Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life: Selected Letters

Translated and edited by Robert Spaethling

Faber £25, pp479

'Several blushing policemen came, and hid their faces for very shame,' wrote D.H. Lawrence of the scandalised reception to his frank and fleshy paintings. With Mozart's letters it is the scholars who have blushed. The composer's rude outpourings have never been thought seemly for the eyes of the general reader in their raw state. Those dating from his teenage years bristle with lewd rhymes, lavatorial humour and constant exhortations along the lines of 'shit in your bed' (and worse).

How could musicologists, on firm ground with analysis of harmony but not of psyche, be expected to square the sublimities of Così Fan Tutte with coprophilia and hypomania? To compound the problem, Mozart's prose style is wild and noisy, a cacophony of different voices, styles and languages. Grammar eludes him, whether out of fickleness or ignorance. He darts in and out of Italian, French and Latin, often inconsistently spelt, albeit fluent in the obscenities of each language.

No wonder editors and translators have brought out the disinfectant. Hans Mersmann's sanitised edition of 1928 (translated by M.M. Bozman) excused stylistic infelicities and what he called 'street-urchinish' turns of phrase as reflecting Mozart's limited formal education and his south German dialect. Eric Blom produced a popular edition for Penguin in the 1950s, when strait-laced gentility reached an all-time low. The standard text, however, has long been Emily Anderson's of 1938, despite its tendency to endow Mozart's prose with fictitious literary elegance. Many of the excised passages were only restored in the third revision of 1985, no doubt prompted by Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus (1979) which used the freedom of the theatre to show us a more human side to our small, thin-haired genius.

Robert Spaethling's welcome new translation and edition helps restore the correspondence to its original colour and spirit. Some two-thirds of the surviving letters appear, grouped chronologically with biographical commentary (skimpy but adequate), annotation and an excellent index. Letters are only from Mozart, rather than any he received from his father, mother, sister, wife or various creditors and friends, examples of which survive.

They cover a period of 22 years, from late childhood when he travelled through Europe with his all-powerful father, until two months before his death in 1791, aged 35. The hazards and delays of receiving post provides a subplot throughout, yet he still managed to maintain a frequent correspondence, and narratives are carried from letter to letter giving invaluable insight into his daily life and preoccupations.

His references to music tend to be practical: finding manuscript paper, copying parts, despatching scores, the inadequacy of this violinist or that pianist. When artistic questions do arise, he dashes any lingering misconception that his music came effortlessly. Obstacles usually sprang from external circumstance rather than loss of artistic direction.

In 1781, after he fell out with his employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart wrote to his carping father: 'Believe me I don't enjoy leisure, I love to work - in Salzburg, yes it's true I had to make an effort, and I could almost not get myself to work, but why? - because my spirits were down... you have to admit yourself that in Salzburg [...] there isn't a penny's worth of stimulation; [...] it is as if the audience consisted of nothing but tables and chairs.' In 1791, when he was completing The Magic Flute, he wrote that: 'Out of sheer boredom I composed an aria for my opera today.'

Such remarks are rare. Uppermost in his mind are the struggle for money (with several begging letters near the end), recognition and regular work. His deteriorating relationship with Leopold makes a pitiful tale. He speaks, too, of his failure to win the hand of Aloysia Weber and his subsequent marriage to her sister, Constanze, whom he keeps on a tight rein.

Gossip, fashions, what he ate for supper fill his busy, often frustrated accounts. At times, he shows no emotion, as in the deaths in infancy of four of his six children. The manner in which he informs his father and sister of his mother's demise nevertheless shows just how skilful he was at deploying language and tone when he chose.

It also calls into question the fashionable belief that he suffered from Tourette syndrome. On the contrary, he knew precisely what he wanted to say and said it. His mother, in any case, wrote in a similarly earthy vein. What regular correspondents have not developed their own in-jokes and private language? (Elgar's letters are another example of the eternal schoolboy.) Spaethling deftly handles the playful, flirtatious letters to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla, as here:

'Dearest cozz buzz, I have received reprieved your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted that my uncle garfuncle, my aunt slant, and you too, are all well mell. We too, thank God, are in good fettle kettle. [...] I now wish you goodnight, shit in your bed with all your might, sleep with peace on your mind and try to kiss your own behind. [...] Oh my ass burns like fire! What on earth is the meaning of this! ---- maybe muck wants to come out? yes, yes, muck... [etc]'

The great glory of this volume is Spaethling's willingness to embrace Mozart's writing in all its zany, often angry effervescence. At the time of his father's death in 1787, only four years before his own, Mozart was preoccupied with mortality. He had recently suffered from kidney disease, and the 29-year-old doctor who treated him was himself dying. A week later, his coveted pet bird expired, prompting this simple doggerel, rendered in English as: 'Here rests a bird called Starling/ A foolish little Darling/ He was still in his prime/ When he ran out time/ And my sweet little friend/ Came to a bitter end.'

At the same time, he started work on Don Giovanni, the darkest and most shocking score he wrote. If the anarchy of his written words seems at odds with the beauty of his music, the misunderstanding is ours. In fact, the prose style seems to have been infected by the tropes of music itself, repetitions, perseverations, decorations, variations and inversions (he often signed himself Trazom Gnagflow), in a polyglot manner more Finnegans Wake than Ulysses. The only paradox is that anyone ever thought there was one.