Was Mozart a Catboy?

by Atlas Cass 04/04/2025

In 2020, when everything was y’know… some Wizard chose to cast a psychic damage spell, rolling a Nat 20, and this post found it’s way to my Tumblr feed. 

Real? Mozart, the 1700’s genius who composed timeless classics, such as Leck mich im Arsch, The Video Essay Song, and… Material Girl. He was acting like a catboy? That sounds believable, geniuses tend to be Like That(TM) y’know…

“Some scholarly thinkers or creative individuals who are deeply involved in their profession may ignore time, place and people around them and outpour their anxiety or stress in a form of peculiar body movements, mannerisms or gesticulations, talking to themselves, yelling or even grunting“¹

Hold up one second.

I wanna read the article now, I wanna know ALL about this freak and his rotted behaviors…

Oh my god?

How do we even know all this about Mozart, like?? Where are the receipts?

“…there’s forgery in all ages. The only thing that changes, is the motive.”²

So, I almost have a degree in History, and this kind of post… it rubs me…

and not the fun kind of rubbing, like…

There’s a part of me that would deep-dive paws first into why this story about Mozart is wrong and what we do know about Mozart, but I have a limited time on this excuse of a world. If I have to spend another millisecond attempting to read German sources from the 1700’s, this cat-boy is gonna be a convicted-boy.

Why would I do that, if I can’t trust that you all won’t be bad kittens and fall for yet another misinformation?

Let’s use the rumor of catboy-Mozart as a lesson in entry-level Source Criticism.

With help from my danish High School History curriculum, and To the Sources! by my former professor and beloved nemesis, Sebastian Olden Jørgensen, we are strapped in for dealing with this. I’ll be using his book to make up for my preposterous claims in the original version of The Princess Who Wasn’t, pt.1, which my teacher respectfully disagreed with back when it was handed in as an 8 page exam paper. Being fair, the version he got, was pre-ADHD meds me, which… yeah. Not my best work.

So, here’s 3 questions to get you started with actually thinking critically.

1. Who wrote this?

The article seems to originate from Listverse, a site run by former Opera singer, Jamie Frater. The article³ is written by Jackie Fuchs, originally an attorney, former bassist for The Runaways, and currently working as a writer. Listverse claims it’s been “fact-checked” by Jamie Frater… which raises red flags.

Aqeel Ahmad Kang writes for Al Hakam, scorching Listverse for it’s spreading of misinformation:

”Our democracy and the general social cohesion is dependent on well-informed citizens. The 2016 US election and the recent misinformation campaigns regarding the Covid-19 pandemic have once again highlighted the need for caution. Hence, it is important to educate young people and parents not to fall for some of the biggest charlatans on the internet such as Listverse and Co. and not to afford them any more credibility than they really deserve.”⁴

Who do I trust more?

Al Hakam, a weekly newspaper run by the Ahmadiyya, a movement persecuted and oppressed⁵ by conservative Islamic forces for daring to work on translating the Quran – an act of heresy, if you’re a Catholic- I mean, conservative muslim. An article with proper references, that I can actually use to do my own checking-up.

Or do I trust Listverse, run by a former Opera singer, whose personhood is clouded in mystery and controversy about the supposed ”fact checking” he totally does. An article that attempts to link ”sources”, but half of them are mysterious.

I’ll be honest, I think I lean towards Al Hakam…

2. How does the author know this?

The Listverse article links the study Mozart's movements and behaviour: a case of Tourette's syndrome?, as source of this supposed “catty” behavior. The study is from 2007, by Aidin Ashoori and Joseph Jankovic. Important to note here, these researchers come from a Psychiatrist and Neurologist perspective respectively, not historian perspectives.

The cat episode was first of all, only documented once.

Karoline Pichler said that during an impov sesh, Mozart got “…suddenly tired of it, jumped up, and, in the mad mood which so often came over him, he began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat, and turn somersaults like an unruly boy”⁶

I am begging these researchers to give me a page number, because this woman’s memoirs are 4 volumes long and in 1800’s German…

Second, it was written by Karoline Pichler, who, if you read along the article also says he has an "irresponsible way of life" and describes Mozart and Haydn (another composer) as “persons who displayed in their contacts with others absolutely no other extraordinary intellectual capacity and almost no kind of intellectual training, of scientific or higher education…. Silly jokes, and in case of Mozart an irresponsible way of life, were all that they displayed to their fellow men”⁷

Thirdly, the cat episode comes from Karoline Pichlers memoirs that are published in 1844, 53 years after Mozart's death.

Fourth, the writers of the article/study are not historians, they are neurologists. They actually fail to do a proper criticism and valuing of the sources.

But that’s not because they are doing a bad job or anything, they are here to determine whether he had Tourettes, not if we can believe what the first hand sources said about him

3. Why?

My former professor, Olden outlined 3 main functions of communication that are good to have in the back of your mind when navigating, well, anything media. Mind you, a piece of media can have all these three auras, but usually one is more in center.

Cognitive:

If the author is genuinely just describing something, example could be a transcript of a speech. The speech itself of course has other functions, but the transcript is nothing but descriptive.

Normative:

The normative function of a piece of media is definitely something that’s super here in the Mozart catboy question. If the piece of media has any hint of how things should be, it has a normative function. This is not inherently bad or good, but it’s suspicious if the author claims to have no intent or such – watch out for that.

The title of the Listverse article, “10 Classical Composers With Extreme Eccentricities” is itself normative, because it’s trying to shift our image of these composers. Painting composers, who might be generally seen as “high culture”, as perverts, loonies and weirdos… it’s giving normative.

Especially the study is serving normative. Was Mozart tourettes? Well, here’s what we should think about it. Literally just, normative.

Performative:

This one is not really relevant here, but important to know about. The performative function of a piece of media, is for example an executive order, a law text, a decree, or even an e-mail from a CEO about lay-offs.

So, was Mozart a catboy?

You’re not gonna like my answer, besties

Olden echoes Kristian Erslev – Erslev is like the baby daddy of the white people in my field – Erslev argued that any source can be used for something, it’s just a matter of what question you ask the sources you have in front of you.

Can we use Pichler’s memoir to say with confidence that Mozart was a catboy?

Probably not.

But that doesn’t make it a useless source – remember what I just said.

Every source has a purpose, you just have to find one or come up with one. 

This applies to life too btw, but that video is 50 pages long.

When we pair it with other sources though, can we use it to say with confidence that Mozart was generally perceived by his social circles as unhinged, “immature” and perverted?

Absolutely yes.

Footnotes

1 Ashoori and Jankovic, ‘Mozart’s Movements and Behaviour’.

2 Olden-Jørgensen, Til Kilderne! Introduktion Til Historisk Kildekritik, p.30.

3 ‘(MISINFORMATION) 10 Classical Composers With Extreme Eccentricities’.

4 Aqeel Ahmad Kang, Al Hakam, ‘Purchased “Facts”’.

5 Sayeed, ‘Pakistan’s Long-Persecuted Ahmadi Minority Fear Becoming Election Scapegoat’.

6 Pichler, Denkwürdigkeiten Aus Meinem Leben Bd. 1-4. (Allegedly)

7 Ashoori and Jankovic, ‘Mozart’s Movements and Behaviour’.

Bibliography

‘About Us - Al Hakam’. Accessed 30 March 2025. https://www.alhakam.org/about-us/.

Amazon.com. ‘Jackie Fuchs: Books, Biography, Latest Update’. Accessed 30 March 2025. https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01DI62GCC/about.

Aqeel Ahmad Kang, Al Hakam. ‘Purchased “Facts”: Risks of Unreliable Online Resources – Listverse.Com as a Case Study’, 26 November 2021. https://www.alhakam.org/what-is-listverse-and-how-does-it-work/.

Ashoori, Aidin, and Joseph Jankovic. ‘Mozart’s Movements and Behaviour: A Case of Tourette’s Syndrome?’ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 78, no. 11 (November 2007): 1171–75. https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.2007.114520.

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Listverse. ‘(MISINFORMATION) 10 Classical Composers With Extreme Eccentricities’, 27 December 2013. https://listverse.com/2013/12/27/10-classical-composers-with-secret-crazy-sides/.

Nun Liebes Weibchen, the ‘Cat Duet’ (Attrib. Mozart), 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH3yzGc3WCk.

Olden-Jørgensen, Sebastian. Til Kilderne! Introduktion Til Historisk Kildekritik. 1. udg. København: Gad, 2009.

Pichler, Caroline. Denkwürdigkeiten Aus Meinem Leben Bd. 1-4, 1844.

Robertson, Ritchie. ‘The Complexities of Caroline Pichler: Conflicting Role Models, Patriotic Commitment, and The Swedes in Prague (1827)’. Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture 23, no. 1 (2007): 34–48. https://doi.org/10.1353/wgy.2008.0004.

Sayeed, Saad. ‘Pakistan’s Long-Persecuted Ahmadi Minority Fear Becoming Election Scapegoat’. Reuters, 16 November 2017, sec. World. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/pakistans-long-persecuted-ahmadi-minority-fear-becoming-election-scapegoat-idUSKBN1DG04O/.

‘Shocking Facts about Classical Composers With Extreme Eccentricities’. Accessed 30 March 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20210312193139/https://www.livingmsia.com/performing-arts/shocking-facts-composers-with-extreme-eccentricities/.

Simkin, B. ‘Mozart’s Scatological Disorder.’ British Medical Journal 305, no. 6868 (19 December 1992): 1563–67. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.305.6868.1563.

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Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/groups/5317067/atlas_cass/collections/ZTBTMNDS