A bass letter from Mozart is auctioned

These letters are highly famous. Because they remove the sugar to the common honey -sweet picture of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, instead show the correspondence that drives corresponding composers as one who does not lay a piglet word and was anything but averse to the faecal humor. We are talking about Mozart’s so-called bass letters. Those directed to the cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart, of which nine have been preserved. Mozart had probably sent a lot more letters to Maria Anna, and there was certainly also counterparts, but not a single copy of posterity.

Mozart and his Augsburg cousin have known each other since childhood. The relationship became narrower in October 1777, when 21-year-old Wolfgang apparently had all sorts of fun with his relative, which was two years younger during a stay in Augsburg several weeks, it was apparently sparked between the two. After departure towards Mannheim Use Mozart’s letters to the bass. Letters that resume the familiar and fun tone of the past few days and almost outbid themselves in juiciness. « I wish you a good night, they shit into the bed that it crashes, » rhymes Mozart there, for example, he fits « Poz Himmel thousand sacristy, cruaden heavy emergency, teaf, witches, truden, kreüz-battalion and no end … » and something more. From the years after 1777 there is another handful of letters to the bass, the last from 1781.

The letter is auctioned at the Berlin antiquarian bookshine Stargardt

The originals of four bäsle letters are now in the British Library in London, one is guarding the Pierpont Morgan Library in the USA; The whereabouts of three other autographs are unknown. A sensation is like that at the Berlin antiquarian bookshop, Stargardt, the bäsle letter number seven is called up at an auction on April 8th.

Mozart wrote it on April 24, 1780. The letter begins with one of his typical fun sets: According to the title « Ma Très Chère Cousin » and two Floskels rates, the whole page remains unrite before Mozart at the bottom of the sheet, « I wanted to write more, the room as she is seeing is too small adieu » – to then take the complete background for the actual communications. In contrast to the Kalauerei of the letters from 1777, there is now a friendly narrative tone. The composer writes that he can offer a new aria for the performance of his opera “La Finta Giardiniera” to the theater improvementation of his opera “La Finta Giardiniera”. At the end of the letter, however, the old familiarity breaks through again. Mozart sends to his « favorite, best, most beautiful, most hardest, and gracious » cousin after a hair -raising fun bill, no less than « summa summarum 12,345’678.987,095 compliment ».

The export permit for the bass letter is available

The announcement of the letter coming for auction does not reveal who is the previous owner of the autograph. The mention that there is an export permit from the Federal Monument Office in Vienna suggests that the sheet is in an Austrian, presumably private property. Stargardt proudly notes that the autograph in question « possibly » is the only one of the bass letters « who will ever be sold ». What should then also have its price: Letter number seven will be called up for 160,000 euros.