Mozart!

Last night Marianne took me for my birthday to a performance of Mozart's Requiem at the l'Eglise de la Madeleine (Church of St. Magdalene) which is a famous church in the heart of Paris. Like most of the Catholic churches in Paris, it has a very interesting history - especially during the French Revolution. The Madeleine was being built when the Revolution brought it to a stop. The French state changed the plans for the building: it would be a 'temple' dedicated to the war heros of the French Republic! Well, at the Restoration of the monarchy, Napoleon thankfully decided to go ahead with the plans for building a church instead. The building is massive; and the style is "neo-classical": at this time architecture, as well as other arts, were marked by a conviction that the height of art was achieved in the classical age with Greece and Rome (as opposed to, say, the Gothic style of high medieval period with its pointy spires and gargoyles and flying buttresses). So the building is inspired by a classical Roman temple. Here's a picture: check out the columns and the frieze (Last Judgment) above the portico.

Inside the Madeleine there is no stained glass; there are not even any windows: the only natural light comes through the very top through two glass-tipped domes. It's interesting to think about what the experience inside churches was before electric light: there was only natural light filtered through windows and candle light. The whole experience must have been much more naturally enchanting... Back then it must have been so much easier to experience the natural world's ways of "proclaiming the glory of God".

I just found on youtube somebody else's home video of another performance of Mozart's Requiem by the same choir (The Amadeus Choir) in the Madeleine. In the video you can see some of the interior of the Madeleine: the choir stands on the steps of the high altar in the front of the church. Above the altar is a beautiful statute of St. Mary Magdalene surrounded by some dancing angels called the Ravissement de sainte-Marie Madeleine, which is a symbolic depiction of the moment of her death and the flight of her soul to the Lord. Above her, your eyes are then directly lifted up to a mosaic of the Resurrected Lord in triumph over death and surrounded by the saints. You can see to his right (your left) Mary Magdalene with her costly perfume placed at his feet (check out John ch. 11).

This video below is of the very famous Lacrimosa section. A Requiem (Latin for "Rest") is a funeral Mass put to music. So the text is from the church's liturgy (although today this hymn is no longer used in funerals). Lacrimosa is Latin for "tearful": it's a section of the Dies irae hymn, which means "Day of Wrath." Here's the Latin with a translation:

Lacrimosa dies illa,
[That day full of tears]
qua resurget ex favilla
[when shall rise up out of the ashes]
iudicandus homo reus.
[the guilty man to be judged.]
Huic ergo parce, Deus
[Spare him then, Lord.]
pie Jesu domine,
[Merciful Lord Jesus]
dona eis requiem. Amen.
[give him rest. Amen.]

The wonderful Protestant hymn-writer John Newton (author of "Amazing Grace") translated the hymn for use in Protestant liturgy ["Day of Judgment! Day of Wonders!"]. There is a lot of mystery surrounding Mozart's composition of the Requiem. It is true that Mozart wrote the Requiem after a mysterious masked visitor came to his door and commissioned it. Mozart himself believed that the visitor was an emissary of the Angel of Death and that he was being commissioned to write the music for his own funeral! Nobody said artistic geniuses weren't strange... It is also true that Mozart died before finishing the piece and his understudy at the time completed it. We know Mozart himself wrote most if it, including the Lacrimosa. There is something so haunting and sublime about it. It pulses with an awareness of the reality of God's judgment at the resurrection from the dead but is somehow simultaneously combined with a pleading hope in his mercy on that day when we "all appear before the judgment seat of Christ" (2 Cor. 5:10). So here's the video: