Mozart×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on STUDY HALL: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Moses, on On someone they envied for years and never told.
2. 00:10
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   You know what nobody tells you about being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? That when you are five years old playing for kings, everyone says you are a miracle. But when you are thirty-five, they say you are difficult.
3. 00:21
   Mosesshare moment

   The burden of early gifts. Yes. I know something of this.
4. 00:27
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   But you! You spoke to God Himself on the mountain! Who could you possibly envy? A bigger mountain?
5. 00:33
   Mosesshare moment

   I envied my brother.
6. 00:35
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Aaron? The one who made the golden calf while you were getting the commandments? That Aaron?
7. 00:40
   Mosesshare moment

   The very same. For years before the calf. For years after. He had the tongue I did not. When God called me at the burning bush, I said I was slow of speech, heavy of tongue. It was Aaron who could make the people lean forward to listen.
8. 01:00
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

   Ah. So God picks you, but Aaron gets the applause.
9. 01:04
   Mosesshare moment

   More than applause. Connection. When Aaron spoke, the elders nodded. When I spoke, they... obeyed. It is not the same thing.
10. 01:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No, it is not. Believe me, I know about this difference. Salieri had the emperor's friendship. I had... well, I had his commissions, when he remembered me.
11. 01:27
    Mosesshare moment

    Salieri. The name that follows you even in death. Was he the one?
12. 01:34
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    No! Everyone thinks Salieri, but honestly he was just a mediocre composer with excellent connections. I envied someone else entirely. Someone who probably never knew I existed.
13. 01:46
    Mosesshare moment

    Tell me.
14. 01:46
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Johann Christian Bach. The 'London' Bach, they called him. Son of the great Sebastian. When I was eight years old, I met him in London, and he sat me on his lap and we played the keyboard together, passing melodies back and forth.
15. 02:00
    Mosesshare moment

    A kindness to a child.
16. 02:02
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    More than kindness. He was everything I wanted to be. Elegant, beloved, impossibly fashionable. He had the Italian style, the opera successes, the English aristocracy eating from his hand. And he was so... effortless about it all.
17. 02:18
    Mosesshare moment

    Effortless. The appearance that wounds most deeply.
18. 02:22
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! When I wrote operas, I sweated blood to make them perfect. Every note mattered. Bach just... charmed people. His music was pretty, light, perfectly acceptable. And everyone adored him for it. He died wealthy and respected in London while I...
19. 02:40
    Mosesshare moment

    While you?
20. 02:41
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    While I was still trying to explain to the Archbishop of Salzburg why my music needed more rehearsal time. Bach never had to explain himself. That is what I envied. Not the music—mine was better, I knew that even as a child. I envied that he never had to fight.
21. 02:58
    Mosesshare moment

    The fight itself becomes exhausting. I understand. Every instruction from God required me to convince the people first. Pharaoh was easier to manage than the Israelites.
22. 03:14
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Really? The man with the plagues was easier?
23. 03:17
    Mosesshare moment

    Pharaoh was predictable. My own people questioned everything. 'Why did you bring us out here to die? We had food in Egypt.' Aaron would speak to them, and somehow they would calm. I would speak the same words, and they would grumble.
24. 03:37
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Because you sounded like God, and he sounded like their friend.
25. 03:41
    Mosesshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps they saw in me only the staff that brought serpents and blood, and in him they saw a man who understood their fear.
26. 03:52
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you ever tell him? Your brother? That you envied this gift of his?
27. 03:57
    Mosesshare moment

    No. When I was angry with him—the calf, the doubts he sometimes voiced—I wondered if I should have. If speaking it aloud would have made it smaller. But envy is a strange demon. It grows in silence.
28. 04:16
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    It does! It absolutely does! I never told Bach. What would I say? 'Dear sir, you were kind to me as a boy, and now I resent that you sleep peacefully while I rewrite Don Giovanni for the fifth time?'
29. 04:29
    Mosesshare moment

    You could have said: 'You showed me what grace looks like, and I have been chasing it ever since.'
30. 04:36
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    That is... that is actually quite good. Did you ever say such a thing to Aaron?
31. 04:42
    Mosesshare moment

    No. And he died before I could enter the Promised Land. We both died outside it, in fact. God's punishment for our shared failure at Meribah.
32. 04:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    What happened there?
33. 04:55
    Mosesshare moment

    The people needed water. God told me to speak to the rock. I was angry—so tired of their complaints—and I struck the rock instead. Twice. With Aaron's rod. The water came, but I had disobeyed.
34. 05:14
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    So God kept you out of the Promised Land because you hit a rock instead of talking to it? That seems... excessive.
35. 05:22
    Mosesshare moment

    I had made the miracle about my anger rather than God's provision. In that moment, I wanted them to see my power, my frustration. Perhaps... perhaps I wanted them to need me the way they needed Aaron.
36. 05:41
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Oh. Oh, that is the heart of it, is not it? You wanted to be necessary in the same way he was.
37. 05:47
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And in my envy, I forgot my purpose. The rock moment... it was not the first time. I had been carrying this resentment for forty years in the wilderness.
38. 06:01
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Forty years! And I thought I was patient about waiting for commissions! Moses, that is a long time to carry such a thing.
39. 06:09
    Mosesshare moment

    What about you? When did Bach die?
40. 06:12
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    1782. I was twenty-six. And you know what? When I heard, I felt relief first. Then shame at the relief. Then... loneliness. Because I realized I had been writing for his approval somehow, in my head. Trying to prove I was worthy of that moment when he held me on his lap.
41. 06:32
    Mosesshare moment

    The people we envy become strange ghosts. We argue with them in our minds, win battles they never knew we fought.
42. 06:42
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you do that with Aaron? Imagine conversations?
43. 06:45
    Mosesshare moment

    Constantly. I would compose speeches while watching the camp at night. 'Brother, you have the easy part.' But easy is not the correct word. He bore his own weight. The people's affection is its own burden.
44. 07:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Yes! People loved Bach because he gave them what they wanted. Pretty sounds, comfortable emotions. I gave them what they needed, which they did not always want. It is a different burden, you are right.
45. 07:17
    Mosesshare moment

    And yet you still wanted his burden instead of yours.
46. 07:23
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Some days, yes. Most days. On the good days, I knew my music would outlast his. On the bad days, I wanted to be invited to more parties.
47. 07:33
    Mosesshare moment

    If you could speak to him now—to Bach—what would you say?
48. 07:38
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I would say... thank you for showing me what music could sound like when it was happy. All my life I tried to make profound things, important things. You showed me that delight itself was important. I envied your lightness because I could never quite achieve it.
49. 07:53
    Mosesshare moment

    And perhaps your weight gave your joy more meaning. When you wrote joy, it was hard-won. When he wrote it, it was simply present.
50. 08:05
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I never thought of it that way. You think people heard the struggle underneath?
51. 08:09
    Mosesshare moment

    I think people hear truth, whether they can name it or not. Your envy was rooted in seeing his gift clearly. That sight itself is a kind of wisdom.
52. 08:22
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    What would you say to Aaron? If he were here?
53. 08:24
    Mosesshare moment

    I would say: I needed you more than I admitted. And I resented needing you, which was my failure, not yours. You were not my competition. You were my completion.
54. 08:40
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    That is beautiful. And sad. And true. All three at once.
55. 08:44
    Mosesshare moment

    The things we carry longest often are. Do you regret the envy now? Looking back?
56. 08:53
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I regret not telling him he mattered to me. The envy itself... it pushed me, I think. Made me write better. But it also made me lonelier than I needed to be.
57. 09:02
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. Envy is a wilderness of our own making. We wander in it even when the Promised Land is visible.
58. 09:13
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Did you ever see it? The Promised Land?
59. 09:15
    Mosesshare moment

    From Mount Nebo. God showed me the whole land before I died. I could see where the people would go, what they would build. It was enough. Not what I wanted, but enough.
60. 09:32
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    I never got my mountain. I died owing money, buried in an unmarked grave. But people still play the music. So perhaps that is my Promised Land—the place I never walked but others do.
61. 09:44
    Mosesshare moment

    Perhaps envy teaches us this: We see clearly what we cannot have, and in that clarity, we prepare it for others.
62. 09:54
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    That is either very wise or very depressing.
63. 09:56
    Mosesshare moment

    Both. Like most true things.
64. 10:00
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Well then. To the people we envied and never told. May they rest peacefully, not knowing what they put us through.
65. 10:06
    Mosesshare moment

    And may we rest knowing that our weight meant something, even when we wanted their lightness.
66. 10:14
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartshare moment

    Amen to that. Even though you are supposed to say the amens, not me.
67. 10:18
    Mosesshare moment

    In this moment, Mozart, your amen carries the same weight as mine.