It is said that the new Pope, like one of the 20th century’s greatest Protestant theologians, is ‘a Mozart man.’ Joseph Ratzinger’s musical life as a child in Bavaria revolved around Mozart and the sound of Mozart Pope Benedict is a pianist can be heard coming from the papal apartments today. Karl Barth found Mozart difficult he did after all write Catholic masses and had accused Protestantism of being all in the head and not knowing the meaning of the Agnus Dei. Barth dreamed that he was examining Mozart in theology, but even though Barth referred to those masses, Mozart answered not a word. Barth always referred to Mozart as a child ‘in the higher meaning of that word.’ ‘It is a child, even a divine child, who speaks in Mozart’s music to us.’ Barth always played records of Mozart’s music before he began going to work on his massive volumes of dogmatic theology. Barth calls Mozart’s music ‘ a parable of the Kingdom of heaven.’ The Pope sees in this music ‘the whole tragedy of human existence.’ Two views not easily brought together.
Evidence for Barth’s view lies in the sheer gracefulness of Mozart’s music graceful because it seems to be a gift of grace. Unlike Beethoven who left pages of notes, experiments, sketches, corrected drafts of his music, Mozart seems to have written his masterpieces in fair copy, straight out of his head, almost as though the music poured through him as a sheer gift of grace. This is the point made dramatically in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus Mozart was christened Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgangus Theophilus but this last name was changed by Mozart himself after his first visit to Italy to its Italian/Latin equivalent Amadeo/Amadeus or ‘one loved by God.’ And that is crux of the matter for Court composer, Salieri, whom Shaffer represents as having made a bargain with God. He will be God’s faithful servant if God rewards him with the gift of inspired music. But grace is not a reward for faith the only grace in Salieri’s life is the ability, denied to all his contemporaries, to appreciate the full genius of Mozart’s music. In the play Salieri’s first encounter with Mozart’s music is the Adagio of the Serenade for Thirteen Wind instruments K361 with its piercingly beautiful oboe solo heard over the ‘rusty squeezebox’ of bassoons and basset horns. And Salieri responds by questioning God, ‘What is this pain? What is this need in the sound? Forever unfulfillable yet fulfilling him who hears it, utterly. Is it Your need? Can it be Yours? ‘
And this is not the only moment at which God’s presence in this music is suggested. Shaffer’s characterisation of Mozart is far from historically reliable. Aspects of his rude humour, immaturity, promiscuity and lack of money and practicality are considerably over-exaggerated. And at one moment Mozart even becomes a theologian: ‘I tell you I want to write a finale lasting half an hour! A quartet becoming a quintet becoming a sextet. On and on, wider and wider, – all sounds multiplying and rising together and the together making a sound entirely new! I bet you that’s how God hears the world. Millions of sounds ascending at once and mixing in his ear to become an unending music, unimaginable to us! That’s our job! That’s our job, we composers; to combine the inner minds of him and him and her and her, the thoughts of chamber maids and Court Composers and turn the audience into God.’
So the play presents God letting himself into the world through Mozart. Mozart reveals God’s passion for us and our need of God and enables us to hear the world through God’s ears. In that sense we might perhaps accept Clifford Longley’s description of Mozart as a ‘natural mystic.’ That isn’t perhaps the kind of phrase Barth would have approved of, but it resonates with his other and best known comment that the angels play Bach for God, but for pleasure God and the angels listen to Mozart. And that is because Mozart serenely and authentically represents the goodness of creation as it is in all its complexity and ambiguity. Mozart heard the harmony of creation ‘in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy, and infinite melancholy is not ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway.’ In other words this is God’s ‘Yes’ or his ‘Amen’ to creation in its very finitude and limitation and here Barth’s view is reconciled with that of Pope Benedict.
Clifford Longley has suggested that to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth he should be canonised as no greater miracle of healing could be required of him than what he gives us in listening to his music. Anglicans have no official processes for recognising saints but we might allow ourselves to recognise that listening to this music can be a form of prayer and we might set ourselves this discipline of praying during Lent!
With my love and prayers,