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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Perhaps an astrologer would claim that due to some remarkable astral influence the year 1955–6 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 27th January 1956; the centenary of the death of Sören Kierkegaard on 11th November 1955, and the seventieth birthday of Karl Barth on 10th May 1956. The three dates are being suitably observed by music-lovers and scholars the world over. But something more than a disposition of the stars links their names together. For if, as we believe, Kierkegaard and Barth, like Luther and Calvin in the sixteenth century, represent the end of an epoch and the dawn of a new era, then according to both men, Mozart is the herald of a new age. Though Mozart lived in the eighteenth century, he actually represented the end of the Age of Absolutism in which he lived and which lingered on in idealism and contemporary existentialism. At the same time he marked the beginning of a new day in which men would begin, not with expressions of their own consciousness, but with grateful praise to the Creator who has revealed Himself totheir consciousness. In Mozart's music Kierkegaard believed he had heard a No to the past: to man who is the measure of all things. Barth, on the other hand, believes he has heard a Yes to the goodness of God's creatures. Not that Mozart himself was a sort of Hegelian synthesis.
page 252 note 1 Either-Or, Vol. I, p. 38.Google Scholar
page 252 note 2 Stages on Life's Way, p. 43Google Scholar, Cf. Either-Or, Vol. 1, p. 38.Google Scholar
page 252 note 3 Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, p. 53.
page 252 note 4 Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, 3, p. 337.Google Scholar
page 252 note 5 Ibid., p. 337.
page 253 note 1 Ibid, P. 338.
page 253 note 2 Foreword to Kirchliche Dogmatik III, 4, p.x.Google Scholar In the preface to Dogmatik IV, 2, just published, Barth retracts his sweeping condemnation of the neo-Calvinists in Holland, particularly in view of G. C. Berkouwer's book, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. He assures them that ‘if in the future they do not wish to say anything unseemly about Mozart, they should have nothing further to fear from him.’
page 254 note 1 See The Point of View.
page 254 note 2 Kierkegaard, pp. 286–90.
page 254 note 3 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 551.
page 254 note 4 Op. cit., p. 288.
page 254 note 5 Either-Or, p. 49.
page 255 note 1 Either-Or, p. 51.
page 255 note 2 Ibid., p. 51
page 255 note 3 Ibid., p. 105
page 256 note 1 Either-Or, p. 5If. ‘It is not of course intended to say by this that music cannot also express other things, but this is its proper object.’
page 256 note 2 Ibid., p. 54.
page 256 note 3 Ibid., p. 57.
page 257 note 1 Cf. Calvin's commentaries on Psalms 33.2, 71.22, 81.1–3, 92.1–3, 98.45, 150.3.
page 257 note 2 Op. cit., p. 59. In view of Calvin's and Kierkegaard's view of instrumental music as a medium of communication—from God to man and man to God—one should not contemptuously dismiss the suggestion that it has no legitimate place in the public worship of God as such. In spite of Barth's high appreciation of Mozart's music, one ought not to conclude that he would approve of a Mozart symphony or sonata for an offertory, any more than he would approve of sculptured images, paintings, drama and the dance in the public service of God. It has been a gross error to think that the reformers were lacking in aesthetic taste, to say nothing of a theological appreciation of the arts because they excluded them from the worship of the congregation.
page 257 note 3 Lack of space forbids us going into Kierkegaard's brilliant analysis of Mozart's operas.
page 259 note 1 Uhde, Jürgen, Der Dienst der Musik in Theologische Studien, No. 30, p. 25.Google Scholar
page 260 note 1 Op. cit., p. 338.
page 260 note 2 Die protestantische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert, p. 53.
page 261 note 1 Cited by Barth, K., Kirchliche Dogmatik III, 4, p. 676.Google Scholar
page 261 note 2 Op. cit., p. 338f.
page 262 note 1 Barth, Karl, Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (Köln 1951), pp. 36–38.Google Scholar
page 262 note 2 On Authority and Revelation, tr. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton 1955), pp. 168–170.Google Scholar