I'll see your Barth and raise you a Tillich

Holy theological aesthetics, Batman...Robert the Llama Butcher has a great post on church, music, church music, and spirituality in music, inspired by the occasion of having had Mozart's Missa Brevis in C incorporated into a recent Sunday church service. I especially appreciated the excerpts of Karl Barth on Mozart (having squeaked through my one-year div school masters without having read nearly as much Barth as I should've, these were all new to me). But when Barth says "But neither did there exist this 'demoniac Mozart' whom our century wanted to substitute", is this a dig against Kierkegaard's take on Don Giovanni in Either/Or? This article from Richard John Neuhaus seems to point in that direction. And while Barth might consider the spiritual message of Mozart's music to be self-evident, I'm mindful of this caution from Paul Tillich, in a footnote to Systematic Theology: "Every public performance of Bach’s Passion of St. Matthew carries with it the risk of making the gospel story more meaningless for people who admire the great art of Bach’s music without being grasped by its infinite meaning."

Now. As for whether Beethoven is "The Music of the Spheres" or "The Music of the Ego": I'm not so sure that that's a fight that needs to be picked. True, Beethoven's music is all him—joyful, stormy, playful, profound, and, yes, sometimes clumsy and intemperate, too—but I don't think it's all about him. When I hear Beethoven, I know that I'm in the presence of great music, never mind the musicological explanations why. That Beethoven's flaws and struggles, overtly expressed, are of a piece with such music, is its own revelation of grace.

I never know when to expect the music of the spheres, but the heavens seem to part to rain it down regularly. In the spirit of Billie Holiday's rendition of "I Hear Music" and Frank Loesser's lyrical laundry list ("The murmur of a morning breeze up there/ The rattle of the milkman on the stair/ Sure that's music/ Mighty fine music/ The singing of a sparrow in the sky/ The perking of the coffee right nearby"), here's my list (some churchly, some not): Kit Taylor playing the Goldberg Variations; the noon church bells in the Meadowood neighborhood chiming "Rock of Ages"; the Schubert Sanctus (although there are parishioners going hungry in the Diocese of Minnesota, where the Bishop Visitation guidelines say: "Please do not use the Schubert Sanctus (S130) unless the congregation really knows how to sing it."); and the music of the "Sphere"—that is, Thelonious Sphere Monk, when Hank Jones plays "'Round About Midnight".

Comments

[Robert the Llama Butcher]

Excellent post!

[don]

I didn't realize that folk needed to be warned about the Schubert Sanctus and I suppose his Agnus Dei, too.

We rotate through the service music according to season, and I always enjoy singing these -- and unlike many of the other pieces, it can be sung in parts.

[Chan S.]

Robert - Thanks; your post was inspiring, what can I say?

Don - The warning is odd indeed, since I've always found the Schubert pieces to be accessible, yet moving (not that I can sing or anything). I don't think I've had the pleasure of hearing the Sanctus sung in parts, but it's a natural for it...and it must be lovely.

[gaia gold cheap]

I didn't realize that folk needed to be warned about the Schubert Sanctus and I suppose his Agnus Dei, too.

We rotate through the service music according to season, and I always enjoy singing these -- and unlike many of the other pieces, it can be sung in parts.

[playerassist.com]

I don't think I've had the pleasure of hearing the Sanctus sung in parts, but it's a natural for it...and it must be lovely.