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Mozart and Medusa

Mozart and Medusa

Last updated on: January 29, 2024 at 1:14 pm by Anne Kennedy

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Mozart and Medusa 2024-01-29T13:14:04-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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Yesterday after church I succeeded in herding a whole flock of young people across town, in the snow, to hear a local production of Mozart’s Requiem. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music, being so tragic and so beautiful, that though it was on the wrong day and at the wrong time of day, I jostled and maneuvered everyone to have that single hour free. All my kids have heard it many times, but never in person, live as it were, and so, despite the weather, and the usual complications of a long day of worship, Sunday school, and lunch we got ourselves together just in time to find our seats.

It is always discomfiting to encounter what once used to be known as “Church Music” but now probably falls under the “Classical Music” rubric out in the wilds of a secular world. All the context has been stripped away and the music hangs out there almost by itself, strange and alone, like a sort of relic to gods unknown. The four soloists brought this discomfort visually to the fore by wearing ordinary concert fare–the women resplendent in ball gowns of shimmering pale blue with sequins and dazzling red satin, the men in better-than-usual cut business casual. The blend of their voices with the choir was, at least from my point of view, divine. But it was bewildering to hear the words of church in such a setting, especially after we, in our service, sang some Getty songs and a couple of solid old Chestnut hymns. Why aren’t all the singers in choir robes, I wondered to myself as I sipped my merlot–for, no lie, our local Philharmonic sells little cups of wine with lids that you can take with you to your seat–and why isn’t this a cathedral? When the lights over the audience–would that it could have been a congregation–fell and the stage–would that it had could have been a chancel–blazed in glory, someone from the Chamber of Commerce came to the mic and bid us all to enjoy the “Show” for that, indeed, is what this beautiful music has become.

I love the whole Requiem but am always bold over by the Sequence, ‘Dies irae, dies illa,’ in English:

‘Day of wrath, day of anger
will dissolve the world in ashes,
as foretold by David and the Sibyl.
Great trembling there will be
when the Judge descends from heaven
to examine all things closely.’

Here’s just that bit if you want to listen to it on YouTube:

The words, so familiar usually, took on a poignant resonance yesterday, the notes resounding over a room full of people who have no more recollection of what that “day” refers to, nor who is angry or why.

Over the last week, there has been a bitter back and forth in the highways and byways of Christian Twitter. The “debate”–though that is not at all the word I’m groping for–is over the adoption of Medusa as a trop, as some kind of icon of wrath and recrimination in the argument over women in the church. I am slowly working my thoughts out on the particulars of that debate and don’t want to be rushed. The trouble is, instead of becoming more reasonable, the quarrel is taking on an almost mythic-level aesthetic. The push and pull, the reaction producing another reaction, like a pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth, swinging farther out each time, is like the banging of the drum in the middle of the Requiem—predictable, and full of doom.

Here is no progression towards some greater knowledge or understanding, but rather a reeling back and forth, and the long journey from one pole to the other is much wrath and vexation.

The Sequence in the Requiem is about God’s wrath, about which we are given fair warning. One of the signs that God is angry is in the proliferation of human anger. Peace and tranquility only come about when God restrains our wrath and indignation against him. When he withdraws his hand, though we think we will be happier than ever, our anger overflows like wine spilling out of a cup, being poured without attention.

Just before the Sequence, in the Requiem, is the Kyrie, which my church will sing every Sunday of Lent. It’s simple—deceptively so—and is the only remedy for all the troubles and arguments we share:

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ have mercy upon us.

Lord have mercy upon us.

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