“I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men; I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to it forever, and never can deny it; I believe that through Art all men are saved.” Dix Écrits de Richard Wagner, 1898
Today is a day unlike any other. As the pages of our calendar turn to the twenty-seventh day of the year, let us solemnly celebrate the birth of the one without whom, no Beethoven, no Wagner and no Mahler, just to name a few, would have been imaginable. Where there is beauty, harmony, refinement, simplicity and symmetry, Mozart's legacy is present.
Born on January 27th, 1756, Mozart, said Richard Wagner in On German Music, was "that greatest and divinest genius". The world was never the same again, and it shall never be. The absolute art, the absolute music and the absolute perfection that one considered only possible in a Platonic form was now there. Now here, with us. Here, on this very Earth.
Richard Wagner Canada
