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Benedict and Mozart on True Happiness | Monsignor Daniel B. Gallagher | September 23, 2011 | Ignatius Insight
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Delivered on the eve of a highly touted visit to the United
Kingdom last year, most of the world failed to notice a short speech Pope
Benedict XVI gave following a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem at Castel Gandolfo. The Pontiff hailed the piece as
an "elevated expression of genuine Christian faith" in which "everything is in
perfect harmony; every note, every musical phrase is just so and cannot be
otherwise." He reminisced about being overcome with "mozart'sche Heiterkeit" ("Mozartian serenity") every
time he heard a Mozart Mass performed at his childhood parish. He marveled at Mozart's
ability to fill even the most somber passages with a hope and joy that can only
come from God's grace and a lively faith. Music, the pope claimed, was Mozart's
way of making transparent the "illuminated response to divine Love, even when
human life is torn apart by suffering and death."
The Holy Father has never kept his fondness for Mozart a
secret. During a 1996 interview with Peter Seewald, the then-Cardinal Ratzinger
explained that it was Mozart's unparalleled combination of luminosity and depth
that first touched him as a boy in Traunstein. The glorious sound, combined
with the sight and smell of incense gently rising to heaven, made manifest "the
jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God."
A comment like this reveals not only the Holy Father's
childlike faith, but his highly refined aesthetic sense that convinces him of
the life to come. He considers music an authentic expression of reason, but a
reason open to the depth of human emotion and the height of divine
transcendence. He has recalled on numerous occasions hearing Leonard Bernstein
conduct a program of Bach cantatas in Munich, after which both he and his
neighbor (a Lutheran bishop) were immediately struck by the same certitude that
the faith is true. "The music had such
an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but
by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from
nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of Truth that
became real in the composer's inspiration."
In fact, music is one of the most direct ways of accessing
Benedict XVI's thought on reason, both human and divine, as well as the
relation between the two. Our openness to the beauty and order of the world
allows us to "discover that what is 'reasonable' extends far beyond what
mathematics can calculate, logic can deduce and scientific experimentation can
demonstrate." If we fail to catch sight of the breadth of human reason or logos, we fall short of appreciating the breadth of divine
reason or Logos – a Logos
which, in both cases, is "creative and capable
of self-communication, precisely as reason." Music is a privileged forum in
which the human and divine logos come
to meet.
The pope's comments following the performance were essentially an invitation to
allow the music to speak for itself. It is only a slight exaggeration to claim
that just as there is no need to know Shakespeare to know his plays, so there
is no need to know Mozart to know his music. The greatness of a true masterpiece
stands on its own. Program notes help to refine one's appreciation of the Requiem,
but if your heart has not fluttered by the
time the developing D minor Introit
begins to hover around its dominant major at the fifth bar, it is unlikely you
will ever appreciate the piece no matter how much you know about the composer.
Jerrold Levinson is right when he says that we do not need to study the score
ahead of time since "we miss nothing crucial by staying ... in the moment" by "following
the development of events in real time."
Such "real time" is essential when listening to the Requiem since the piece has been needlessly veiled by mystery
and intrigue that have nothing to do with its internal meaning. We know Mozart
began to work on the piece earnestly after returning from Prague to Vienna in
mid-September of 1791. He was interrupted several times by other pressing
obligations, including Die Zauberflöte, which premiered on October 1st. Although it is true that the
Requiem was commissioned
anonymously, the masked figure appearing in Mozart's doorway in Miloš
Forman's cinematographic adaption of Peter Shaffer's play is the result of pure
dramatic license. If there was any masked figure, it certainly was not Antonio
Salieri who, despite his rivalry with Mozart, remained on friendly terms with
him until the end. The anonymous commissioner was in fact Count Franz von
Walsegg, a mediocre musician and accomplished plagiarist, who wished to pass Mozart's
Requiem off as his own in memory
of his wife, Countess Anna von Walsegg.
Furthermore, money was neither Mozart's sole nor perhaps his primary motive for
accepting the commission. It is true that he had his share of financial woes,
but the situation began to improve towards the end of his life. Upon returning
to Vienna from Prague in 1791, he was delighted to learn that he had been appointed
Kapellmeister at Saint Stephen's Cathedral, a position which allowed him to
indulge a long latent passion for sacred music. This was the primary motive for accepting the anonymous
commission. The liberal reforms of Emperor Joseph II led to a wider scope of
the type of music deemed suitable for church ceremonies, giving Mozart freedom
to remold the text and music of the Requiem according to his ever-fecund imagination – a
fecundity nourished by faith and a fascination with the afterlife.
Baptized as an infant, Wolfgang was raised by devout parents
who took seriously the responsibility of passing the Catholic faith on to their
children. Leopold Mozart chided Wolfgang whenever he sensed his son slacking in
the practice of the sacraments, especially Penance. These warnings were
particularly justified in the early stages of the Enlightenment, a time when
divine revelation was doubted, ecclesial authority slighted, and human
rationality exalted as the sole power necessary for unlocking the secrets of the
universe. Endowed with an extraordinary perception of the "laws" of tonality,
Mozart must have benefited greatly from his father's admonition, for he could
easily have been persuaded that a natural, this-worldly, quasi-religion was
equally as conducive to upright moral living as any religious doctrine. As it
was, Mozart, unlike many of his contemporaries, found atheism an unappealing
and unsophisticated position, to the point that he vowed never to befriend
anyone who rejected religion and scornfully referred to Voltaire as that
"ungodly arch-villain."
Anyone wishing to understand Mozart's faith must confront
the thorny issue of his association with Freemasonry. The Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II, attracted to the Enlightenment ideals embraced by Freemasonry but
wishing to monitor more closely the anti-rationalist tendencies of some Masons,
consolidated the seven Viennese Masonic Lodges into three in 1785. This led
Mozart to join a new lodge, the Zur Neugekrönten Hoffnung, for which he wrote several initiation hymns.
Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini was already advanced in years and
failing in eyesight when elected to the chair of Peter, but as Pope Clement XII
he took up the responsibility of protecting his flock from error with no less
vigor. A Florentine, he was deeply troubled by the growing influence of a Lodge
established in his native city with the help of Lord Charles Sackville, the son
of the Duke of Dorset. In his constitution In Eminenti, the Pontiff astutely synthesized Freemason
philosophy as being "content with a certain kind of "natural honor" (quadam
contenti honestatis naturalis specie). In
other words, all we need to know is apparent to us in the laws of nature,
eliminating any need for divine revelation let alone any authority to interpret
and safeguard it. His condemnation of Freemasonry included a severe admonition
that the faithful were to "stay completely clear" of it (prorsus
abstinere se debeant): to associate with Freemasons
meant to incur an immediate excommunication that could only be lifted by the
Holy See.
Perhaps Mozart was aware of this prohibition at the time he
was inducted into the Zur Wohltätigkeit
("The Beneficence") in 1784. Nevertheless, we have few leads that would help us
explain how he would have rationalized his involvement with Freemasonry as a
practicing Catholic. It may simply have been the case that he saw how common it
was for Catholics to join Lodges in Vienna, and the young, somewhat rebellious
Mozart was eager to exercise his newfound independence from his family in the
big city. His father Leopold attended one meeting but never went back.
The irony is that Wolfgang must have been attracted to Freemasonry because it
seemed to accord with what he had learned in his Catholic upbringing. It must
be kept in mind too that Freemasonry was not a homogenous phenomenon. Like
several of his successors, Pope Clement XII primarily had in mind forms of
Freemasonry that embraced occult practices and harbored animosity towards the
Church. There is evidence that Mozart belonged to a lodge that enshrined the
ideals of justice, peace, and brotherhood from a rational point of view. They
seem to have been critical of religious abuses, but not hostile to religion.
They championed the dignity of all regardless of social rank (hence Mozart's preference
to make the lowborn the heroes and heroines of his operas). Mozart was also
attracted to the role music played in Masonic gatherings of uniting the
attendees in a spirit of brotherhood, goodwill, and peace. A good example is "in
Diesen Heil'gen Hallen" from The
Magic Flute in which Sarastro sings: "With
friendship's kindness as our guide, the soul's made glad and satisfied."
On the other hand, it is precisely the specious character of Freemasonry that
obliges the Church to forbid Catholics from becoming members. Although an
explicit probation did not appear in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, it did in the
1917 version, in which we read that anyone who joins a Masonic sect or any
society that "plots against the Church or legitimate civil authority" (canon
2335) incurs an ipso facto excommunication reserved to the Holy See. In
November of 1983, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a
statement clarifying that this prohibition is indeed still in force.
So in the end, provided we steer clear of Masonry, there is nothing to prevent
us from hearing a true expression of faith in Mozart's Requiem. The pope's brother Msgr. Georg Ratzinger was once
asked if he was troubled by Mozart's involvement with Freemasonry. His reply: "it isn't for me to pass judgment on Mozart. He was a man
with many difficulties arising from the period he lived in, and from the
circumstances of his life. The issue of his Freemasonry disturbs me insofar as
he was not only an ordinary member, but attained the rank of Master, and wanted
to found his own lodge. Freemasonry was obviously fashionable at that time in
Vienna. Certainly he hoped for material gain from his membership. Whether he
reflected on the theological implications I don't know."
If he did not, he certainly reflected on the theological sense of the sacred
music he had been yearning to compose by the time he wrote the Requiem. His genius consists not so much in breaking the
strictures of traditional forms as in stretching those forms further than
anyone stretched them before. He looked upon tonality and structure as horizons
of new possibilities rather than as limitations. Others had tried to set the Requiem
to music using the sonata form, but no one had exploited its possibilities so fully
precisely by adhering to the form more closely. There are those who criticize Franz
Xaver Süssmayr (1766-1803) – the composer primarily responsible for
completing the unfinished piece – for repeating the musical ideas of the
opening Requiem aeternam and Kyrie
eleison in the final Lux aeterna and cum sanctis tuis, but I would like to think Mozart would have had it
no other way, for it allows for a sublime melding of our human longing for
"eternal rest" (requiem aeternam)
with the divine reality of "eternal light" (lux aeterna). It offers a splendid parallel of our plea for
"mercy" (kyrie eleison) with the
firm conviction that God is indeed "merciful" (pius es). The transposition from D minor to B major
heightens the conviction, as does the rich harmonic
content of the Agnus Dei. This movement, which contrasts a "walking bass" line with
soft and simple a cappella sections,
makes a transition to the final Communion through an eerie chromatic deconstruction (requiem sempiternam) similar to the
Dissonant Quartet. This modern bridge ends with the final two above-mentioned
movements that honor Baroque sensibilities for musical symmetry.
What Pope Benedict wished to stress in his remarks after the Requiem performance is that the friendship alluded to by
Sarastro in The Magic
Flute is not some vague, abstract
connection with the cosmos, but a truly human friendship with a person: Jesus
Christ, the Logos, the "recapitulation" of all things in heaven and on earth
(cf. Eph 1:9). This friendship
with Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh, radically distinguishes
Christianity from Freemasonry, paganism, magic, witchcraft, and any occult
practices that refuse to believe that God did, or even could, become man.
The hypostatic union is precisely what we hear in Mozart's masterpiece. The Requiem is genuinely human without giving up its "divinity."
It instills in us a gentle resignation to the divine will in all things. It
elevates, rather than denies, pain and suffering. The Holy Father references a
letter written by Mozart to his dying father on April 4th, 1787, in
which the composer broaches the sensitive topic of life's final phase. He
writes: "For some years now, I have entered into such familiarity with this
sincere and most dear friend of life (i.e., death), the image of which not only
holds nothing terrifying, but on the contrary seems the most soothing and
consoling of all things! And I thank my God for having given me the good
fortune to have the opportunity to recognize in it the key to our happiness. I
never go to bed without thinking that tomorrow I won't be here anymore. And
still no one who knows me can ever say that I am sad or ever in a foul mood
when I am in their company. And for this grace I thank my Creator every day,
and I wish with all my heart the same for you."
The Pope remarked that these words witness a profound and
simple faith that pervades every note of the Requiem. Whether listening to this glorious music or facing
life's daily challenges, faith leads us to embrace the happenings of this world
as God's gift. Faith elevates us above them and allows us to look serenely at
death as the key to eternal happiness.
Such happiness is offered to each and every one of us, but
you certainly will not find it at your local Masonic Lodge. You will definitely
hear traces of it in a quality recording of the Requiem. Mozart worked extremely hard on this piece, unable to
finish it before his untimely death in 1791. Hence it is not meant to be
listened to while driving the car, washing the dishes, or working out. Rather,
turn off the television, sit down, close your eyes, and just listen. Mozart and Benedict both guarantee that you will be
much more prepared for a happy death if you do so than if you rush off to catch
another episode of Glee.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles, Excerpts, and Interviews:
Ignatius Insight Author Page for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI | Ignatius Insight
Music as Witness to the Faith: Benedict on Beethoven and Pärt | Rev. Daniel B. Gallagher
Music and Spirituality: To the Tune of St. Thomas Aquinas | Fr. Basil Cole, O.P.
Music and Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
The Virtue of Art and the Virtue of Religion | John Saward
Modern Art: Friend or Foe? | Joseph Pearce
Evangelizing With Love, Beauty and Reason | An Interview with Joseph Pearce
Monsignor Daniel B. Gallagher is a priest of the Diocese of Gaylord. His recent publications appear
in Sacred Architecture Journal (Spring 2011),
Benedict XVI and
Beauty in Sacred Art and Architecture (Four Courts Press, 2011), and Scruton's Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; forthcoming).
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