Flatulence in Opera and Classical Music
The connection between flatulence and classical music seems absurd — but it is real and surprisingly rich. Composers from Mozart to Shostakovich have either directly addressed intestinal gas or incorporated it into their works. Some famous musical pieces about farts are still performed in concert today. The contrast between the exalted art form and the plebeian subject makes the fart in high culture a particularly effective form of comedy.
Mozart: Classical Music's Fart Composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) is famous for his operatic masterworks — but he also had a pronounced fondness for scatological humor. Mozart's correspondence, particularly with his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart ('das Bäsle'), is rich with fart jokes and explicit intestinal gas references. Most famous: the canon 'Leck mich im Arsch' (KV 231), a polyphonic vocal piece Mozart composed for social gatherings. Less well known is the 6-voice canon 'Bona nox, bist a rechta Ox' (KV 561), which also contains explicit flatulence references. These pieces were not published during Mozart's lifetime — only in the 20th century were they recognized as part of his catalogue. Mozart thus exemplifies the dual nature of Viennese Classicism: courtly grandeur in public, crude folk humor in private.
Baroque Opera and the Buffo Tradition: Farts as Standard Repertoire
In Baroque opera (17th–18th centuries), the Opera Buffa — comic opera — was an established genre that explicitly relied on physical comedy, social satire, and taboo-breaking. Character types such as the 'Vecchio' (the old, immature miser) or the 'Dottore' (the pedantic doctor) had fixed physical gags in the Commedia dell'arte tradition that could, depending on staging, include flatulence. Pergolesi's 'La serva padrona' (1733) reportedly contains, according to contemporary accounts, a scene in which an onstage gas release was used as a dramatic device — whether intentionally staged or not is historically unclear. The buffo tradition's tolerance for physical comedy explains why Mozart's scatological canons were not considered impropriety but as part of an accepted comic repertoire.
Shostakovich: Political Flatulence
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) used surreal physical humor in his opera 'The Nose' (1930, after a story by Gogol) as a vehicle for social criticism. The opera — in which a nose runs away from its owner and independently assumes high office — contains passages interpreted as veiled references to political flatulence (self-importance, inflated bureaucracy). Shostakovich had to justify some of his works before the Stalinist cultural apparatus; his use of physical humor as a cover for political satire is well documented in musicology. Less well known: his youthful work 'Polka' from the 'Old Pieces for Children' suite actually contains a 'fart effect' through unexpected brass glissandos.
Modern Music: Farts as an Avant-Garde Element
In the 20th and 21st centuries, avant-garde composers have treated bodily sounds — including farts — as serious compositional material. John Cage, the father of experimental music, maintained that all sounds can be music — and bodily sounds are sounds. His piece '4'33"' (four minutes 33 seconds of silence, in which ambient sounds form the music) was 'augmented' by an audience member at a 1986 performance — something earnestly discussed in Cage research literature. Composer György Ligeti mentioned in an interview that he occasionally thought, while playing tuba parts, that the tuba 'is the only register that tonally approaches a fart'. He composed no explicit fart pieces — but this thought is widely known in the music world.
Did you know?
- Mozart composed canon pieces with explicit fart references that were only recognized as part of his catalogue in the 20th century.
- In Baroque opera, physical comedy including flatulence was part of the accepted comic repertoire of the Opera Buffa.
- Shostakovich used physical comedy as a cover for political satire in Stalin's USSR.
- John Cage maintained that all sounds — including bodily sounds — can be music.
Fun Fact
At a performance of Mozart's canon 'Leck mich im Arsch' KV 231 at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 2006 — a scholarly retrospective on the occasion of Mozart's 250th birthday — an elderly couple reportedly left the auditorium in indignation after reading the program notes. At the exit they told the usher: 'Mozart would never have composed this.' The usher replied: 'The Köchel catalogue says otherwise.' The lady's response: 'Then Mozart was no gentleman.' A statement that is, musicologically speaking, difficult to refute.
Sources
- Anderson, E. (Ed.) (1985). The Letters of Mozart and His Family. Macmillan.
- Rushton, J. (2006). Mozart. Oxford University Press.
- Fanning, D. (2004). Shostakovich Studies. Cambridge University Press.