Indeed no words can better be used to describe Mozart’s music than “sublime” and “natural.” Beethoven is heroic, tragic—although at the end, he too can be sublime, with the autumnal serenity of a warrior turned contemplative; Bach erects his marvelously ornate cathedrals of sound—and occasionally he too passes into a timeless realm which could be truly termed sublime, though rarely natural. But Mozart’s melodies carry something of the birth of an infant God, the remarkable union of opposite absolutes, total simplicity and infinite depth. Only here is the completely free and ever-surprising united to formal structural perfection. Mozart speaks with human words, as God spoke his Word through a birth, a life, and a death. Yet in those simple events lay the Incarnation, the eternal mission of the Son from the Father, suffering which destroys death, and transfiguration into deathless life. (full text)

August 2, 2011 by Communio, From the Winter, 2006 issue: Jonah Lynch, Mirth and Freedom in The Magic Flute (pdf).

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