"Lick my ass" redirects here. For the sex act, see
Anilingus.
"Leck mich im Arsch" (German for "Lick me in the arse") is a
canon in
B-flat major composed by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
K. 231 (K. 382c), with lyrics in German. It was one of a set of at least six canons probably written in
Vienna in 1782.[1] Sung by six voices as a three-part
round, it is thought to be a
party piece for his friends.[2]
English translation
The German
idiom used as the title of the work is equivalent to the English "Kiss my arse!" or American "Kiss my ass!"[3] However, the literal translation of the title is "Lick me in the
arse".
Publication and modern discovery
After Mozart's death in 1791, his widow,
Constanze, sent the manuscripts of the canons to publishers
Breitkopf & Härtel in 1799 for publication. The publisher changed the vulgar title and lyrics of this canon to the more decent "Laßt froh uns sein" ("Let us be glad!"). Of Mozart's original text, only the first words were documented in the catalogue of his works produced by Breitkopf & Härtel.[4]
A score containing what may possibly be the original text was discovered in 1991. Handwritten texts to this and several other similar canons were found added to a printed score of the work in a historical printed edition acquired by
Harvard University's Music Library. They had evidently been added to the book sometime after publication. However, since in six of the pieces these entries matched texts that had, in the meantime, independently come to light in original manuscripts, it was hypothesised that the remaining three may, too, have been original, including texts for K. 231 ("Leck mich im Arsch" itself), and another Mozart work, "
Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber" ("Lick my arse nice and clean", K. 233; K. 382d in the revised numbering).[2] Later research revealed that the latter work was likely composed by
Wenzel Trnka.[5][6][7][8]
Lyrics
The text rediscovered in 1991 consists only of the repeated phrases:[9]
Leck mich im A... g'schwindi, g'schwindi!
Leck im A... mich g'schwindi.
Leck mich, leck mich,
g'schwindi
etc. etc. etc.
where "A..." obviously stands for "Arsch"; "g'schwindi" is a dialect word derived from "
geschwind", meaning "quickly".
The
bowdlerised text of the early printed editions reads:
Laßt uns froh sein!
Murren ist vergebens!
Knurren, Brummen ist vergebens,
ist das wahre Kreuz des Lebens,
das Brummen ist vergebens,
Knurren, Brummen ist vergebens, vergebens!
Drum laßt uns froh und fröhlich, froh sein!
Let us be glad!
Grumbling is in vain!
Growling, droning is in vain,
is the true bane of life,
Droning is in vain,
Growling, droning is in vain, in vain!
Thus let us be cheerful and merry, be glad!
Another semi-bowdlerized adaptation is found in the recordings of The Complete Mozart edition by
Brilliant Classics:[10][11]
Leck mich im Arsch!
Goethe, Goethe! Götz von Berlichingen! Zweiter Akt;
Die Szene kennt ihr ja!
Rufen wir nur ganz summarisch:
Hier wird Mozart literarisch!
Kiss my arse!
Goethe, Goethe!
Götz von Berlichingen! Second act;
You know the scene too well!
Let us now shout the summary:
Mozart here gets literary!
This is a clear allusion to the line "
... er kann mich im Arsche lecken!" (literally, "he can lick me in the arse" or idiomatically "he can kiss my arse") attributed to the late medieval German knight
Götz von Berlichingen, known best as the title hero of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1773
drama. The text of the canon contains a slight error about the Goethe source: the line occurs in the third act.[12][13]
See also
"
Difficile lectu" – a canon with a disguised Latin version of the same text
"
Bona nox" – "Good night", a multilingual scatological canon
^Catherine Carl; Dan Manley; Dennis Pajot; Steve Ralsten; Gary Smith.
"Koechel List". Mozart Forum. Archived from
the original on 14 August 2007. Retrieved 10 September 2007.