The following was an address given at Macalester College in 2017 to the Institute of Theological & Interdisciplinary Studies, an organization cofounded by a Presbyterian pastor who had edited a collection of the writings of Theodore Gill—one of which was Gill’s seminal article on “Barth and Mozart” (Theology Today, 1986). For years I’d been troubled by Gill’s interpretation of the importance of Mozart’s music in Barth’s theology, so this invitation provided the perfect opportunity to provide my own response. What made the evening particularly enjoyable was that I dragged our hefty Victrola to the lecture hall in order to play some old 78-rpm records of Mozart’s music, in order to better “hear” what Barth may have heard.
This address perhaps best articulates my own theology and why I am so attracted to Barth’s writing. In the Q&A afterward, however, someone asked: Did Barth listen to anything other than Mozart? I was chagrined to answer that Barth did not, in fact, listen to much else, and he even commented to a friend that he wanted to get into modern music but simply could not bring himself to do so. At that moment it dawned on me that, like Barth, we can train our ears into one mode of listening so strongly that we cannot even begin to appreciate other voices. This presents a dialectic that I’d like to explore further.
Barth, Mozart, and St. Benedict:
Lessons in Listening with the Ear of the Heart
- Begin with 1st movement of Symphony no. 40 in G minor
This is how the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth began each day before he wrote. How do we know this? Because Barth says so. In 1955, he wrote: “I confess that thanks to the invention of the phonograph, which can never be praised enough, I have for years and years begun each day with Mozart, and only then (aside from the daily newspaper) turned to my Dogmatics. I even have to confess that if I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart and only then enquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher.” (Mozart, 16)
Earlier this year I contacted the director of the Barth Archiv in Basel, which is located in Barth’s home and preserves his office and personal library precisely as he left it at his death in 1968. I was specifically interested in Barth’s record collection, as those who knew Barth have commented that his collection of Mozart records was quite immense. When the 33 1/3 format came out in the 1950s, Barth immediately bought a player and writes in a letter to a friend that he spent far too much money on Mozart records in the new format.
My question for the director was this: Can Barth’s record collection provide any indication of his listening habits? Was he partial to symphonies? Operas? Piano sonatas? Violin concertos? How did he approach collecting Mozart? Did he focus his efforts on collecting the broad corpus of Mozart’s compositions, so that he could have one of each composition that was available? Or did he collect multiple recordings of certain favorite compositions—for instance, the Symphony in G Minor by the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, and so on? Or the Piano Sonata as recorded by Rachmaninov and other distinctive pianists? Unfortunately, however, the director of the archives in Basel told me that the record collection was not preserved. It was dispersed among family members, and because such a small remnant of that collection remains, about 50 records he reports, no definitive conclusions can be made about the Barth’s listening habits. Perhaps we can conclude that if fifty records is too small of a sample, then perhaps we should just settle for the conclusion that Barth collected a lot of Mozart. So he probably collected BOTH the corpus itself AND multiple recordings of individual compositions.
There is one published first-hand account of an interaction with Barth regarding his fondness for Mozart. A classic exposition of Barth’s admiration for and understanding of Mozart is an article published in a 1986 issue of Theology Today by Alan’s own professor, Theodore Gill. And it was in that article that Professor Gill recounts visiting Barth in his study in Basel, where a portrait of Calvin was hung beside a portrait of Mozart. Commenting upon this curiosity, Professor Gill received the reply, “My special revelation” (indicating Calvin) and “my general revelation” (indicating Mozart). The remainder of the article speculates on the degree to which Barth may have been revealing something about his own theology—a curiosity since Barth was adamantly opposed to the idea that there is such a thing as a special and a general revelation.
“Special” revelation denotes a particular, historical revelation such as the burning bush or the incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ, as opposed to “general” revelation, or the various ways we might learn of God through nature, a sunset, the laughter of a child, and so on. Barth absolutely rejected the latter. One of the more significant debates of his career was an argument with Emil Brunner over the idea of a natural theology, and the title of Barth’s reply was Nein! No! And that rejection was so vociferously articulated that it took years for Barth and Brunner to reconcile what had previously been a close friendship.
In 1986 Professor Gill offered this personal story as a way to reengage that question in relationship to Barth’s own theology. That is, while Barth rejected natural theology, Gill argues that we cannot take Barth at his own word. He even goes so far as to say that Barth did not know what he was doing. Barth thought of his theological work as a science, but according to Gill this was a misunderstanding. Barth was not a scientist, but an artist. And to that extent we cannot treat Barth’s theological pronouncements as scientific hypotheses or propositions, but rather they are the themes, the melodies, and the harmonies of a classical formalist composer. Gill concludes: “I think Barth simply mistook the regularities and formalisms of classical form for the systems and rigors of science. They do share an orderliness and a discipline, but they are worlds apart.”
While I am certainly intrigued by Gill’s proposal here, likening the theological genius of Barth to the musical genius of Mozart, I find myself a bit hesitant. It’s not that I don’t think Barth’s theology is any less impressive, but rather I think Gill’s interpretation of Barth fails to account for the importance of listening. Was Barth a composer of sorts? Sure. But more importantly, I think Barth was a good listener. And if an analogy is to be made to the artistic and musical professions, I believe Barth is more of a professional music critic than he is an artist or composer himself.
In order to fill this out, then, let’s look more closely at Barth as a professional listener.
He began his career in 1911 as a pastor in an industrial Swiss town, and he very soon found himself caught in the crossfire between the management of the local factories and labor. These were the years, of course, when various forms of Marxism and capitalism went through a kind of identity crisis prior to, during, and following the Great War. This was the era of general strikes—that is, labor strikes not in a single factory or even a single industry, but entire countries would stop working. Switzerland experienced several of these, and Barth often found himself at odds with the managers who funded his parish precisely because he listened so intently to the needs and struggles of the workers.
During this time he wrote his famous commentary on Romans, in which he turned away from the prevailing approach to theology, which understood scripture to witness to the religious experience of people in a certain time and place. On the contrary, Barth insisted, one must listen to the words of scripture as the word of God, which lands into human history like a bombshell that leaves nothing but a crater behind.
This book was so impressive that, even without a PhD, Barth was able to procure academic employment. What is curious about his first academic post, however, is that he was the token Reformed member of a Lutheran faculty. We may not bat an eye at this today, but in the 1920s it was rather significant. Barth held the first chair of Reformed theology at the faculty of theology in Göttingen. (Incidentally, this position had been funded by American Presbyterians.) He quickly found the atmosphere difficult, however, as the Lutheran air was just a bit too heavy for his lungs. He did not make many friends among his colleagues, and he frequently found himself sidelined or ignored. In one letter he complains that the announcements of his lectures had been pinned on the same area of the bulletin board as those advertising music lessons. After several semesters of lecturing on various books of the New Testament and Reformed theologians like Calvin and Zwingli, Barth endeavored to present on dogmatic theology. But the faculty stipulated that he could only do so if it was clear that he was doing specifically Reformed dogmatics, and so he was forced to adopt a course title based upon Calvin’s work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
After five years in this unfriendly environment at Göttingen, Barth took up a post at Münster. In addition to having a Protestant faculty, Münster, located in the largely Catholic Westphalia, had a sizable Catholic theological faculty. But Barth soon found that he preferred spending time with members of the Catholic faculty more than his Protestant colleagues. It was here that he first began wrestling with Catholic theology. He taught a class on Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, and even invited one of the more notable Catholic theologians of the day, Erich Przywara, to join them for a class session. Przywara is still remembered today as the author of a book on the doctrine of the analogia entis, the analogy of being, and Barth’s engagement with Przywara on this issue is currently one of the hottest topics in theology today.
After five years in Münster, Barth was invited to replace Otto Ritschl, son of the famous nineteenth-century theologian Albrecht Ritschl, as the chair of systematic theology in Bonn. It was in Bonn that he attracted some students from the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach, about thirty miles south of the city. Not much is reported about these students, but they do appear in a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who travelled to Bonn in order to meet Barth. He attended Barth’s seminar in the morning, and then wrote a letter to a friend stating how incredible the class was, and that later that evening he was going to attend a discussion with these monks from Maria Laach that Barth was hosting in his home.
Barth’s secretary and biographer, Eberhard Busch, records that Barth maintained friendships with this group of monks, and frequently visited them at their abbey, even occasionally bringing other students along with him. And there is one place in Barth’s writings that he refers to the Benedictines of Maria Laach, when in 1933 he wrote about the German church and, specifically, why he had not yet addressed the political situation there. He writes that he has not done so “for the simple reason that at Bonn here, with my students in lectures and courses, I endeavor to carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened. Perhaps there is a slightly increased tone, but without direct allusions: something like the chanting of the hours by the Benedictines near by in the Maria Laach, which goes on undoubtedly without break or interruption, pursuing the even tenor of its way even in the Third Reich.” Of course Barth would not always take this approach, and eventually he would be very critical of the German church’s acquiescence toward the Nazi regime.
What Barth was arguing here in 1933, however, was that it is important to keep on doing theology in the midst of historical and political upheaval. His analogy is a curious one, however—likening the carrying on of theology to the Benedictine chanting of the hours.
What is Barth referring to here?
Having spent the past six years working at Saint John’s Abbey, I’ve learned quite a bit about the Benedictines. And I think there is much to be gleaned in terms of dialogue with Barth’s theology. I would love to have been a fly on the wall that evening in which Bonhoeffer joined Barth and his students in a discussion with this group of Benedictine monks. But I have some strong suspicions about what attracted them to Barth’s theology, and what attracted Barth to Maria Laach. And it has something to do with the practice of listening.
The Benedictine tradition of monastic life finds its source in the life and rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia. What we know of St. Benedict comes mostly from a biography that a later Benedictine wrote—that biographer being Pope Gregory the Great, the same Gregory for whom Gregorian chant is named. Benedict was born in the late fifth century and lived through the first half of the sixth century. Early in his life he went to study in Rome, but he was repulsed by what he considered the moral licentiousness there. So he decided to become a monk.
Now at this time there were multiple, competing forms of monasticism throughout the Christian world. There was eremitic monasticism, in which hermits lived alone in order to pursue perfection away from the trappings of this world. And there was cenobitic monasticism, from the Greek koinos bios or “common life,” in which monks lived together in community in order to pursue perfection together, holding one another accountable. Benedict’s first stint as a monk was as a hermit. He lived by himself in a cave outside of the town of Subiaco, about forty miles from Rome. Evidently he was successful in his pursuit of holiness, because when the abbot of a local cenobitic monastery died, the monks sought out Benedict and asked him to lead them.
They soon regretted this decision, however, as his pursuit of perfection was a bit too rigorous for their tastes. The story goes that they attempted to kill him with poisoned bread, but as he was about to eat it, a raven swooped down and took it from him. So he left and founded another monastery on a hilltop overlooking the town of Cassino, the famed Abbey of Monte Cassino. It was here that he developed the Rule of Saint Benedict, 73 chapters that outline how the monastery is to be organized and how it is to function. And fundamental to the Rule of Saint Benedict is the practice of listening.
It begins: “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” You may be aware of the general practice of using an incipit in ancient literature—that is, in the absence of book titles the first word or phrase of a book often became a way of referring to it. So the final book of the Bible is known as the book of Revelation precisely because apokalyptos is its first word: The Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John. First words were therefore always carefully chosen, because they were supposed to communicate something about the book as a whole. Papal documents and official documents that come out of the Vatican also follow this practice. Dei Verbum was the Second Vatican Council that dealt with the revelation of the word of God—and it begins with the two words Dei Verbum (the Word of God). Pope Francis’s recent apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia or the Joy of Love, begins with those two words.
So when Saint Benedict begins his rule for monks with the word obsculta, listen carefully, then the reader knows not only to listen carefully but to recognize that the rule has to do by and large with the act of listening carefully. Indeed, the act of careful listening comes up as a repeated theme throughout the Rule. Junior monks are always to listen to their seniors, of course, but also—and contrary to the practice of many cenobitic monasteries in Benedict’s time—the abbot is never to make major decisions without receiving the counsel of other community members. Benedict also insisted that abbots were to be elected by the community, rather than the then-common practice of abbots selecting their own successors. This was a remarkably democratic innovation in ancient religious life.
But another way in which listening is fundamental to Benedictine life is in the practice of praying the hours. You’re probably familiar with this—that at set times during the day, from very early in the morning to very late in the evening, monks will interrupt their labors in order to pray. And Benedict outlines the seven hours—including lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and the evening vigil. During these periods of prayer scriptures would be read and the psalms themselves would provide the text of prayer, and these psalms would often be chanted, hence the advent of Gregorian chant. And the psalms were organized into a kind of lectionary so that the entire psalter would be prayed over the course of a week. This practice varied in its details, but generally this is how the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, developed.
So Benedictine life and work is indeed persistently punctuated with the practice of listening to the word of God. And this is what Barth refers to when he likens his own practice of theology—specifically, his insistence on doing so despite the political situation that swirls about him—to the unfailingly regular practice of the Benedictines at Maria Laach, who chant the hours regardless of the world around them. But we cannot understand this practice of chanting as that of an active performance. It is not that the Benedictines are so self-absorbed in their own music-making that they ignore the world—although this has often been a criticism of the monastic life. Rather, they recognize the ultimate importance of listening to the word of God, of taking a receptive posture and allowing God’s words to be proclaimed and prayed through them. Put another way, it is nonsensical for a Benedictine monk to chant by himself. Rather, he chants in community precisely because the point of it all is to listen.
Ad lib description regarding the scene from Of Gods and Men where they listen to music during their final meal together.
- Scene from Of Gods and Men.
In a way, then, this practice of listening, taking a receptive posture toward God and toward others, is a kind of virtue. As one carefully listens, repeatedly, seven times a day in prayer, but also in one’s labor throughout the day, one will inevitably develop this as a personality trait, as a characteristic. It will shape the way one encounters the world and lives in relationship to the world and to God. It becomes a habit, it becomes instinctual, it becomes the way in which one lives.
So when Barth draws an analogy with his own practice of theology, then, it is important to keep in mind the Benedictine theme of listening and taking a receptive posture. Throughout his work, Barth emphasizes hearing the word of God. This statement that Barth makes about the Benedictines has often been criticized. It’s 1933. How dare he sequester himself in the ivory tower and act like theology has nothing to do with politics. But I think that criticism misses his point. Barth was no stranger to encountering politics from a theological standpoint. He made many enemies standing up for labor in the industrial town of Safenwil. And he lost his position in Bonn due to his refusal to swear allegiance to Hitler. And he was the architect behind the Barmen Declaration that gave the churches a confessional stance to counter the Reich. When he states that he must do theology like the monks pray the hours, then, he is saying that the Reich can go about doing its thing, but his task, the theological task, is to listen to the word of God. Because without listening to the word of God, one cannot even begin to go about countering the Reich.
So if you are not in a monastery, how do you go about developing the virtue of careful listening? How do you develop this habit if you are not in a monastery with others, persistently punctuating the day with chanted prayer?
First, of course, you can go to church and listen to readings from the Bible, you can listen to the sermon, you can sing the hymns. But the Reformed practice is not to do this daily. So how does the Presbyterian develop the virtue of careful listening on a daily basis? What could Barth do, what did Barth do, to train his ear on a daily basis to listen carefully?
The first thing he did each morning, was to take the Mozart record out of its sleeve, place it on the phonograph, turn it on, lower the needle, and listen.
- 4th movement of Jupiter Symphony
That was the fourth movement of the Jupiter Symphony, in which Mozart intertwines six different musical themes that weave in and out of one another, but with the main theme—do ray fah me—being a popular theme used by composers in his day to evoke a sense of Gregorian chant, thus at the height of the Enlightenment and the eve of the French Revolution, this theme came to symbolize a specifically Christian faith or piety.
Now, to be sure, he was not listening to the word of God when he listened to Mozart. Despite his joke about the special and general revelation, Barth would say emphatically that one does not hear God’s word through means other than the word of God in Jesus Christ, the scripture that testifies to Jesus, and the proclamation of that word in sermons based on the Bible.
Barth famously wrote in the first volume of his dogmatics, the first of two volumes on the doctrine of the word of God: “God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. We do well to listen to Him if He really does. But, unless we regard ourselves as the prophets and founders of a new Church, we cannot say that we are commissioned to pass on what we have heard as independent proclamation.” (I/1, 55)
Many commentators have used this quote to say that Barth leaves room for a natural theology, that God can reveal Godself however God chooses. It is true that Barth, like a good Reformed theologian, always upholds the sovereignty of God to do whatever God wishes. But the point of this statement about the flute concerto and the dead dog is, rather, that one can’t do any constructive theology with such events. Sure, God can do what God wants, but we cannot proclaim any word of God beside what is found in Jesus Christ, the prophets, and the apostles.
Barth’s regular listening to Mozart is not an opening toward natural theology. Mozart’s music does not reveal anything about the word of God to which Barth insists the theologian must be open. What Mozart’s music can reveal, however, is insight into the created order. Just as a biologist doesn’t need divine revelation to make proclamations about nature, Mozart’s music provides an account of this world. We opened with the first movement from Barth’s symphony in G minor. In his doctrine of creation, Barth writes at length about this symphony. Specifically, he writes about how Mozart presents an account of the relationship between the darkness of this world and the light that overcomes it. Which is something, Barth says, we can observe without divine revelation. There is evil in this world, but there is also goodness—and the goodness is much greater than the evil. And he cites this symphony, stating that the negative things of this world exist “only in and with the positive.”
- third movement of Symphony no 40 in G minor
Again, we hear the intertwining of themes, beginning in a somewhat aggressive and foreboding manner. This leads into a more peaceful, joyfully reflective section, such that when one returns to the initial material, it no longer controls one’s overall impression of the movement.
So, again, Barth’s interpretation of Mozart is not that one is listening to something divine, but rather to mundane observations about the providentially created order. This is not some romantic natural theology whereby we see God in the sunset or in a symphony.
That being said, what I want to argue here is that the receptive posture that the theologian requires in order to hear the word of God can be developed through the regular practice of careful listening. Such a practice is, incidentally, a primary characteristic of the Benedictine tradition. And Christians of various denominations, not just Catholics, can learn from this tradition. Barth scholars have been paying a good deal of attention in recent years to Barth’s engagement with Catholic theology via the doctrine of the analogy of being, but I would argue that insufficient attention has been paid to what Barth learned from the Benedictine monks of Maria Laach.
But that practice, that habit, that virtue of careful listening can also be fostered through something as mundane as a morning ritual of placing a needle on a record. In this era of streaming music services that provide access to massive online collections of music, such a practice is more economical, to be sure, but also—I would argue—less intentional and less ritualistic. It may, in fact, be more difficult to develop such a habit of listening today. But it is certainly no less important.
We must listen carefully. We must listen carefully to one another, and we must listen carefully to the word of God. This is what we learn from both Barth and St. Benedict.