A Letter of Thanks to Mozart1

Basel, December 23, 1955

My dear Maestro and Court Composer: Well now, someone hit upon the curious idea of inviting me and a few others to write for his newspaper a "Letter of Thanks to Mozart." At first I shook my head, my eye already on the waste basket. But since it isyouwho is to be the subject, I find it almost impossible to resist. For that matter, didn't you yourself write more than one rather odd letter during your lifetime? Well, then, why not me? To be sure, there where you are now — free of space and time — you [and your companions] know more about each other and also about us than is possible for us here. And so I don't doubt, really, that you have known for a long time how grateful I have been to you, grateful for as long as I can recall, and that this gratitude is constantly being renewed. But even so, why should't you for once see this gratitude expressed in black and white? But first, two preliminary matters. The first is that I am one of those Protestants of whom you are supposed to have once said that we probably could not properly understand the Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. Pardon me — you probably know better now. Still, I don't want to trouble you with theology on this point. Imagaine, rather, that I was dreaming about you last week, specifically that I was supposed to give you an examination (why is a mystery to me) and that to my question what "Dogmatics" and "Dogma" might mean, I received no answer at all — despite my most friendly prompting and my hints about your masses, which I especially like! This saddened me (because, after all, I knew that under no circumstances would you be allowed to fail). Shall we just let this matter rest? There is another much more difficult problem. I have read that even when you were still a child, only the praise of experts could please you. As you know, there are on this earth not only musicians but also musicologists. You yourself were both; I am neither. I do not play an instrument, and I haven't the vaguest idea of the theory or harmony or of the mysteries of counterpoint. I am genuinely afraid, especially of those musicologists whose books about you I am trying to decipher, since I am composing a festival address for your birthday. Moreover, when I read the conclusions of these scholars, I fear that if I were young and could undertake this study, I should clash with several of your most important academic interpreters, just as I did with my theological mentors forty years ago. But be that as it may, how can I under these circumstances thank you as an expert and, as such, satisfy you? Still, to my relief I have read that you sometimes played hours on end for very simple people, merely because you sensed that they enjoyed listening to you. This is the way I have always heard you and still do, with constantly renewed enjoyment of ear and heart. I do this so naively that I cannot even be sure which of the thirty-four periods into which Wyzewa and St. Foix have divided your life and work appeals to me most. One thing is certain: that around 1785 you began to be truly great. But surely you won't be offended if I confess that it wasn't Don Giovanni and your later symphonies, not The Magic Flute and the Requiem, that first captivated me. I was deeply moved already by the "Haffner" Serenade and the Eleventh Divertimento, etc. — even by Bastien and Bastienne. Thus you became fascinating and dear to me even before you were hailed as the forerunner of Beethoven! What I thank you for is simply this: Whenever I listen to you, I am transported to the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day and 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. Of course, you now know better than I that for this more than even the best music is needed. Still, there is music which as a supplement, and quite incidentally, helps us toward that life, and other music which helps us less. Your music helps. Because it is part of my life experience — in 1956 I shall be seventy, whereas you would now be walking among us as a 200-year-old patriarch! — and because I believe that in its growing darkness our age needs your help — for these reasons I am grateful that you walked among us, that in the few short decades of your life you wanted only to make pure music and that in your music you are still vitally with us. Please believe me: many many ears and hearts, both learned and as simple as mine, still love to listen to you again and again — and not only in your anniversary year! What the state of music is where you are now I can only faintly surmise. Once upon a time I formulated my notion this way: it may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, the play Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure. Well, the contrast may be wrong, and of course you know more about this than I. I mention it only as a figure of speech to suggest what I mean. And so, truly yours, K. Barth From the Round Robin in the weekly supplement of the Luzerner Neusten Nachrichten, January 21, 1956 1 Karl Barth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, trans. Clarence K. Pott (Grand Rapids, MichiganUnited States of America: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), 19-23.