Mozart and Psalm 73
I do know it's more than this, but part of our trouble with the way God is running the world is that he's too generous. That remark will infuriate all sensitive non-believers and many believers but I think it's true nonetheless. In a world with millions as hungry as ours "generosity" isn't the first word that comes to our minds. That makes sense but the sense it makes takes in only part of the entire picture. If we knew—cared to know—what God is up to and will bring about we would still sense the "wrongness" of the world but we'd think noble things of God and we'd know it would all end in breathtaking joy and glory.
In the meantime we hate to see villains prosper and the righteous and innocent (babies) suffer. Sometimes we hate it that God is generous to the evil and thankless; they shouldn't be blessed at all. Many of us who talk a lot about his generosity are quick to say it should be limited to us and people like us.
Antonio Salieri had that problem. Salieri served Emperor Joseph II for thirty-six years at the court in Vienna as the master of the chapel, though he'd been around the court much longer. He was a great composer who produced thirty-nine operas, seven secular cantatas, eighty-six religious compositions and an assortment of other pieces. He remained friends with Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig Van Beethoven throughout his life and had given Beethoven lessons on counterpoint. Beethoven dedicated the three violin sonatas, Opus 12, to Salieri.
When he was a teenager Salieri dedicated himself to God. Ignoring its serious distortions of fact at times in favour of drama, as the movie Amadeus tells the story, one day Salieri prayed, "Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate your glory through music. Make me famous, dear God; make me immortal. After I die, let people forever speak my name with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give you my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life." He thoroughly believed that God gave him his giftedness!
He became the toast of Europe, and on the 16th of June, 1816, he celebrated the golden anniversary of his debut in Vienna. Everyone who mattered was there and some of his famous students, including Franz Schubert, played pieces in his honour. Life couldn't have been better for him. Invitations flooded in from everywhere, his opinion was sought and the praise never ceased and he was a part of every tribunal of consequence; but one thing troubled him deeply and his life soured and shriveled.
Let's turn the clock back more than twenty-five hundred years before Salieri, to another musician and composer called Asaph. When David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, Asaph was one of the lead singers. He was (perhaps) the "master of the chapel" and prophet for the most revered king in Israelite history (1 Chronicles 16:4-5, 37; 2 Chronicles 29:30). Today, three thousand years after he wrote them, the songs Asaph composed are still being sung and read in the presence of millions. Twelve psalms bear his name to the glory of God.
What did Salieri and Asaph have in common? Both were troubled by God's generosity, though they probably didn't realize that that was the case.
Both were troubled not by bad things happening to good people but by good things happening to bad people!
In Psalm 73:1-16 Asaph said he almost lost his footing in faith when he saw what was happening in the lives of so many that were wicked. The wicked prospered and people sang their praises and even asked them the secret of their success.
In the movie, the success of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart nearly unhinged Salieri. Mozart is regarded as "the most sheerly musical composer who ever lived" and the famous Goethe saw him as "the human incarnation of a divine force of creation." Mozart began composing at the age of four and he continued furiously with hardly a breath until he died at thirty-five.
It isn't surprising that Salieri would be jealous, even though the Viennese public preferred one or two of his works. On the whole, people were thrilled by Salieri but they were dumbfounded by Mozart whose name was never off their lips and whose music left them speechless with pleasure. Not only did Mozart write more than Salieri, the movie has his scores written perfectly the first time—he never revised!
As the movie tells it, Salieri described Mozart as "a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy!" Every time he heard the name of Mozart he became incensed and every time he heard him praised it drove him nearer to madness. Finally, obsessed by his jealousy and after looking at some of Mozart's perfectly written scores, he throws a crucifix into the fire, saying to God, "We are enemies you and I, because you are unjust, unfair, unkind. I will hinder and harm your creature on earth as far as I am able."
God—unjust and unkind? Because he was generous to the happy pagan? God is unjust because he is generous? (Compare Matthew 20:1-15.) Darkness closed in on Salieri; he shriveled and died long before they put his body into the ground. In spite of his still making the rounds, receiving respectful nods from the aristocracy, despite being recognized and praised he was the shell of a man—cancer had eaten his soul.
If we weren't troubled by jealousy, if we didn't know the pangs of envy when we heard someone praised—someone we knew some dark secret about—if we weren't profoundly unsettled by the good things that happen to bad people maybe all the above would be of fervent dramatic interest, but no more. If we weren't inclined to stand in for God as judge of all who should receive good in this life then the dramatized Salieri would be just another tragic figure. But like the composer we can burn in a fever and everyone loses.
Salieri offered no help to Mozart to lift him to a moral life that matched the generosity of God in creativity. It didn't matter to him that Mozart and his young wife would waltz on bare floorboards in their freezing apartment just to keep warm (which is true to fact).
When we're in the fever of jealousy no beauty or depth or honor of giftedness of our enemy makes a difference. No, that's untrue—these things make matters even worse; their presence only increases our bitterness for then we realize others have reason to praise our enemy. Others are lifted nearer to God and to the higher life by our enemy. Not us! We're too consumed with out correct views of his/her shortcomings, too filled with bile because we're aware of his/her sinfulness and too busy dissecting him/her to be uplifted by the gift God is offering us through him/her.
So even God loses!
We become so sour that everything in life—every gift from God in life—is lost on us or if not completely lost, at least cheapened. I need hardly rehearse the bah humbug approach to life that marked out Ebenezer Scrooge. [What a name for Scrooge. "Ebenezer". "God has helped me to get this far."] He was miserly and when he was transformed he became not just fair, he became generous.
Generous like God who gives riches to the evil and thankless; who spreads his generosity around through people who have no time for him and who wants his children to be generous as he is generous (Matthew 5:44-48).
[I've borrowed this and adapted it by permission from my little book Celebrating the Wrath of God. Permission from Waterbrook Press (a division of Random House), Colorado.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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