Bona nox

Music#

The canon is written in the time signature of cut common time and in the key signature of A major. The theme is 16 bars long; each of the four voices enters after four bars.

Text#

The original lyrics are probably by Mozart himself; they include the words for “good night” in five different languages (Latin, Italian, French, English, and German). The phrase “”, found in the fourth-to-last and third-to-last lines, closely resembles a similar expression found in a postscript to one of Wolfgang’s letters by his mother, written to his father; also in Mozart’s letter from to his sister. :

Reception#

The completely expurgated version found widespread distribution in traditional German .

See also#

• Other canons which Mozart also entered on the 2 September 1788 into his catalogue are: “Difficile lectu mihi Mars”, K. 559, and “O du eselhafter Peierl”, K. 560a; other canons which also use a similarly robust language are “Leck mich im Arsch”, K. 231, and “Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber”, K. 233.
• Mozart and scatology

External links#

• “Bona nox! bist a rechta Ox”, work details, Köchel-Verzeicnis, International Mozarteum Foundation
• “Bona nox! bist a rechta Ochs”, score (for unknown reasons in G major) at the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Animated lyrics (expurgated) at the Scratch Project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology