As a way of introducing Karl Barth to readers of this blog who may not be familiar with him, I turn in this post to a brief little volume Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Karl Barth*.
The back cover of this delightful read offers the following biographical information about Barth:
Karl Barth (1886-1968). The Swiss Reformed professor and pastor, was once described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. As the principal author of “The Barmen Declaration,” he was the intellectual leader of the German Confessing Church, the Protestant group that resisted the Third Reich. Barth’s teaching career spanned all or parts of five decades. Upon being removed from his post at Bonn by the Nazis in late 1934, Barth moved to Basel, where he taught until 1962. Among Barth’s many books, sermons and essays are “The Epistle to the Romans,” “Humanity of God,” “Evangelical Theology” and, of course the “Church Dogmatics.”
This little 60 page volume was originally published in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in 1956, and was reissued in English translation in 1986, the 100th anniversary of Barth’s birth.
Barth wrote the following in “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart” in 1955: Whenever I listen to you, I am transported to the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day by night, is a good and ordered world. Then as a human being of the twentieth century, I always find myself blessed with courage (not arrogance), with tempo (not an exaggerated tempo), with purity (not a wearisome purity), with peace (not a slothful peace). With an ear open to your musical dialectic, one can be young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live. (22)
Barth is reported to have remarked that when the angels were in worship that they utilized the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, but when they played they danced to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Barth also wrote: I have for years and years begun each day with Mozart, and only then (aside from the daily newspaper) turned to my “Dogmatics.” I even have to confess that if I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher. How am I to explain this? In a few words perhaps this way: our daily bread must also include playing. I hear Mozart – both younger and older – at play. But play is something so lofty and demanding that it requires mastery. And in Mozart I hear an art of playing as I hear it in no one else. Beautiful playing presupposes an intuitive, childlike awareness of the essence or center – as also the beginning and the end – of all things. it is from this center, from this beginning and end, that I hear Mozart create his music. I can hear those boundaries which he imposed upon himself because it was precisely this discipline that gave him joy. And when I hear him, it gladdens, encourages, and comforts me as well. (16-17)
So let us live and play – enjoying God forever!!!
tmitchellmusic 