Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The teaching

Taught from his Masonic music, his letters and The Magic Flute, with Emanuel Schikaneder's text.

The craft in music

Mozart taught no doctrine in words; he set the teaching of his lodge to music. The craft's own lessons, the square, the level, the three degrees and the legend of Hiram, are given in full in the branch on the Freemasons, among the orders and mystery schools. In his music for the brethren the craft has a sound of its own: the number three, the key of E flat with its three flats, the low, veiled wind of clarinets and basset horns, and the threefold knock of the lodge door. The Masonic Funeral Music lays a chant of mourning over that dark wind, and his lodge cantatas praise light, brotherhood and the love of humankind.

Death, the best friend

In a letter to his father, then gravely ill, he set down the craft's teaching on death as his own. Since death, looked at closely, is the true goal of our life, he wrote, he had for some years made friends with this best and truest friend of mankind, so that its image no longer frightened him but brought him peace and comfort; and he thanked God for the chance, his father would understand him, of learning that death is the key to our true happiness. He never lay down at night, he added, without thinking that he might not see another day, and yet no one who knew him could say that he was gloomy.

The prince and the portrait

The Magic Flute tells the craft's way as a fairy tale. Prince Tamino, fleeing a serpent, is saved by three veiled ladies, servants of the Queen of the Night, who show him a portrait of her daughter Pamina, carried off, they say, by the tyrant Sarastro. The Queen promises him Pamina if he rescues her, and he sets out with a magic flute, together with the bird catcher Papageno, who carries a set of magic bells, and three boys to guide them.

The temple of wisdom

At the temple Tamino finds three doors, of Nature, of Reason and of Wisdom, and at the last a priest tells him that he has been deceived. Sarastro is no tyrant but the high priest of Isis and Osiris, who took Pamina out of her mother's power to keep her from harm. The world of the opera turns over: the Queen is the night, mother of lies and vengeance, and Sarastro's realm is the light of the sun, where, as he sings, one knows no vengeance in these holy halls, and a fallen man is led back to his duty by love. Tamino asks to be received, and the priests agree, if he can pass the trials.

The trials

The first trial is silence. Tamino may not speak, not even to Pamina, who comes to him in love and, finding him mute, believes herself forsaken and longs to die, until the three boys stay her hand. Papageno chatters, and fails. Then two men in armour read Tamino the writing on the pyramid: whoever walks this road full of hardship is purified by fire, water, air and earth, and if he can overcome the terror of death he will rise from the earth to heaven, and, enlightened, be able to give himself wholly to the mysteries of Isis.

Pamina is allowed to walk the last trials with him, and she leads him by the hand, for love guides her. Through the fire and through the water they pass together, he playing the flute, and come out into the light of the temple.

The night driven out

Papageno, who failed every trial, is given his Papagena all the same, for the opera has room for the plain man who wants only food, wine, a wife and children, and does not mock him. The Queen and her followers, storming the temple, are cast down into eternal night. Sarastro's last words are that the rays of the sun drive out the night, and the chorus hails the initiates and sings that strength has conquered and crowns beauty and wisdom with an everlasting crown.

What the opera teaches

Its hearers in the craft have read its lesson plainly. The way from darkness to light passes through silence, the conquest of fear and a love that keeps faith under trial; the wise rule by kindness and not by vengeance; and the light of the temple, unlike the lodges of Mozart's day, is opened to a woman who has walked the trials beside a man. The priests of Egypt, the three solemn chords of the overture and the strength, beauty and wisdom of the last chorus, the three pillars of every lodge, are the craft's own emblems, set where those who know them can see them.