Mozart: “A Saint of Music?”
(Author’s note: Here’s some more old undergrad work I found on my computer, written in February 2009 at age 19 for a course called Spiritual Autobiography. That was a productive semester and year! I still like this but found it almost impossible to publish. It’s too niche. We really “canonize” some artists — ha, I love puns!)
Grace Lapointe
02/05/09
Spiritual Autobiography
Mozart: A Saint of Music
Music has always evoked strong images and emotions for me. Listening to music, particularly classical music, has allowed me to imagine vivid scenes and entire stories, even if these are not the same ones intended by the composer. My mom, who was a voice major in college, is familiar with a lot of musical genres. She frequently listened to classical music with me when I was little. This exposed me to a diverse range of music, but on the other hand, it made me somewhat blasé about music in general. Hearing your mother sing arias around the kitchen makes most pop songs dull by comparison. But I still find some musical pieces tremendously moving.
The first time I listened to Mozart’s Requiem, it was a truly awe-inspiring experience. I was probably around ten years old. I had heard requiems before and knew that they were supposed to be funeral Masses. Faure’s requiem was light, airy, and rather insubstantial, I thought. It irritated me because it conjured up the popular greeting-card image of angels floating around on clouds. I was also a very devout child, so my knowledge of Catholic theology and the Mass may have played into my reaction.
But even without my religious background, I think Mozart’s Requiem would have hooked me from the very first note. It begins quietly, and then slowly crescendos in volume and intensity. The four-part harmonies are intricate and dramatic, layering on one another to create a beautifully rich sound. In the slow build of the voices and the orchestra, I could clearly see the interplay of light and darkness. Maybe I was influenced by the liner notes and the artwork, which showed an artist’s shadowy rendering of Judgment Day. My mom was singing along with the soprano solos and translating the Latin lyrics for me. But the music is so eloquent that it speaks for itself, making any further explanation redundant. The dark urgency of the music evoked powerful images of the end of the world and the final judgment. In the “Lacrimosa,” where dozens of voices gradually rise in pitch, I imagined that they were souls ascending to heaven. Yet underneath that, my rational brain was saying, “It’s just a scale. You know what a scale is.”
While I listened, I had the odd feeling that I had somehow been transported into Mozart’s mind. I didn’t have any specific beliefs about the apocalypse and the final judgment, so where were these vivid images coming from? From my imagination, of course, but I felt like they were being transmitted directly from the music itself. I knew that Mozart had been dying as he wrote the Requiem, and that made it sound even more urgent. I thought that I was literally hearing his heart and soul poured out into this piece. The tender vocal melodies, contrasted against the intimidating instrumental parts, sounded like his personal plea for salvation.
As I got more and more and more engrossed, I continued to have clear mental images, but my verbal thoughts became almost incoherent. I remember having bizarre, vague thoughts, such as: “If there are saints of music, Mozart must be one of them” or, “Mozart must be in heaven just for having written this.” Obviously, I knew that there is no such thing as a “saint of music” and that people cannot buy their way into heaven by writing anything. My only explanation is that my emotions had overwhelmed my rational thoughts. And although certain writers move me very deeply, I’ve never thought that Shakespeare was a saint of literature.
I have had other experiences of feeling transported or transformed by music, but none as powerful as that one. I still listen to Mozart’s Requiem occasionally and think it is the most perfect example of music that I’ve ever heard. Ironically, if someone close to me has died recently, I find I cannot listen to it. Although it might seem like the Requiem could be comforting in that context, it is actually just the opposite. At times like these, it affects me viscerally and seems almost unbearably sad. Of all the works of art I’ve seen or heard, I think it comes closest to expressing the ineffable. Whenever I listen to it, I’m captivated by its beauty, as if I’m experiencing it for the first time.
