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| The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra warming up before the concert. The choir still had yet to come out! (The picture isn't very clear; it was taken with my phone) |
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| F. Murray Abraham as Salieri (L) and as himself (R) |
In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct. - Edvard Grieg
Mozart's music is free of all exaggeration, of all sharp breaks and contradictions. The sun shines but does not blind, does not burn or consume. Heaven arches over the earth, but it does not weigh it down, it does not crush or devour it. - Karl Barth
It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion. - Leonard Bernstein
What a picture of a better world you have given us, Mozart! - Franz Schubert
Milan, August 31, 1771.Anyone who knows more on this subject, please comment with your input and knowledge!
My Dearest Sister,--
We are quite well, thank God! I have been eating quantities of fine pears, peaches, and melons in your place. My greatest amusement is to talk by signs to the dumb, which I can do to perfection. Herr Hasse [the celebrated opera composer] arrived here yesterday, and to-day we are going to pay him a visit. We only received the book of the Serenata last Thursday. I have very little to write about. Do not, I entreat, forget about THE ONE OTHER, where no other can ever be. You understand me, I know.
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| Today, Antonio Salieri would have been 261 years old! He was 6 years older than Mozart. |
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| Nannerl in 1763, wearing a dress given to her by Empress Maria Theresa when she and Wolfgang performed for her. |
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| Nannerl in 1785. |
May the name of his father be his epitaph, as his veneration for him was the essence of his life.
Does he still find time to tickle the ivories?Msgr Ratzinger also gives a musical portrait of their family home:
Very seldom. But the last time I was in Rome with the Cathedral Choir the piano lid was open, and Mozart sonatas were lying there, open. He knows himself that his playing is hardly of an elevated standard, but he enjoys it. And his desire to make music still finds its most beautiful outlet in Mozart.
What sort of piano does he have then?
It's of no particular brand. We bought it when he was lecturing in Freising. The action is not so great, but it looks very nice, and the tone is fine. For the papal palace in Castelgandolfo the Steinway firm has donated a small grand piano, one which I also used to enjoy playing very much. There's talk of getting one for the Vatican too, but my brother says it's not worth it. For one thing he doesn't have much time, and also he gauges his own abilities realistically. For his own playing, his old piano is good enough.
Reverend Kapellmeister, how did you and your brother come in contact with Mozart for the first time?
At home we played the harmonium. Our parents were of the view that it would prepare us for the organ. In one practice book was a piece of two lines reputed to be by Mozart. I could never identify it later. The "Mozart year" 1941 saw an intensification. During the 150th year after the composer's death there was a Mozart broadcast every Sunday, at lunch time. As I was the one in the family who was the most musically engaged, I was allowed to take my father's place at the table, which was directly next to the radio. Then in July I went with my brother to a Mozart concert put on by the Regensburg Cathedral choir. They sang excerpts from The Impresario in costume, and it was quite wonderful. I couldn't sleep the whole night.
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| Cardinal Ratzinger enjoying Mozart |
You are a great lover of Mozart.Penetrated our souls...so luminous...so deep...contains the whole tragedy of human existence, says the man who is now Pope. Many, including myself, would agree. The deeper one enters into Mozart's music — the more one seeks to find there, in between those little quavers and crotchets; — in short, the more one allows it to 'penetrate the soul', then the more it is felt as transcendent, sublime, consummately beautiful.
Yes! Although we moved around a very great deal in my childhood, the family basically always remained in the area between the Inn and the Salzach. And the largest and most important and best parts of my youth I spent in Traunstein, which very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me very deeply, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence.
What must appear everywhere else as a vain image of fantasy or even of blasphemy — the definitive revelation of eternal beauty in a genuine earthly body — may well have become blessed reality just once, here, in the realm of the Catholic Incarnation.And this astonishing passage from his Tribute to Mozart:
Do we not come from God and return to him, passing through the waters and fires of time, suffering and death? And why should we not permit ourselves to be led through the dissonances of our existence by the Zauberflöte, a tremendous adumbration of love, light and glory, eternal truth and harmony? Is there a better, indeed another manner to bear witness to the nobility of our divine filiation than to make present whence we came and where we are going? All those whom we take for our models tried to have it that way, and above all he who knew himself to be the Son of the Father, who had the face of the Father before his eyes always, and whose will he accomplished. Mozart serves by making audible the triumphal hymn of a prelapsarian and resurrected creation, in which suffering and guilt are not presented as faint memory, as past, but as conquered, absolved, fixed present.All this will inevitably scandalise those who regard Mozart primarily as a Freemason, and The Magic Flute principally as a piece of Freemasonic symbology, both true enough in themselves. (Balthasar too — the "theologian of beauty" — is viewed in certain circles with suspicion. Yet the Holy Father, as Cardinal Ratzinger, said at von Balthasar's funeral, "the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the Faith".) The subject of Mozart's Freemasonry was raised with Georg Ratzinger:
Does it disturb you that Mozart was a Freemason?No thoughtful Catholic will have difficulty distinguishing Mozart's music from his Freemasonry, any more, for example, than separating Bach's work from his Lutheranism. If we were to dismiss every human work that had been created by a sinner, there might not be much left standing. I was once taken to task for leading a congregation in a "Protestant tune", to which I replied, "which note was Protestant, the E-flat or the B-flat?"
It isn't for me to pass judgement 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.
Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved You!Contrary to popular opinion, true beauty (the only kind there is, despite Satan's posturings) is objective. Truth and goodness are beautiful, just as the beautiful is true and good. A wonderful passage from Balthasar's The Glory of the Lordsays,
Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. [my italics] Beauty is the ... one without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which ... has bid farewell to our new world, leaving it to its avarice and sadness.In former times the liturgy, too, "refused to understand itself" apart from beauty: beauty was taken for granted. The fact that the holy liturgy has — in broad terms — been a casualty of the modern exaltation of ugliness is for Benedict XVI a matter of grave concern. He speaks scathingly of:
...mass culture geared to quantity, production and success. Pop music joins up with this culture... It is a reflection of what this society is, the musical embodiment of kitsch... Hindemith used the term brainwashing for this kind of noise, which can hardly be called music any more ... Is it a pastoral success when we are capable of following the trend of mass culture and thus share the blame for its making people immature or irresponsible? (A New Song for the Lord, p.108)For him, "faith becoming music is part of the process of the Word becoming flesh" ( p.122 ). But there is no chance here of doing justice to the breadth and profundity of our theologian-Pope's writings. Here is one small taste:
It is not the case that you think something up then sing it; instead, the song comes to you from the angels, and you have to lift up your heart so that it may be in tune with the music coming to it. But above all this is important: the liturgy is not a thing the monks create. It is already there before them. It is entering into the liturgy of the heavens that has always been taking place. Earthly liturgy is liturgy because and only because it joins what is already in process, the greater reality. ( p.129 )And a last word from Msgr. Georg Ratzinger:
Many describe your brother as the "Mozart of theology". What do you think of this title?
Joachim Cardinal Meisner of Cologne coined this phrase. It has a certain justification. My brother's theology is not as problematic and difficult as that of Karl Rahner... Directness, clarity and form: his work does seem to have these elements in common with Mozart's music.
