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On February 19, 1786, during the Viennese Carnival, a masquerader, cloaked in the robes of an Oriental philosopher, proceeded to the Redoutensaal of the Hofburg, where festivities were in progress. There, he passed out copies of a broadside sheet containing eight riddles and fourteen proverbs, entitled “Excerpts from the Fragments of Zoroaster” and printed for “the edification of the masked ball.”1 The masquerader and author was Mozart. Copies of the broadside have not survived, but Mozart sent one to his father, who found many of its thoughts commendable; he, in turn, forwarded it to his daughter, Nannerl:
Your brother sent this printed enclosure to me. The first seven riddles were immediately solved on sight. The eighth is more difficult. The Fragments [i.e., the proverbs] are really good and true from first to last and should really be taken to heart…. Please return the sheet to me.2
However strained the relationship between father and son may have been at this time, Leopold Mozart was unable to conceal delight in his son's creative accomplishments; and that is how one of the riddles and seven of the proverbs were preserved: Leopold Mozart placed them at the disposal of his friend Lorenz Hübner, editor of the Salzburg Oberdeutsche Staatszeitung, who published them in the issue of March 23, 1786, without mentioning Mozart's name. Evidently, Hübner did not regard the materials to be quite as edifying as did Mozart's father. While he gave them some faint praise, he also reported that they were included because