Composing and networking
Mozart and Freemasonry

In the eighteenth century, Freemasonry combined mysterious rituals with Enlightenment ideals. Mozart was a member of this secretive society, his affiliations repeatedly reflected in his works – not only in Die Zauberflöte but also in his incidental music for Thamos, König in Ägypten.

Leopold Mozart and his son travelled to Vienna in the summer of 1773 and visited the famous doctor Franz Anton Mesmer, who lived in a villa in a large park. His open house attracted visitors from far and wide: he was a member of the middle class with vast wealth at his disposal. Contemporaries wondered how this was possible. Was it because he was a Freemason? The Mozarts also met another Freemason, the writer and theatre administrator Franz Reinhard Heufeld, at his home. We can never know whether or not it was Heufeld who drew Mozart’s attention to Tobias Philipp von Gebler’s play Thamos, König in Ägypten, but we do know that soon afterwards, Mozart started to set two choruses from the play to music.

It was probably in 1772 that Mozart, then sixteen years old, wrote his Lobgesang auf die feierliche Johannisloge (Song in Praise of the Solemn St John’s Lodge) K148 for tenor, male-voice chorus and keyboard. Mozart was not yet a member of any Masonic Lodge, and neither was his father. All that has survived of this piece is the melody and the bass line: “O sacred bond of friendship twixt true brothers, / Akin to highest happiness and Eden’s joys, / A friend to faith and nevermore against it, / Well known to all the world, yet full of mystery.” Here we find a feature that was to return in many of the Masonic works that Mozart would go on to write: the chorus has the last word.

A useful network

For friends of the Enlightenment, the Freemasons, whose heyday was in the eighteenth century, embodied the highest ideals. “Although the Lodge was a cult-like, symbolic community,” writes the Mozart biographer Eva Gesine Baur, “it was above all a community of like-minded men bent on action and made up of members of the upper and lower middle classes and of the aristocracy. The links that were forged here were advantageous to everyone who was dependent on aristocratic patronage at court.” Leopold Mozart was a hard-working businessman who saw that the Freemasons had an excellent network of contacts at their disposal and that this network could be of use to him and to his son. Freemasons occupied key positions, notably as soloists in the Court Orchestra in Mannheim. By the same token, several members of the Concert spirituel in Paris – one of the finest orchestras in France – were Freemasons.

But many rumours were circulating at that time. What exactly did Freemasons get up to at their meetings? Did they worship the Devil? Or were they planning an international conspiracy? Little information reached the outside world. All that was reported was that their activities served humanitarian goals and that Freemasons followed the paths of truth and brotherly love. Silence was also said to be one of their fundamental values. “Be steadfast, patient and silent,” sing the Three Boys in Die Zauberflöte. And Sarastro warns that “Within these hallowed halls, where mankind loves his fellow man, no traitor can ever lurk.”
 

Mozart joins the Brotherhood

Eleven years after visiting Mesmer’s house in Vienna,  on 14 December 1784, Mozart finally became a Freemason. No evidence survives to indicate what may finally have prompted him to act. Did he feel that he had been misunderstood as an artist? Was he looking for new friends? Was he driven by financial motivation? All that we can say for certain is that Freemasonry flourished in the Vienna of Joseph II.

The Journal für Freymaurer was founded in 1784, at a time when, according to its inaugural issue, “the better part of humany is at pains to free Reason from the oppressive burden of prejudices both sacred and profane”. The “Crowned Hope” Lodge was largely made up of members of the aristocracy, while the tradesmen of the middle classes frequented the St Joseph Lodge. Two Lodges where the members of the educated middle classes met were “True Concord” and “Beneficence”. The Lodge that Mozart joined was “Beneficence”, which had been founded only a year earlier, in 1783. A glance at the subscription lists for Mozart’s Wednesday concerts, which started in March 1784, reveals a strikingly large number of fellow Masons. These members seemed to know, value and support one another.

After joining the Lodge, Mozart wrote a whole series of pieces, most of them intended for specific occasions. They include the Lied zur Gesellenreise (Song for the Journeymen’s Travels) K468, two songs for male-voice choir K483 and K484, the cantata Die Maurerfreude (A Mason’s Joy) K471 and the Maurerische Trauermusik (Masonic Funeral Music) K477. In the spring of 1785, Leopold Mozart became an Apprentice at the Lodge “True Concord”. In Vienna, Freemasonry proliferated. Joseph II put a stop to this when he limited the number of Lodges, imposing a cap on their members. As a result, Mozart joined the “New Crowned Hope” Lodge in January 1786, after a number of smaller Lodges were merged together.

“Die Zauberflöte” and its symbolism

There is a well-known oil painting from the late 1780s depicting the interior of a Masonic Lodge. But which one? The answer is unclear. It is possible that it does not represent a particular Lodge, but is rather a kind of collage, designed to capture key features of life in a Lodge. The painting is also famous because at the right-hand side of the image we can see a man who has repeatedly been identified as Mozart. He can be seen in an agitated conversation with the man standing next to him. It is not possible to say if this second person is the clarinettist Anton Stadler or the playwright Emanuel Schikaneder.

Mozart worked with Schikaneder on Die Zauberflöte, a singspiel that has repeatedly – and with good reason – been interpreted in the context of Freemasonry. Even today, the work continues to be reinterpreted. The piece reflects the spirit of the age in late eighteenth-century Vienna, and mirrors the social upheaval of the period, as well as the values of the Enlightenment. It also includes timeless elements drawn from the world of fairytales. But it has also been interpreted in the light of its affinities with Freemasonry. The music is rich in Masonic symbolism. One component of the ritual that is enacted here is the priests’ fanfare, heard for the first time in the Overture. This fanfare imitates the hammer blows of the Grand Master, who is in charge of the Lodge and who sits by the altar, and of his two assistants during the ceremony in the Temple. But despite these allusions, Mozart gives away no Masonic secrets – he was astute enough to limit himself to the most general of allusions.

Right up until the final months of his life, Mozart wrote music close to the Masons’ world of ideas. As late as 15 November 1781, he entered the cantata Laut verkünde unsere Freude (Loudly Proclaim Our Joy) in the catalogue of his compositions. Two days later, he conducted the first performance at the inauguration of the Temple at the “Crowned Hope” Lodge, when light was carried into the room. Three weeks later he was dead – another of the world’s great mysteries.