Benedict XVI and Music: A Key to Understanding His Personality

Aurelio Porfiri

Among the many facets of Benedict XVI's long life, I believe it’s impossible to overlook his love for music, a passion he frequently expressed on various occasions.

He enjoyed playing the piano and had a particular fondness for the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer favored by many theologians (such as Hans Küng and, in the Protestant realm, Karl Barth), who perceived the imprint of God in his music. Indeed, Mozart is far more enigmatic than one might assume at a superficial listening. He was a composer who dwelled more in the sublime than in the merely beautiful, and the sublime can sometimes be terrifying. Returning to theologians’ love for Mozart, this was also true for Joseph Ratzinger, and for this reason, on his eighty-ninth birthday, he was honored with a concert featuring the music of his beloved Mozart.

Certainly, the then-Pope Emeritus was not only passionate about instrumental music but also sacred music. Let us remember that his brother Georg, who passed away in 2020, was a renowned choir director.
In 2012, when receiving the Italian Association of Santa Cecilia, Benedict XVI declared:

“The Sacred Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, in line with the Tradition of the Church, teaches that ‘as a combination of sacred music and words, it [the musical tradition of the universal Church] forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy’ (n. 112). Why ‘necessary and integral’? Certainly not for purely aesthetic reasons, in a superficial sense, but because, due to its beauty, it cooperates in nourishing and expressing faith and hence is to the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful, which is the purpose of sacred music (cf. ibid.).”

In the collection of his works on liturgy, there are many references to sacred music, offering truly illuminating thoughts on the current situation we face today. For instance, he contested the idea that certain music played in churches today should be positively regarded simply because it’s intended for young people. He rightly pointed out that this music does not reflect youth culture, but rather the culture of large pop music corporations. Young people are drawn to this music by technical and marketing means aimed solely at maximizing sales, which, from the corporations' perspective, is entirely understandable. However, this should not be the criterion for selecting liturgical music for our churches. And to be clear, it is not true, as Karl Rahner and others have claimed, that music becomes liturgical if the text is liturgical. Even in our parishes, we have many examples of compositions using liturgical texts, but whose music lacks any of the qualities of good liturgical music, which were already outlined by St. Pius X in his important Motu Proprio of November 22, 1903.