Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

Musica contemplativa and the beatific vision

George Harne, Princeton University

"We see in a glass darkly, but then face to face." The promise of these words by St. Paul has not only offered consolation through the centuries but has also provided form to the theology of heaven--conceived as the final, contemplative end of the blessed. Understood as the "beatific vision," this promise finds a unique articulation within the fourteenth-century Speculum musicae. A treatise best known for its polemical content, the Speculum--as its title suggests--is also concerned with the vision of the intellect. For Jacobus of Liège (b. ca. 1260), the author of the Speculum musicae, this seeing stands in direct relation to the beatific vision and consists of several aspects, which will be the primary focus of this paper. First, Jacobus added to the Boethian categories of musica mundana, humana, and instrumentalis, the category of musica coelestis. Second, Jacobus drew upon the topos of Mary and Martha--conventional, medieval icons of the contemplative and active lives--to designate the relation between musica contemplativa and musica practica. Third, in considering musica as a constituent of the quadrivium, Jacobus (following Boethius) understood that musica contemplativa could prepare one for metaphysical sight, i.e., seeing "face to face." Beyond these intratextual connections between musica contemplativa and the beatific vision, one also finds extra-textual links. These will be a secondary focus of this paper. During the time in which Jacobus was composing the Speculum musicae, Pope John XXII (best known to music historians for the bull Docta sanctorum) offered his private speculations concerning the beatific vision. John's views were counter to the traditional understanding of the matter and elicited a response--specifically a rejection, ex cathedra--by his successor, Pope Benedict XII. Thus, in light of both the Speculum musicae and larger fourteenth-century theological disputes, the relation between musica contemplativa and the beatific vision may be considered.

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Karl Barth, The Magic Flute, and God: The Implications of the Duet “Tamino Mein” for Barth’s Theological Method

Philip Stoltzfus, University of St. Thomas

The only “religious” experience Barth identified in his early life involved hearing his father play the duet “Tamino Mein,” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, on the piano. Reflecting back upon it at age 70, Barth described the opening lines as going “right through me and into me…and I thought, ‘that’s it!’” Given the centrality of Mozart in Barth’s musical life, as well as the formative role of musical reflection in Barth’s thinking, the question arises: What implications might there be for this particular piece of music as a resource in the development of Barth’s theological approach?

First, Barth says nothing about the feeling or mood evoked in this scene. This is consistent with the anti-expressivism with which he treats Mozart in Church Dogmatics III/1. Likewise, formal theology, in his view, has no business engaging with issues of subjectivity or interiority as methodological starting points. Second, the scene illustrates the act of a lover going outside of himself or herself, through acknowledging and appreciating the form of the other. Barth would say that Mozart’s “free objectivity,” in which he seems to grasp music in its “timelessly valid form,” is thus mirrored in this scene. Just so, theological symbols confront us as a wholly other gestalt, as in Church Dogmatics II/1, where Christ becomes “the beautiful form of the divine being.” Third, the duet’s opening leaps, taking us from F major back to C major, suggest the Barthian theme of God coming to us as a leap from the beyond. Yet, one hears in Mozart’s compositional style “parables of the kingdom,” which offer intimations of God’s form and freedom from within cultural forms. Thus “Tamino Mein” not only stands as a kind of “conversion experience” for the early Barth, but also serves as a resource and metaphor for his formal theological method.