The Polyphony of Life

Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Music

Andreas Pangritz, John W. de Gruchy, John Morris, Robert Steiner

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532661525
  9781532661532
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532661549
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation

This fascinating book, which explores an intriguing idea formulated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the very last months of his life, has up until now been available only to German readers. Since Polyphonie des Lebens first appeared twenty-five years ago, a whole new generation of scholars has come into contact, in English as well as in the original German, with the entire collection of his works, as well as with a huge body of Bonhoeffer studies that have provided an exhaustive assessment of the man and his theology. But now with this brand new English edition of a book that explores a neglected but significant aspect of his life, readers may be surprised to discover how Bonhoeffer's interest in music influenced him--he seriously considered becoming a professional musician as a teenager, but chose the path of theology instead--and that not only did music provide him with a rich inner world of solace during his daily life while confined in Tegel Prison during 1943 and 1944, but music also lent him a remarkable metaphor for the fragmentary nature of life itself. In Polyphony of Life Andreas Pangritz explores Bonhoeffer's musical development and its impact on his theology and so fills in an important gap in the record of Bonhoeffer's life and thought.

1

Bonhoeffer’s Musical Biography

There are numerous speculative statements about music in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Tegel prison, occasionally supported by musical notations. Most occur prior to Bonhoeffer’s discussion of what Eberhard Bethge called his “new theology,”1 which developed in response to his question, “what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?”2 But the references are revealing, for they prelude and provide a commentary on Bonhoeffer’s final theological thought which, Bethge noted, was frequently regarded as shocking by those who read it after the Second World War. That Bonhoeffer’s last specifically theological reflections were preceded by those on musical terms is, however, no coincidence.

Bonhoeffer was already musically educated in the classical-romantic tradition before his interest in theology developed.3 In this respect he was typical of his social class, for “making music” at home was an integral part of bourgeois culture. Bonhoeffer was “playing Mozart sonatas at the age of ten,” writes Bethge, and “on Saturday evenings he skilfully accompanied his mother and his sister Ursula, who had a good voice, in songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Hugo Wolf.” At an early age, Bethge goes on to say, Bonhoeffer was accustomed “to performing without shyness or embarrassment.”4

This nineteenth-century musical legacy or “romantic heritage”5 was imparted to Bonhoeffer by his mother, whose own mother (née Kalckreuth) had enjoyed singing and had taken piano lessons with Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt.6 In this way a “treasure chest of songs” was handed down to the Bonhoeffer siblings, something Dietrich later recalled in his prison letters. According to Bethge, the young Bonhoeffer had played a “small selection” of the songs of Hugo Wolf with his sister, and later, before his imprisonment, Bethge and Bonhoeffer bought a large quantity of these songs and tried them.7 It seems that among the siblings it was especially Dietrich to whom the “Kalckreuthian family musicality” was passed on. In addition to the piano, Bonhoeffer appears to have tried the lute and even attempted his own compositions, and he “made such musical and technical progress at the piano that, for a time, both he and his parents thought that he might become a professional musician.”8

Bonhoeffer’s turn to theology never displaced music. Throughout his life he kept his skill as a pianist, especially his ability as an accompanist. He applied both skills during his parish work in Barcelona (1928),9 and in London (1933–1935),10 as well as when playing chamber music at home, often with his brother-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher on the violin and his brother Klaus on the cello.11 But a shift in his musical outlook becomes evident after Bonhoeffer increasingly came under the influence of Karl Barth’s “Dialectical Theology.”12 The influence of Barth’s criticism of religion in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (second edition 1922),13 for example, can be seen in Bonhoeffer’s critical comment about Beethoven’s “quartets and symphonies” in a sermon preached in Barcelona in March 1928 on Rom 11:6:

There is in the soul of human beings, as truly as they are human beings, something that makes them restless, something that points them toward the infinite, eternal . . . this notion of something eternal, something infinite, makes the soul anxious in its own transitoriness . . . It wants to acquire power over the eternal so that it can rid itself of anxiety and restlessness . . . From this restlessness of the soul the colossal works of philosophy and art emerged.14

This “restlessness of soul” is “religion,” says Bonhoeffer, but “the sum total of Christianity is not religion, but rather revelation.”15

Together with his theologically motivated preference for Bach, even though Barth loved Mozart more,16 Bonhoeffer developed a reservation for the classical-romantic tradition, at least as far as its liturgical use was concern...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface to the English Translation
• Editors’ Introduction
• Bonhoeffer’s Little Invention
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Bonhoeffer’s Musical Biography
• Chapter 2: Christological Concentration
• Chapter 3: The Lutheran Chorales
• Chapter 4: Heinrich Schütz and the “Recapitulation of All Things”
• Chapter 5: The Art of Fugue and the Conspiracy
• Chapter 6: The Music of the Deaf Beethoven and the “New Body”
• Chapter 7: Cantus Firmus and Counterpoint
• Bibliography