This is one year late, but yet again, from ALFA Y OMEGA (issue of February 2006), comes the Spanish translation of a text that Pope Benedict XVI contributed for a book that was being put together to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006, with contributions by 60 personages, mostly artists.
Helga Rabl-Stabler, president of the Salzburg Festival, provided the text, entitled "My Mozart," to the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, which published it on the Feast of the Epiphany last year.
The magazine does not say so, but I imagine this could well be the first secular contribution by any Pope to any book - even if it does begin and end with God! Here is my translation from the Spanish:
My Mozart
By Benedict XVI
In our parish of Traunstein, when they performed a Mass by Mozart during church holidays, to me, a boy who lived on a farm, it felt like the heavens had opened.
In front of me, in the presbytery, columns of incense rose which muted the sunlight. In the altar, the sacred celebration was taking place, a celebration that we knew would open up heaven for us. And from the choir came music that could only have come from heaven, a music that showed us how the angels must rejoice over the beauty of God. And some of that beauty was present there with us.
I must say that even now, something like that happens to me when I listen to Mozart. In Beethoven, I hear and feel the effort of genius to give its all, and in fact, his music has a grandeur that touches me to the core. But the passionate efforts of Beethoven are perceptible and sometimes, in a passage or two, it shows in the music.
Mozart is pure inspiration - or at least, that's what I feel. Every note is just right and cannot possibly be any other. His message is simply there. And nothing in it is banal, nothing is simply playful. Existence is neither demeaned nor falsely harmonized. Nothing is left out of its grandeur and its importance, but everything becomes a totality, in which we also feel the redemption of the dark side of life even as we perceive the beauty of truth, which so many times we may wish to doubt.
The joy that Mozart gives us - and which I feel in every encounter with him - is not based on shutting out reality, but it is an expression of the most elevated perception of all, which I can only characterize as inspiration, from which his compositions seem to flow as if they were so obvious.
And so, listening to the music of Mozart, I am left ultimately with gratitude that he has given us all this, and gratitude because all this had been given to him.
Benedict XVI
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2007 9.25]