Some of this has previously appeared here before, but Gerald Augustinus at closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/ does a nice wrap-up today of all things Papa-and-Mozart...
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Father Raymond Blake pointed out this Australian article. Here are excerpts:
The Pope's brother Msgr Georg Ratzinger - for thirty years choirmaster of Regensburg Cathedral - recently gave an interview to a Swiss Catholic press agency, in which he divulged that Benedict XVI's favourite musical pieces are Mozart's Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet Concerto.
Inside the Vatican reported that Benedict was playing Mozart on his piano on the Sunday afternoon following his installation as Pope, when he returned to his old apartment to see his brother.
And papal biographer George Weigel said in
Newsweek after Benedict's election that "here is another surprise for cartoonists of the dour Ratzinger: he's a Mozart man, which I take to be an infallible sign of someone who is, at heart, a joyful person."
Georg Ratzinger supplies further anecdotes:
"Does he still find time to 'tickle the ivories'?"
"Very seldom. But the last time I was in Rome with the Cathedral Choir the piano lid was open, and Mozart sonatas were lying there, open. He knows himself that his playing is hardly of an elevated standard, but he enjoys it. And his desire to make music still finds its most beautiful outlet in Mozart."
"What sort of piano does he have then?"
"It's of no particular brand. We bought it when he was a lecturer in Freising. The action is not so great, but it looks very nice, and the tone is fine. For the papal palace in Castelgandolfo the Steinway firm has donated a small grand piano, one which I also used to enjoy playing very much. Then there's talk of getting one for the Vatican too, but my brother said it's not worth it. For one thing he doesn't have much time, and also he gauges his own abilities realistically. For his own playing, his old piano is good enough."
Msgr Ratzinger also gives a musical portrait of their family home. He says, "At home we played the harmonium. Our parents were of the view that it would prepare us for the organ. In one practice book was a piece of two lines reputed to be by Mozart. I could never identify it later. The 'Mozart year' 1941 brought an intensification. During the 150th year after the composer's death there was a Mozart broadcast every Sunday, at lunch time. As I was the one in the family who was the most musically engaged, I was allowed to occupy my father's place at the table, which was directly next to the radio. Then in July I went with my brother to a Mozart concert put on by the Regensburg Cathedral choir. There they sang excerpts from
The Impresario in costume; it was quite wonderful. I couldn't sleep the whole night."
But let's hear Benedict himself on the subject.
In the extended interview that was published ten years ago as
Salt of the Earth, we read:
"You are a great lover of Mozart?".
"Yes! Although we moved around a very great deal in my childhood, the family basically always remained in the area between the Inn and the Salzach. And the largest and most important and best parts of my youth I spent in Traunstein, which very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me very deeply, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence."
"So luminous ... so deep ... contains the whole tragedy of human existence", says the man who is now Pope. Many, including myself, would agree.
Hans Urs von Balthasar was a close friend of Cardinal Ratzinger. Together with Cardinal de Lubac and others they founded the
Communio International Catholic Review, published today in fifteen countries. Balthasar dared to express himself in directly theological fashion, speaking of the miraculous Mozart who had the "power of the heart" to sense infallibly the true and the genuine.
A wonderful passage from Balthasar's
The Glory of the Lord says, "Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another [my italics]. Beauty is the ... one without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which ... has bid farewell to our new world, leaving it to its avarice and sadness."
In former times the liturgy, too, "refused to understand itself" apart from beauty: beauty was taken for granted. The fact that the holy liturgy has - in broad terms - been a casualty of the modern exaltation of ugliness is for Benedict XVI a matter of grave concern.
And a last word from Msgr. Georg Ratzinger:
"Many describe your brother as the "Mozart of theology". What do you think of this title?"
"Joachim Cardinal Meisner of Cologne coined this phrase. It has a certain justification. My brother's theology is not as problematic and difficult as that of Karl Rahner ... Directness, clarity and form: his work does seem to have these elements in common with Mozart's music."
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SUBLIME! Those of you who are not familiar with Mozart's clarinet pieces better run out and get a CD now. Once you hear the Clarinet Concerto, you won't get it out of your mind and heart!...And Hans Urs von Balthasar has got to be my favorite philosopher on the topic of beauty!!! I've quoted him before on this in connection with why we love Papa.....