Product Description
Mozarts K. 559 is a canon titled Difficile lectu, composed in F major for three voices. The work was entered into Mozarts catalog on September 2, 1788, as part of a set of ten canons, and was likely written between 1786 and 1787. The lyrics, ostensibly in Latin, are a humorous bilingual pun designed to be heard as vulgar phrases in German and Italian when sung by a specific performerJohann Nepomuk Peyerl, whose Bavarian accent was the target of the joke.
The pseudo-Latin phrase, Difficile lectu mihi mars et jonicu difficile, is intended to sound like German and Italian vulgarities. Specifically, lectu mihi mars mimics the German leck du mi im Arsch (roughly kiss my ass), and jonicu is meant to evoke the Italian coglioni (testicles). The canon was meant for fun, featuring scatological humor and playful mockery of a friend, rather than as a serious or religious work.
The canons first performance is associated with a humorous anecdote: Mozart tricked Peyerl into singing the canon, and after the joke was revealed, he immediately followed it with another mocking canon, O du eselhafter Peierl (K. 559a), on the reverse side of the manuscript.
The autograph manuscript of K. 559 is preserved and now resides in the British Library, having been part of the collections of the Austrian author Stefan Zweig.
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