This post may seem like a diversion – but – it is not – as I will attempt to explain in my next post.
The following is from an address delivered by Karl Barth in the Music Hall in Basel in 1936:
As performer and composer, Mozart always had something to say, and he said it. But we should not complicate and spoil the impact of his works by burdening them with those doctrines and ideologies which critics think they have discovered in them but which are in fact an imposition. There is in Mozart no “moral to the story,” either mundance or sublime. He certainly consulted closely with the librettists for his operas, but not at all to arrive at some agreed upon profound meaning! We must take to heart what he wrote to his father in 1782: “In an opera the poetry must absolutely be the obedient daughter of the music!” . . . If we judge from his letters, the fact is simply – whether we like it or not – that he was never directly or specifically affected by nature around him, or by the history, literature, philosophy, and politics of his time. With regard to these he had no special conclusions and theories to present and proclaim. I fear he did not read very much; he certainly never speculated or lectured. There is no Mozartean metaphysics. In the realms of nature and spirit, he sought for and found only the opportunities, materials, and tasks for his music. With God, the world, himself, heaven and earth, life – and, above all, death – every present before his eyes, in his hearing, and in his heart, he was a profoundly un-problematical and thus a free man: a freedom, so it seems, given to him – indeed commanded and therefore exemplary for him. (31-33*)
Until next time . . .
tmitchellmusic 