Secret rituals and brotherly love: why Mozart joined the Freemasons

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Published: Sunday, 03 November 2024 at 18:17 PM

Read on to discover why Mozart joined the Freemasons, the oldest fraternity in the world…

When did Mozart join the Freemasons?

On 14 December, 1784, an initiation ceremony took place at the Masonic lodge known as ‘Zur Wohltätigkeit’ (‘Beneficence’) in Vienna. The new initiate was none other than the 28-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who had settled in the imperial city three years previously to advance his musical reputation further. Before long, he had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna, and scored a significant success with his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’).

Why Mozart joined the Freemasons… what was the appeal?

So why did Mozart want to be a Mason? Why add the numerous commitments involved in membership – meetings, lectures, dinners, charitable events – to his already hectic swirl of social and professional activities? Undoubtedly, there were opportunities for what we nowadays call ‘networking’. Many of Austria’s governing class were Masons – 80 per cent, by one estimate – and the well-connected movers and shakers Mozart encountered at Masonic functions could undoubtedly assist his career aspirations.

Connections matter. But a much stronger reason for Mozart’s attraction to Freemasonry was the philosophy that it promoted. For the German writer Gotthold Lessing, this involved a ‘brotherly love’ (all Masons in Mozart’s time were men) which viewed all human beings ‘high and low, rich and poor’ as a single family, ‘created by one Almighty being for the aid, support and protection of each other’. These values broadly aligned with those of the Enlightenment period, and appealed to many of its leading artistic figures including Voltaire, Haydn and Goethe, all of whom were Masons. 

Could Mozart, a Catholic, become a Freemason?

But how, scholars have often wondered, did Mozart square his Freemasonry with the Catholic faith which he continued to practise? As recently as 1738, Pope Clement XII had banned Catholics from becoming Freemasons, whose free-thinking approach to social issues and morality was seen as dangerously challenging to the church’s authority. For Mozart, no such clash of interests existed. ‘Beneficence’ was for him, as scholar Nicholas Till puts it, ‘not a substitute for religion but an expression of it’.

Why Mozart joined the Freemasons… values to inspire his Magic Flute

Religion and politics were, in fact, taboo subjects at Masonic meetings, where the aim was to avoid the ideological wranglings and disputations of daily living, and point members towards more unifying, practically useful conversations. Mozart thrived in this environment. He was, by all accounts, a regular attendee at lodge meetings, and within months had ascended to the third and highest degree of ‘Master Mason’. Before long, he was also writing music for a variety of Masonic functions. For the opening of a new temple building, for instance, he gifted the sunny cantata Laut verkünde unsre Freude (‘Loudly may our joy be sounded’), while for the funeral of two lodge-brothers he wrote the masterly Maurerische Trauermusik (‘Masonic Funeral Music’).

But the crowning glory of Masonic influence in Mozart’s music was undoubtedly his opera Die Zauberflöte (‘The Magic Flute’), premiered two months before he died in 1791 in Vienna. His friend and fellow Mason Emanuel Schikaneder wrote the libretto, whose tale of ritual trials on the path to enlightenment closely mirrors Masonic practice. Scholars have also traced Masonic symbolism in the music, not least in the solemnly resounding, three-chord wind and brass fanfare at the heart of the overture.