Mozart's Church Music Via "Another Route"

Sometimes you think you've lived before 

All that you live today 

Things you do come back to you 

As though they knew the way 

Oh, the tricks your mind can play!

--Lorenz Hart, "Where or When", from Babes in Arms

I could revise this verse slightly: "Sometimes you think you've read before/All that you read today"' especially when I read a chapter from Charles Scribner III's new book Artists & Authors: A Life in Good Company. 

The book as a whole is divided into three parts: Authors ("Books and Company": Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Woolf at Scribner's); Artists ("Old Masters": Bernini, Rubens, Caravaggio, Michelangelo); Singers ("The Vocal Arts": Sacred Music, Schwarzkopf, von Stade, and Costa).

 

[Please note that von Stade is singing "Where or When" in the link above.]

It was in that "Sacred Music" chapter that Scribner wrote about Mozart's sacred (Church) music as Dietrich von Hildebrand had done in his comments in MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT and in the "Sacred Music" excerpt from Aesthetics, Volume 2. I think that von Hildebrand and Scribner agree on "the quintessentially Catholic character" of Mozart's Church music.

Scribner advises: 

The common wisdom used to be that Mozart's religious music was merely "for hire", something he knocked off to earn a living so that he could write the music--operas, symphonies, chamber pieces--he really loved. What a surprise, then, to read that his widow, Constanze, said that his favorite genre of all was church music. A close study of Mozart's sacred music confirms Constanze's claim. (p. 139)

He goes on to comment on Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore, K339 that it "was as carefully composed as anything Mozart ever wrote" with due attention to the "texts of psalms and canticles". He also highlights the "Dona nobis pacem" of the Coronation Mass in C-major that its peace "is not a passive one--not the absence of pain or conflict, but rather the consummation of joy." (p. 140)

[Please note that I purchased Artists & Authors and enjoyed reading Scribner's chapters on the authors, artists, and singers he highlights. For one thing, I learned how to describe the Crucifix at my home parish, Blessed Sacrament: as a "Christo Vivo"; His eyes are open and His side has not been pierced!]

After reading those comments, I pulled out my copy of a "Double Decca" set of some of Mozart's sacred music, including Vesperae Solennes De Confessore, K339; Vesperae De Dominica, K321; Litaniae, K243; Litaniae Lauretanae, K195, and the "Spaur-Messe", K258. In Kenneth Chalmers' notes he quotes a letter Mozart sent to Padre Martini in September 1776, in which the twenty-year-old writes about his "current activities in Salzburg" that "My father is in charge of music in the cathedral, and this gives me an opportunity to write as much church music as I like . . ." Mozart further comments on the challenge of the Prince Archbishop's time restrictions (a Mass was not to last more than 45 minutes): "Special care is needed with this sort of composition." Archbishop Colloredo was responding to Pope Benedict XIV's 1749 encyclical "Annus qui" (which was a Jubilee Year) to, according to Chalmers, "focus on clarity, and on an identifiably 'sacred' idiom". (p. 5)

Chalmers states that Mozart and the Prince Archbishop Colloredo did not get along ("possibly exacerbated by the very limitations imposed on sacred music" p. 6) and Mozart did want to write more operas but concludes on page 7 that he wanted to present copies of both the confessore and Dominica Vespers to Baron van Sweeten in March of 1783, indicating that he valued them.

Nevertheless, one would have to twist Mozart's words to imply that he didn't want to compose that much Church music!

Listening to Szell's 1967 "Missa Solemnis" with Dietrich von Hildebrand

There's a YouTube channel titled The Ultimate Classical Music Guide by Dave Hurwitz I enjoy listening to: not because I always agree with the judgment (or the worldview) of the music critic, but because I always learn something, think I should explore the music, or even try to buy the CD performance of a work he recommends. The classical recording business is such that I am having to wait more than a month (12/27/25 to 2/5/26) to receive an order of two Brahms Piano Quartets with Krystian Zimmerman (one for a gift)!

Hurwitz has posted several discussions of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with reviews of recordings by Bernstein, Zinman, Gardiner, Shaw, Klemperer, Blomstedt, etc. I own the Telarc CD of Robert Shaw of the Missa Solemnis and Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and several soloists. You could also watch the conductor rehearsing and performing the Missa Solemnis in 1992 at Carnegie Hall.

In one of Hurwitz's discussions of this great Mass, he talks about how until he listened to George Szell's 1967 performance in Severance Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra, Sara Mae Endlich (soprano), Florence Kopleff (alto), Ernst Haefliger (tenor) and Ezio Flagello (bass) and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus prepared by Robert Shaw, he did not understand or appreciate this work. In another video, however, he chooses Leonard Bernstein's 1978/1979 live recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as The Reference Recording. 

Indeed, the 1967 Szell is out of print, but I found it on YouTube, and after listening to it, went back to Dietrich von Hildebrand's MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT and read what he said about Beethoven's achievement in this work:

It is a work of art, but a sacred work of art. It is primarily an artistic representation--even the representation--of the spirit of the Holy Mass. Its sublime artistic beauty is fully thematic; but, on the other hand, it is so unambiguously sacred and so much a religious confession that one cannot do justice either to Beethoven's intention or to the spirit of the work if one listens to it as a pure work of art, that is to say, with the same attitude with which one listens to a symphony.* Despite the thematic character of the artistic beauty, the theme of the whole remains purely religious. (p. 73)

Earlier in the book, von Hildebrand comments on the "thoroughly Catholic" essence of this Mass at the beginning of the Benedictus "When . . . the violin rings out, it is as if heaven bends down; when the Dona nobis pacem resounds, as if humanity from its true metaphysical position looks up beseechingly to God. Truly, it ever in the world of art applies, then here we must say: "It is the Passover of the Lord." (p. 42)

That's so true in this performance! Or when you listen to the pleading of Szell's soloists and the chorus in the Agnus Dei for mercy and for peace as the prayers they are, not merely thematic developments, you know what von Hildebrand means. 

Sometimes critics ask if they can really appreciate a religious work without a religious response--reactions to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius usually disparage the text** and years ago a critic wrote that he couldn't respond to the tragedy of the Carmelites of Compiegne in Poulenc's opera because he didn't accept their rationale for martyrdom (I'm relying on my memory of Catholic media response to his review.) I think according to von Hildebrand you have to have the correct subjective response to the objective value of the work to give it its due and comprehend what the composer intended to achieve. 

Regarding Beethoven's religious faith, the commonly accepted view is that he had left behind his childhood Catholicism, but Nicholas Chong, an assistant professor of musicology at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, has written a book I've seen reviewed, The Catholic Beethoven, published by OUP (expensive!!!!!) but fascinating:

The Catholic Beethoven offers a new view of Beethoven and his religious music by demonstrating that both the composer and his sacred works were influenced by the German Catholicism of his era to a greater extent than has been thought. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, most accounts of Beethoven's religious attitudes have assumed that, as a child of the Enlightenment, the composer was estranged from the Catholicism into which he was born, adhering instead to an idiosyncratic and unorthodox religious outlook that was suspicious of dogma and tradition. This assumption has often resulted in the critical marginalization of Beethoven's religious music, with the notable exception of the Missa solemnis, which is usually included among his most important compositions only by being reinterpreted as a humanist or universalist work transcending its superficial identity as a setting of the Catholic Mass. This book argues that such views have relied on an inadequately complex view of the Enlightenment, which presumes incorrectly that the Enlightenment was monolithically opposed to traditional religious belief.

Beethoven's religious outlook was primarily shaped by ideas associated with the German Catholic Enlightenment, a particular strand of the Enlightenment that sought to reconcile traditional Catholic beliefs with elements from more familiar, secular versions of the Enlightenment. The book uses the central concerns of this Catholic Enlightenment as a framework for interpreting Beethoven's sacred works-not just the Missa solemnis, but also the Mass in C, Christus am Ölberge, and the Gellert Lieder-as well as documentary evidence usually cited in relation to the composer's religious outlook. In addition, it will situate the content of a number of religious books in his library within the religious-historical context of his time. Particular attention is devoted to Beethoven's interest in the writings of Johann Michael Sailer (1751-1832), one of the most important figures in German Catholicism during Beethoven's time, with whom the composer also had a personal connection.

*Von Hildebrand only mentions Gustav Mahler once (as an opera director of Beethoven's Fidelio); I wonder what he thought of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony with its "Urlicht" and "Aufersteh'n" movements . . . 

**Dave Hurwitz particularly despises Saint John Henry Newman's poetry in content and form. Newman had a more dispassionate view of his work: "As to my own Gerontius, it was not the versification which sold it, but the subject. It is a RELIGIOUS subject which appeals to the feelings of everyone." (September 18, 1870.) Not in this case, obviously.

Image Source (Public Domain): Beethoven with the manuscript of the Missa solemnis by Joseph Karl Stieler (1819-1820)

Best Books of 2025: MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT by Dietrich von Hildebrand

Please note that I purchased this book, published by the Hildebrand Project:

This extraordinary volume presents Dietrich von Hildebrand, one of the preeminent aesthetic philosophers of the twentieth century, in a mode unlike any of his other published works. Neither philosophy nor theology, neither biography nor personal appreciation, these essays achieve something rarer: capturing the true spirit of the music itself.

Hildebrand approaches the great composers with loving openness—the only stance, he argues, through which beauty fully reveals itself. He shows us Mozart’s radiant happiness, Beethoven’s victorious joy, and Schubert’s mysterious power, not through analysis but through reverent attention. The result is a book of profound insight and joyful discovery.

The three chapters dedicated to Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert were published in one book; the Additional Writings on Music, including on Sacred Music (Bach's St. Matthew Passion and his Christmas Oratorio), Beethoven's Fidelio, Richard Wagner's music dramas, selections from an unpublished essay on Wagner, and Verdi's music drama (Otello and Falstaff) are from other sources.

In the chapter on Mozart, he focuses on Mozart's operas: two of his singspiel, The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), and the three da Ponte operas, Cosi fan Tutti, Don Giovanni, and Le Nozze di Figaro. I was surprised that von Hildebrand did not mention either Idomeneo or La Clemenza di Tito, two of his opera seria but perhaps they weren't performed in Germany or Austria at his time. (When Idomeneo was performed in Vienna in 1931, it was in an adaptation by Richard Strauss with some of his own music included, so maybe it's for the best.) It just seems to me that the spirit and form of the opera seria, with its emphasis on virtues, would really appeal to von Hildebrand. 

He deplores (in 1962! already!?!) some of the misleading staging of Mozart's operas, the view that Giovanni is the hero of his opera--an anti-hero, at least--to the disparagement of Don Ottavio whom, along with Donna Anna, "deserve[s] our love" for their "moral depth." In a footnote to his discussion of "The Marriage of Figaro" he deplores productions that update the setting to "an art nouveau room" or "add farcical, coarse effects"! Von Hildebrand greatly appreciates the character of Cherubino, "that enchanting invention [of Beaumarchais], original in the operatic literature and so quintessentially Mozartean . . . An incarnation of Mozart's youthful phase of being in love, Cherubino is a unique character and without counterpart in the whole of literature." (p. 7)

He would have been most concerned with some performances of Cosi fan Tutte, when the couples switch after they've been re-united. I think he'd also be appalled with the depiction of Mozart in Amadeus, even though he knows that Mozart was no saint! Or rather, he'd be more concerned with Salieri's rejection of the true response to value, God's Providence in the distribution of talent.

Of course he does not neglect Mozart's other works, his symphonies, concerti, chamber music, and his religious music, including the Great Mass in C minor, the Requiem, and the "Ave Verum Corpus". He emphasizes the "festive radiance" and "the quintessentially Catholic character" of all of Mozart's works.

In the chapter on Beethoven he finds "such complete artistic fulfillment, such a conscious striving for specifically artistic worlds, such intentional realization of these worlds to the very last detail . . ." He writes of the art of Beethoven "is an unsurpassed expression of the objective logos. The ethos suffusing it is through and through that of a reverent and profoundly felt value-response [an emblematic statement of von Hildebrand's] of a surrender to the world of values and to God." (pp. 27-28)

Von Hildebrand especially praises Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, calling it "thoroughly Catholic": in the final words of this chapter, he writes:

When at the beginning of the Benedictus the violin rings out, it is as if heaven bends down; when the Dona nobis pacem resounds, as if humanity form its true metaphysical position looks up beseechingly to God. Truly, it ever in the world of art applies, then here we must say: "It is the Passover of the Lord." (p. 42)

The chapter on Schubert took me the longest time to read because I am not as familiar with Schubert's works, especially not his Lieder, so I had to stop to hear what von Hildebrand was praising because he knows Schubert's works so thoroughly, and he responds so empathetically to Schubert's person and art.  He calls him "a figure so uniquely loveable and filled with such extraordinary genius" (p. 44). He contrasts the joyful sharing of his music with close friends in the "Schubertiaden" to "an understanding of the tragic dimension of human existence in this valley of tears--a presentiment of death." (p. 45) 

Von Hildebrand comments on Schubert's lieder, saying he developed this form of song into "a fully artistic genre" . . . and that "His Lieder are musical poems." Von Hildebrand also praises Schubert's Masses, especially the Mass in E-flat Major, noting how he interweaves the Incarnatus the Crucifixus in the Credo, as "an entirely unique conception, which . . . allows us to see the mystery of the Incarnation in light of the Crucifixion." (p.61)

I found it interesting how few Italian (except for Mozart's three da Ponte operas) or French works or composers von Hildebrand discusses: no Massenet, Gounod (21 Masses!), or Thomas and certainly no Debussy or Berlioz. Even when he discusses Verdi, it's only Otello and Falstaff (Shakespearean inspirations with Boito's librettos; not Macbeth from Piave!)--and not La Traviata, Rigoletto, or Aida--and certainly no Puccini. He mentions Rossini's "Barber of Seville" once. No French melodie or Italian arie antiche, just German Lieder. His selections are focused! Probably depends on what was being performed in his time; musical tastes and trends change over time and place.

When he writes about Wagner's operas, which he had probably seen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus before fleeing Nazi territory in 1938, I still can't gain the kind of appreciation he has for these works. But I do think that he would be horrified by the different settings of the Ring cycle, etc. once the operas were allowed outside Wagner's designated performance site; (the Metropolitan Opera performed Parsifal in 1903 in spite of Cosima Wagner). 

When I think of Wagner's Ring cycle, I think of Anna Russell ("Remember the Ring?"; when Siegfried meets Gutrune, Russell exclaims that she is "the first woman he has met who isn’t his aunt!") so maybe that's my fault.

This is a book that demands a great deal from the reader. I was able to understand and sympathize with his expression of appreciation of Mozart most readily; Beethoven took some more recollection--I have listened to Beethoven through the years, including Fidelio--and Schubert took quite a few searches on YouTube to listen to some of his works. French and Italian are much easier for me to understand, but I've never studied German at all, so I have to take von Hildebrand's comments about the poetic expression of Lieder on his authority.

One of the reasons I've chosen it as one of the best books I read in 2025 is how much work I had to do to appreciate von Hildebrand's loving openness . . . reverent attention. . . . and . . . profound insight and joyful discovery." It was truly an interactive experience!

Honorable mention in this category of music appreciation goes to Dana Gioia's Weep, Shudder, Die.

Ritual Matters: Liturgy and Personality

In the 1990's I went through quite a Dietrich von Hildebrand phase. Sophia Institute Press was reprinting many of his works, including Transformation in Christ, The Art of Living, Man and Woman, Jaws of Death: Gate of Heaven, and Liturgy and Personality. Other publishers and used bookstores supplied me with The Trojan Horse in the City of God, The Devastated Vineyard, and The New Tower of Babel, his series of books descrying problems in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. One of the problems that he saw was the reform of the liturgy that had sapped its Divine Mystery, downplayed the sacrificial aspect of the Mass, and of course, stripped it of the Latin that the Second Vatican Council required to be preserved and indeed, inculcated more firmly among the faithful, both in prayer and in chant in the other liturgical reforms mandated by Sacrosanctum concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. I remember hearing these issues discussed at the Newman School of Catholic Thought I attended in 1979, and von Hildebrand's works were mentioned then too.

But when I read Liturgy and Personality: The Healing Power of Formal Prayer the first time in the Sophia Institute Press edition, Latin in the liturgy was at its lowest point of usage in the Masses I attending. Monsignor William Carr at the Newman Center at WSU held a few Latin Masses in the Novus Ordo rite, but those may have been the only ones I'd ever attended. Now that I've attended Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite for about ten years since the 2007 issuance of Summorum Pontificum, however, re-reading von Hildebrand's study  in the Hildebrand Project edition has a much greater impact.

As in all of von Hildebrand's works, the basis of his exploration of the connection between Liturgy & Personality (I think that Sophia added the subtitle) is the appropriate response to the hierarchy of values. We are as human as we should be when we respond to the objective value of things: nature, works of art, God. God should receive our most exalted reaction and response: love, adoration, obedience, worship. When we offer Him what He deserves, with the Grace He has given us to do so, we fulfill our humanity: we will be authentically human. This structure of subjective response to objective value is also a theme in the philosophy of Karol Wojtyła and Edith Stein as a Phenomenological philosophy that acknowledges the objectivity of being while exploring the human response to being. When we respond correctly to objective goods and truth and beauty, we will have personality. The Hildebrand Project provides a substantial sample where you can read his argument.

Von Hildebrand uses this response-to-value framework through Liturgy & Personality. Chapters 4 though 11 describe the objective values of the Roman Rite: the Spirit of Communion, the Spirit of Reverence, the Spirit of Response to Value, the Spirit of Awakenedness, the Spirit of Discretio, the Spirit of Continuity, the Organic Element, and the Classical Spirit of the Liturgy. Then in each of those chapters, citing examples from the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite--it was published first in German in 1933, so it's not exactly the Mass of the Missal of 1962--he describes how the Mass or the Breviary exemplifies those qualities. Von Hildebrand further explains why we won't always respond to them: because of some defect (sin) in our personality. Our egocentrism, isolation, concupiscence, narrowness, unconsciousness, etc., prevent us from responding to the great spirits and elements of the liturgy.

I presume he would have acknowledge that the same spirit and elements are present in the Eastern Rites of the Church, but what he knew of course was the Latin Rite. Dietrich von Hildebrand obviously attended Mass often and must have prayed the Breviary throughout the day. He is completely attuned to the Latin Rite.

Von Hildebrand's Battle Against Hitler

A major publication by Image Books and the Hildebrand Project:

How does a person become Hitler’s enemy number one? Not through espionage or violence, it turns out, but by striking fearlessly at the intellectual and spiritual roots of National Socialism.

Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic thinker and teacher who devoted the full force of his intellect to breaking the deadly spell of Nazism that ensnared so many of his beloved countrymen.

His story might well have been lost to us were it not for this memoir he penned in the last decades of his life at the request of his wife, Alice von Hildebrand. In My Battle Against Hitler, covering the years from 1921 to 1938, von Hildebrand tells of the scorn and ridicule he endured for sounding the alarm when many still viewed Hitler as a positive and inevitable force. He expresses the sorrow of having to leave behind his home, friends, and family in Germany to conduct his fight against the Nazis from Austria. He recounts how he defiantly challenged Nazism in the public square, prompting the German ambassador in Vienna to describe him to Hitler as "the architect of the intellectual resistance in Austria." And in the midst of all the danger he faced, he conveys his unwavering trust in God, even during his harrowing escape from Vienna and his desperate flight across Europe, with the Nazis always just one step behind.

Dietrich von Hildebrand belongs to the very earliest anti-Nazi resistance. His public statements led the Nazis to blacklist him already in 1921, long before the horrors of the Third Reich and more than twenty-three years before the famous assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. His battle would culminate in the countless articles he published in Vienna, a selection of which are featured in this volume.

"It is an immense privilege," writes editor John Henry Crosby, founder of the Hildebrand Project, "to present to the world the shining witness of one man who risked everything to follow his conscience and stand in defiance of tyranny."

The Hildebrand Project website provides a generous sample and asks for help promoting the book. I joined the launch team and look forward to receiving my copy. I am also interested in how this book supplements his widow's book, The Soul of a Lion: The Life of Dietrich von Hildebrand, published by Ignatius Press (using the same photograph!) in 2000. Alice von Hildebrand has also written her memoirs: Memoirs of a Happy Failure, about how she faced another form of totalitarianism, relativism--teaching for 37 years at Hunter College. You may also read an excerpt from her book on TAN Books' website.