Mozart: Traces of Transcendence.(Brief Article)

There are few titles that have more surprised, intrigued and ultimately disappointed this reviewer as much as Hans Kung's Mozart: Traces of Transcendence. Since, as Kung observes, relatively little has been written about the religious dimensions of Mozart's musical work, Kung decided "to make rather deeper theological soundings into Mozart's liturgical work in two directions" (ix). The first is to discover to what extent Mozart's music displays "traces of transcendence," i.e. to what extent there is something in his music which "goes beyond the human dimension and gives intimations of the mystery of a 'bliss' which transcends even all music." The second is to consider the …