Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Experiencing Sara Levy’s World
- Part One Portrait of a Jewish Female Artist: Music, Identity, Image
- Part Two Music, Aesthetics, and Philosophy: Jews and Christians in Sara Levy’s World
- Part Three Studies in Sara Levy’s Collection
- Appendix: The Salonnière and the Diplomat: Letters from Sara Levy to Karl Gustav von Brinckmann
- Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
6 - Poetry, Music, and the Limits of Harmony: Mendelssohn’s Aesthetic Critique of Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Experiencing Sara Levy’s World
- Part One Portrait of a Jewish Female Artist: Music, Identity, Image
- Part Two Music, Aesthetics, and Philosophy: Jews and Christians in Sara Levy’s World
- Part Three Studies in Sara Levy’s Collection
- Appendix: The Salonnière and the Diplomat: Letters from Sara Levy to Karl Gustav von Brinckmann
- Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
Barely a week before his sudden death in January 1786, one of the most prominent Jewish figures in Sara Levy's world, the celebrated philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, offered the following thoughts in a letter to his non-Jewish friend Sophie Becker:
You say that the philosopher does not pray, or at least not out loud, not with singing—but rather, at most, in thoughts. Dearest Sophie! If his hour comes and he is disposed toward prayer, then against his will he will break out into word and song. The most common person, it seems to me, does not sing so that God hears him and finds pleasure in his melodies. We sing for our own sake, and the wise man does this as easily as the fool. Have you ever read the Psalms with this purpose? It seems to me that many Psalms are of such a type that they must be sung with true edification by the most enlightened people [sie von den aufgeklärtesten Menschen mit wahrer Erbauung gesungen werden müssen]. I would once again recommend to you my translation of the Psalms, if this would not betray too much of the frailty of an author. This much is certain: the Psalms have sweetened many a bitter hour for me, and I pray and sing them as often as I feel a need in me to pray and sing.
Appearing in his last extant letter, Mendelssohn's comments invoked two themes that figured prominently in his writings: the value of aesthetic phenomena such as poetry and music, and the existence of common ground between different religious communities. Mendelssohn is remembered today as one of the German Enlightenment's leading theorists of aesthetics, and his remarks to Becker reflected his long-standing concern with that field, casting “song” as irresistible even for a philosopher and describing the biblical Psalms as poems that offer “true edification” and have “sweetened many a bitter hour.” And while Mendelssohn famously refused to endorse the creation of a “union of faiths” and claimed, instead, that religious “diversity is evidently the plan and purpose of Providence,” he is widely known for emphasizing the existence of points of agreement between seemingly disparate religious traditions—for insisting, for example, that there are “fundamental principles on which all religions agree.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sara Levy's WorldGender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin, pp. 122 - 146Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018