British Medical Journal in which he emphasized that he was able to prove the diagnosis with reasonable medical certainty. Simkin based his claim on an analysis of Mozart’s letters, among other things, in which he found clusters of obscenities. In addition, he described the following symptoms, among other things, as indicating Tourette: hyperactivity, tics, sudden impulses and strange motor behaviour, echolalia, palilalia, a love of nonsensical words and inner restlessness [20, 43, 48]. Simkin went so far as to claim that the written expressions in Mozart’s letters reflect vocal expressions similar to those in a Tourette syndrome. However, one must consider that most of the examples of unusual speech appear as pranks or wordplays. It is conceivable that Mozart enjoyed such jokes and wordplay because they allowed him to cover up his verbal tics without appearing strange. On the other hand, he may have simply been a socially awkward man who had a taste for unseemly wordplay. Davies considered critically the diagnosis of a Tourette syndrome in Mozart: ‘I share Oliver Sacks’s doubts about Benjamin Simkin’s twice previously proposed hypothesis that Mozart suffered with Tourette’s syndrome [43, 48]. Not only has Simkin been unable to produce evidence of a family history of this genetic developmental disorder but he has also failed to satisfy the essential diagnostic criteria’ [11, p. 521]. Karhausen [25] emphasized that tics are an essential criterion for a Tourette syndrome, i.e. involuntary, sudden, fast, recurring, arrhythmic, stereotypic motor movements

or expressions that, although they are continuously experienced, can be suppressed for a certain time [17]. Neither the variability in Mozart’s facial expressions, which depicted his frequent mood changes, nor his compulsion to tap the tact of the music, which always filled his head, with repeated movements of his hands and feet would correspond with motor tics. The particular, planned and wellcoordinated movements, such as leaping over tables and chairs, miaowing like a cat or turning somersaults, would not fall into the category of tics. Karhausen [25] rejects the putative diagnosis of a Tourette syndrome with this primarily medical argument but also includes a respective analysis of the Ba¨sle letters as a counterargument. He points out that ‘Psychiatric interpretations of the composer’s wit, e.g. in his letters to his cousin (the Ba¨sle letters), miss the point. His scatological wit was not a symptom, neither was his gibberish or his tomfoolery; they relied on a wealth of rhetorical techniques, literary tools and figures of speech. Like Folengo, Rabelais and James Joyce, Mozart used time-honoured literary devices such as multiple meaning, deformation of syntax, enumerations, the jocular, the pleasure of unexpected associations or coarseness and the delight of defying taboos and ignoring proprieties. Mozart’s silliness or foolishness, through its language and symbolism, expressed the spirit of his time and that of the Viennese and South German middle class’ [25, 31] [25, pp. 546–547]. Aterman [4] presents a comprehensive, critical discussion of the putative diagnosis, Tourette syndrome. He also refutes the putative diagnosis with medical arguments. There was no reliable report about any of the ‘essential diagnostic criteria’ of verbal or motor tics in the young Mozart, and his development did not show the characteristics that would guarantee the definitive diagnosis of a neuropsychiatric disorder, even though Neumayr [34] indicated that the young Mozart showed ‘motor restlessness’. According to Aterman [4], ‘Simkin’s interpretation of Mozart’s coprolalia raises an interesting question. If coprolalia is defined as the ‘‘involuntary, inappropriate uttering of obscenities’’ [41] and if Mozart wrote as he spoke, then presumably ‘‘coprographia’’ [48] too should be viewed as an involuntary manifestation. Most of the descriptions of Tourette’s syndrome understandably emphasize the frequently embarrassing uncontrolled vocalizations, including coprolalia, but little mention is made of written manifestations in this disorder. Is the reason that the written word emerges in seclusion, in the writer’s solitude, can be carefully chosen, and if the choice was impetuous or inappropriate, can be corrected or destroyed?’ [4, p. 256]. One may suspect that the peculiarities of the writing had another meaning: In the case of a vocal tic, one has only a moment in time to suppress or redirect the urge; when writing, one can put down the pen

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and wait as long as the urge lasts or give free rein to it vocally. Even Tourette patients with severe palilalia that makes it completely impossible for them to work normally have fluent writing. Mozart’s unusual writing may therefore be no more than an indication that he liked wordplays or the mark of a different kind of individuality. Sacks [43] describes how ‘artists and writers may use their Tourette’s’ and describes a writer who, when his disorder was under control, wrote ‘short, sober,… formal essays and reviews’, but ‘at great speed… huge, meandering, fantastical (and often coprolalic) novels’ when the disorder was uninhibited. In the view of Aterman [4], ‘On reading Mozart’s letters, including the rather small scatological segment, one nowhere gains the impression of that ‘‘blind, impersonal’’ force driving him that we perceive in Sacks’s description of a Tourettic artist. Mozart’s letters are light, superficial, sometimes with little meaning, seemingly deliberately drawn out because he may have had little to say. His ‘‘bumpy’’ rhymes—he was a versatile Reimschmied (rhymster)—are not as smooth and elegant as Goethe’s ‘‘unseemly’’ verses, but his facility with language, which can create the impression of echolalia and palilalia, is impressive. And his letters achieved their writer’s aim: they bantered along, they entertained, they were considered ‘‘witty’’, they did not offend—and they told precious little about what prompted him to write them in that manner’ [4, p. 256].

Conclusions A counterargument to the interpretation of the Ba¨sle letters as indicating Tourette syndrome, which is difficult to prove from a medical point of view—also on the basis of other biographic sources—could be the fact that the peculiarities of style and content, particularly as regards obscenities and elements of faecal language, only appear in such a concentrated form in the Ba¨sle letters. There are stylistic peculiarities, e.g. comprehensive wordplays, in Mozart’s correspondence with his father and wife as well as with other acquaintances and friends. However, they do not contain such a dense concentration of obscene elements and elements of faecal language. Furthermore, the type and amount of wordplays depend on the individual and context. While in the letters to his father, for example, Mozart obviously uses his extensive wordplays to try to avoid directly answering his father’s letters, which constantly press him to give reports on his performance and messages of success, the letters to Constanze are characterized by teasing stylistic features that play with pet names, are almost ‘Papageno-like’ and evoke the couple’s closeness and intimacy, or by protestations of his own love and statements beseeching his wife to be faithful.

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The stylistic features of the Ba¨sle letters, which are conspicuous because of the large amount of coarseness, obscenities and coprolalia, can probably be best explained from a linguistic sociological and cultural historical standpoint such that the otherwise compulsory ‘courtly style’—which was regulated by strict standards, cultivated particularly by the nobility, but then also adopted by the bourgeoisie—was undermined and counteracted within families and between close friends by a manner of communicating that tended to consist of rather coarse modes of expression and expressed the elementary drives and needs in an archaic manner that was intentionally employed as a contrast to etiquette. Noteworthy in this context are coarse theatre figures such as ‘Hanswurst’, who time and again appeared at certain dramatic junctions in plays to present a comic contrasting world to the other events on the stage, which tended to be lofty and conducted in upper-class language. A reader of Mozart’s letters who has a concept of an artist of the romantic period finds it difficult to discover a Mozart who, instead of behaving like a genius who deals with life in all seriousness, profundity and grandeur and reveals the workings of his soul with deep emotionality, teases his addressees with lightness, facetiousness and bravura, messes around and clowns around with them, does not stop short of Hanswurst-like coarseness and clearly enjoys his masterly command of this style of language. Perhaps, this element of Mozart’s character is also part of his musical genius. In his music, Mozart was able like no other to unite the metaphysical and superficial, the frivolous and serious, and elements of opera seria and opera buffa to a wonderful unit, as shown, for example, in the opera ‘the Magic Flute’. In my opinion, Mozart’s compositions do not include any indications of tic-like features. Acknowledgments The author thanks Jacquie Klesing, Board-certified Editor in the Life Sciences (ELS), for editing assistance with the manuscript. Conflict of interest interest.

The author states that there is no conflict of

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