Music, Theology and Politics around Mozart: between the Image of the Eternal Child and the Idea of the Demonic

Abstract

In 1906, the musicologist Alfred Heuss published an essay in which he argued that there was a demonic element in Mozart’s works. This publication changed the way the composer’s figure had been interpreted up to that point, not only among musicologists but also among biographers, poets, musicians, theologians, and philosophers, who had generally followed the image of the eternal child. In this article, I analyze the history of both interpretations and attempt to reveal their theological-political background, which leads us back to the early texts of Hoffmann and Kierkegaard on the opera Don Giovanni. My thesis is that Heuss’s article is part of a tradition that seeks to turn Mozart into a Romantic author and place him within a German canon, linked to Protestantism and German nationalism, distancing him from other religious, literary, and cultural influences present in his work, such as Catholicism and Italian music. This will help us understand the use of the concept in recent decades, from Karl Barth’s theology to Peter Kivy’s philosophy, including the studies of Ivan Nagel, where the image of the eternal child and the idea of the demonic have continued to coexist.