Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

From Philosopedia

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791)

Mozart, the Austrian composer, represents one of the great peaks in the history of music. His works, written in almost every conceivable genre, combine beauty of sound with classical grace and technical perfection.

A prodigy, he was taught to play the harpsichord, violin, and organ by his father, Leopold, and began composing before he was five. When Mozart was six, he and his older sister performed a concert for the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna. By the age of thirteen, he had written concertos, sonatas, symphonies, a German operetta, and an Italian opera.

The Pope made him a Knight of the Golden Spur, and for ten years he was concertmaster to the archbishop of Salzburg, a position in which he was restless because of his doubts about Catholicism. Two leading biographers are in agreement that Mozart was a non-Christian theist, but the Catholic Encyclopedia claims him as being a Catholic.

Mozart became a Freemason in 1784 and took his Freemasonry seriously. His Kleine Freimaurer Kantate (K.623), “A Small Freemason Cantata,” for chorus, two tenors, bass, and chamber orchestra has the following recitative:

For the first time, noble brothers,

We are met in this great seat of virtue, wisdom, and truth,

We consecrate ourselves to the sanctity of our labor,

Which is to discover for ourselves the great mysterious truth.

Joyful are all brethren on this day,

This happy day of holy dedication

By which the brotherhood is bound in unity.

Let us be thankful that human kindness

Reigns among men once again upon earth.

“The Magic Flute” is permeated by Masonic imagery, themes, and motifs. Also, Mozart wrote Maurerische Trauermusik (K. 477), the “Masonic Funeral Music,” about which Paul Nettl has written:

• The low, threatening notes of the winds anticipate the serious mood. Several chords serve as an introduction, then a plaintive, rhapsodic melody is played by the solo violin. This juxtaposition of winds and strings corresponds to the dialectic of life and inexorable death. . . . The dotted rhythms in the bass accompany the sobbing of the strings which, toward the middle of the piece, rear up in sudden anguish and then return to a gentle but serious lament. His famous ‘Requiem Mass’ was composed for Count Walsegg, who paid Mozart but put his own name on the composition. Ulibichov, the second leading biographer, gives further evidence that he abandoned the Church.

Mozart had worked feverishly on the requiem, with the foreboding that it would commemorate his own death. Meanwhile, he died at the age of thirty-five without finishing it. One of his pupils, Franz Süssmayr, did finish the requiem.

Freemasonry was sternly condemned by the Catholic Church. To his father Mozart in 1778 explained that Masonry was his only creed. “The orthodoxy of my youth is all over,” he explained, “and will never come back.” Joseph McCabe quotes the biographer Wilder as saying that “on his death bed [Mozart] refused to ask for a priest and when his wife nevertheless sent for one, it was refused, and he was buried without service in the common grave of the poor.” Common myth has it that at Mozart’s funeral snow fell. However, Nicolas Slonimsky, author of Music Since 1909 and My First Hundred Years – he lived to be 102 – checked with the Austrian weather bureau and learned that it was a clear day there on 7 December 1791.

{CE; Freethought History #9 1994; JM; RAT; RE}