Mozart: Traces of Transcendence

For Hans Kung, as for many other people, something can sometimes appear in Mozart's music which goes beyond the human dimension and gives intimations of a bliss which transcends even all music. In this short book he sets out to identify what it is. Much, he argues, has been written about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but relatively little about the religious dimension of his person and music. While it is completely taken for granted that Johann Sebastian Bach has Protestant roots and was a pious man, that Mozart was a Catholic and wrote music for masses is virtually ignored. So the first part of the book looks at Mozart's life and music from this perspective and asks how it contributes towards those 'traces of transcendence' which may be perceptible to those open to them. The second part sheds new light on Mozart's Coronation Mass by setting it against its contemporary cultural and political horizon and the critical confrontation with religion beginning at the ,irrie of its composition. Here is a work which is not only worthy to stand alongside Karl Barth's famous study, but which for many readers will even eclipse it.