I Know Of A Man

I Know Of A Man

“I know of a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the  third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.  And I know that this man was caught up in paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.  On behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my behalf I will not boast, except of my weakness.  Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth.  But I refrain from it, so that no one thinks more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.  So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh,  messenger from Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.”  (II Corinthians 12:2-7).  These words in the second book of Corinthians allude to the apostle Paul, but if Mozart had read them, and perhaps he did, those words would have been  a burning arrow to his heart.  In spite of the music he wrote, likened to divine revelation, multiple plagues of spirit reminded him that he was not God.  Unlike another angel of light, he could not be proud.  

From early childhood he was recognized as supremely gifted.   In the words of his father, Mozart was “a miracle, which God has allowed to see the light in Salzburg”.  Yet Mozart seemed driven by blind impulse.  Scores of armchairs analysts have diagnosed Mozart with every mental illness under the sun from Tourette Syndrome to Bipolar Disorder.  One thing remains clear and haunts him hundreds of years later:  He couldn’t help from embarrassing himself (and his father). We remember his inane outbursts, the crassness and silly profanities.  They have been recorded and are not forgotten.  The story has been told, going through the grapevine, generation after generation.  It is every man’s worst nightmare.  Should I provide an example of this “lid off the id”?  I can’t do it. It would be too heartless.  It would be like pushing someone naked onto the stage.

Mozart’s wild and childish impulses, those random neurological firings, were ultimately harnessed by  music.  The outlet of unspent energy was released through the fingers of the pianist.  Every instrument including the human voice, became an analgesic for his pain.  

His musical compositions, and the performing and directing of those compositions, must have been a great relief to him, the very balm of Gilead to his soul.  

He wrote so much music and yet I will mention only a few as examples of his art.

Piano Concerto No 27 in B flat Major reminds me of a wild child at play, as divine as any bad child can be, when suddenly something captures that child’s attention and all that flippancy becomes flippantly beautiful. Eine kleine Nachtmusik K525 takes the breath away, it is so full of majesty and victory.  It is restraint and then an irrepressible lifting of the hand that restrains, breaking into a full run.  It is a shameless indulgence of joy.  “How dare you?!” chokes the realist.  But Mozart, that child, dares and then dares again. In a world of suffering, he dares to express  flagrant joy.  There is a 

“Flight of the Bumblebee” air about some of his works, as in The Marriage of Figaro”.  But what do I know?  He’s bombastic and I love it.  I hate it too.  There are those two sides, the Jekyl and Hyde, about this composer.  And just when I think I have this guy pegged, I hear this tender melody full of yearning.  Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major K467: Second Movement is clarity and purity, beauty and pain. The Horn Concerto just makes me smile. The Clarinet Concerto is tranquility yet taut with desire. 

There is classical music which imparts holiness but this is not what I hear when I listen to Mozart.  I hear the voice of the first Adam, the image of God deeply embedded.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was plagued  just like us.  We are all dull, uninspired sinners but when we stand and sing, we become different people, miraculously redeemed, “born again”.  When Mozart composed, played, and directed, he  was transformed from a silly boy into the son of God.  We know that God understands our grief, our unbearable pain, the intensity of love and heart wrenching yearning.  He also understands our celebrations of beauty and the dance of unrestrained joy.  He knows us.  He knows us because He knows the full spectrum of human emotion and experience.  We know this because we recognize it in Mozart’s music, music which lifts us out of a rotting grave to a rapturous resurrection.  What grace!  It is grace to both the writer and the hearer.  

“I know of a man”.  

Mozart/Myself