{"id":7580,"date":"2024-04-08T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/?p=7580"},"modified":"2024-06-05T11:28:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T09:28:22","slug":"on-mozarts-second-naivete-alfred-einstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2024\/04\/08\/on-mozarts-second-naivete-alfred-einstein\/","title":{"rendered":"On Mozart\u2019s \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 (Alfred Einstein)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alfred Einstein
*1880 M\u00fcnchen \u2013 \u20201952 El Cerrito
\u00a9 Smith College Archives<\/p><\/div>\n

I can’t recall when I first read Alfred Einstein\u2019s Mozart biography.[i]<\/sup><\/strong><\/a> Most probably during my first semester in Munich at Ludwig Maximilian University\u2019s Musicology Institute, in the very same rooms where Alfred Einstein had also studied musicology about 80 years before me. As a Jew, he had to flee Munich with his family at the end of the 1930s and emigrate. I found on the Internet a moving biographical memoir<\/a> by Einstein\u2019s daughter Eva. The Mozart biography is dedicated to her, as well as to Einstein\u2019s wife Hertha and his sister Bertha: \u2018To My Three Ladies\u2019 is the Mozartian title on the frontispiece.<\/p>\n

What I do know, though, is that I have been an ardent admirer of Einstein\u2019s diction ever since I first read this biography. He always writes out of love and enthusiasm for the subject, also from the perspective of great insight into human nature, namely, personally judgmental, empathetic, sometimes lavishly panegyrical, sometimes even a bit condescending. He is concerned solely with the essence (he says \u2018character\u2019) of Mozart the person and his compositions. Thanks to his immense knowledge, Einstein\u2019s Mozart book is also informative on every page. Given that today not all his factual assertions are still \u2018tenable\u2019, he would have been the first to acknowledge the findings of Mozart research.[ii]<\/sup><\/strong><\/a> Above all, however, his style is unpretentious and avoids any kind of pompous technical pretension. That impresses me. Apart from that, as just examples of his much more comprehensive life\u2019s work, Alfred Einstein fundamentally revised the third issue of the K\u00f6chelverzeichnis<\/a> [K\u00f6chel Thematic Catalogue] (1937), and he was the first to publish a philologically verifiable edition of the \u2018Ten Famous String Quartets\u2019 (1945).[iii]<\/sup><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The German first edition (1947) of Mozart. Sein Character, sein Work<\/em>, which I bought in an antiquarian bookshop, is one of the very few books that I\u2019ve several times read in its entirety. Samples?<\/p>\n

\u2018In matters of art Mozart admitted no compromises; and his gift of clear observation, which was like a child\u2019s, led him to discover the ludicrous and weak sides of a man rather than his worthier qualities.\u2019 (p. 85)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Mozart\u2019s music, which to so many of his contemporaries still seemed to have the brittleness of clay, has long since been transformed into gold, gleaming in the light, though it takes on a different luster for each new generation.\u2019 (p. 471)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018The \u201cPrague\u201d Symphony contains, in its slow movement, a further example of the marvelous fusion of the galant<\/em> and \u201clearned\u201d that Mozart attained at the end of his life\u2026 [K 504, 2nd<\/sup> movement, mm. 8 ff.]<\/em>\u2026 There are hundreds and thousands of such passages; they are evidence of that \u201csecond na\u00efvet\u00e9\u201d for which only a few masters in all the arts were predestined and which actually presuppose a long life \u2013 in Mozart they are the more miraculous since he lived to be only thirty-six.\u2019 (p. 155 f.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There it occurs, the concept \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019. Einstein uses it in the book in several places (I haven\u2019t counted how often) when discussing Mozart\u2019s \u2018late works\u2019.[iv]<\/sup><\/strong><\/a> In the chapter on the piano concertos, he twice refers descriptively to the \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019:<\/p>\n

The secondary theme in the first movement of the C-major Piano Concerto K. 467<\/a> is \u2018of that utmost simplicity of which only great men are capable, men who possess that \u201csecond na\u00efvet\u00e9,\u201d which is the highest achievement of artistic and human experience.\u2019 (p. 308):<\/p>\n

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Mozart, K. 467, 1st<\/sup> movement (Allegro vivace), mm. 128 ff. (HN 467)<\/p><\/div>\n

In Einstein\u2019s description of Mozart\u2019s last Piano Concerto in B-flat major K. 595<\/strong> \u2013 I\u2019m currently editing the work for G. Henle publishers \u2013 the unusually suggestive term is likewise used: \u2018This last Piano Concerto is also a work of the highest mastery in invention \u2013 invention that has the quality of that \u201csecond na\u00efvet\u00e9\u201d of which we have spoken [!] \u2026. It is so perfect that the question of style has become meaningless. The very act of parting from life achieves immortality.\u2019 (p. 315):<\/p>\n

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Mozart, K. 595, 3rd<\/sup> movement (Rondo. Allegro), mm. 1\u20138, autograph<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

And when describing the Larghetto from the C-minor Concerto K. 491<\/a>, Einstein refrains from using the term, though meaning it when he says that this music moves \u2018in regions of the purest and most moving tranquillity, and has a transcendent simplicity of expression.\u2019 (p. 311)<\/p>\n

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Mozart, K. 491, 2nd<\/sup> movement (Larghetto), mm. 1\u20134 (HN 787)<\/p><\/div>\n

In my opinion, thanks to this formulation, Alfred Einstein succeeds astonishingly in getting to the heart of a central essential phenomenon of the late Viennese Mozart\u2019s music without having to go into (usually unpalatable) musico-analytical trivia. The \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 may be terminologically more diffuse than \u2018six-four chord\u2019, for example, but it has the power to help us better understand our childlike joy and adult shock when listening to or playing numerous passages in Mozart\u2019s music. \u2018Six-four chord\u2019 doesn\u2019t do it!<\/p>\n

When Einstein specifically describes Mozart\u2019s ability to achieve this \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 as \u2018of that utmost simplicity of which only great men are capable, men who possess that \u201csecond na\u00efvet\u00e9,\u201d which is the highest achievement of artistic and human experience.\u2019 (p. 308), this admittedly reads at least as mystical, if not as pseudo-religious. And in fact, the term does not come from Einstein at all, but from an influential theological discourse of the early 20th<\/sup> century. More on this in a moment.<\/p>\n

Intuitively, I already knew immediately what Einstein meant by \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 the first time I read it: our very original, \u2018first\u2019, i.e., childlike \u2018na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 is astonished, innocent, innocuous, simple, guileless, genuine, natural, healthy, trusting, communicative and often enough also original. Anyone who has children knows what I\u2019m talking about. Many melodies of the late Mozart speak to us directly in precisely this sense, touch us in our innermost being, because they are obviously not (or are no longer) \u2018constructed\u2019 (for example, through counterpoint, complex harmonisation, surprise effects, etc.), but come precisely from an adult<\/em> composer who, as a human being, had, on the one hand, long since lost his childlike innocence (amongst other things, through his ability to reflect and his experience of suffering and loss), and as an artist had had, on the other hand, to leave his child-prodigy na\u00efvet\u00e9 behind. And we listeners feel intuitively and longingly the loss of our own innocent childhood \u2013 insofar as we are at all able to maintain an openness for such deep emotional access to music.<\/p>\n

Einstein is right: such deeply moving passages of \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 in Mozart\u2019s oeuvre are innumerable. If we were to shine our musico-analytical torch more closely at them, we could quite well describe the sophistication of such invention and its ingenious treatment, but we would probably never really get to its essential core. In countless places, Einstein chooses the rather vague formulation of a \u2018fusion of galant<\/em> and \u201clearned\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

My observation now is that this \u2018material\u2019 seems to have been drawn from a kind of Mozartian \u2018wellspring\u2019. For many of the ostensibly \u2018na\u00efve\u2019 melodies are related to each other: they are musically very similar. I shall give just one example of this below, that is, the touching opening of the Clarinet Concerto K. 622 \u2013 one of Mozart\u2019s very last works. And I am adding two melodic cognates from other works which, for me, come from the same pure, secret source of \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019. The music examples speak for themselves:<\/p>\n

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Mozart, K. 622, 1st<\/sup> movement (Allegro), mm. 1\u20134 (HN 729<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mozart, K. 466, 2nd<\/sup> movement (\u2018Romanze\u2019), mm. 1\u20134 (B\u00e4renreiter Urtext)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mozart, K. 563, 1st<\/sup> movement (Allegro), mm. 27ff. (HN 9625<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

And now a surprising twist. The expression \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 was not coined at all by Alfred Einstein, but almost exactly 100 years ago, in 1925, by the religious philosopher Peter Wust (1884-1940). The essay (which can be downloaded as a pdf<\/a>), superbly written on the subject by fundamental theologian Joachim Negel, is highly recommended to all readers of this blog who are interested in philosophical, religious-pedagogical or theological issues.[v]<\/sup><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The theological discourse of the \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 deals with the core problem of the impossibility of belief in a (Creator) God in post-Enlightenment times. Reason, scepticism and scientific knowledge are fundamentally opposed to the na\u00efvet\u00e9 of faith. Words from the Bible, insofar as they still play a role at all in our modern age, are usually dismissed with a shake of the head as long-since demythologised stories from children\u2019s fairy tales, therefore no longer offering any indirect access to God or faith. The \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 would now like to afford the way back \u2013 or rather down \u2013 to a childlike, marvelling faith for the modern, enlightened, highly-doubting adult:<\/p>\n

\u2018After he had learned all that could be learned, experienced all that could be known and asked all that could be asked, the world of faith arose in him again, intact at its core, and he grasped it with regained childlikeness … a new mental attitude, that of the second na\u00efvet\u00e9.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2013 a sentence by the German-born Israeli philosopher of religion Ernst Akiba Simon (1900-1988), located in footnote 28 of Negel\u2019s essay, and the subject of a separate chapter. Simon developed the idea of the \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 in the 1930s, though surprisingly without knowing Peter Wust\u2019s neologism and its fundamental considerations. (And, to round off what has been said here: The best-known representative and most prominent exponent of the \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 was then, shortly thereafter, the much-read French philosopher Paul Ric\u0153ur [1913-2005]).<\/p>\n

Back to Alfred Einstein. What I hadn\u2019t at all noticed before <\/em>becoming involved with this discourse, something going far beyond a suggestive rhetorical figure, is that in his biography of Mozart Einstein always puts the phrase in quotation marks or italicises it. I have always understood this as meaning \u2018so to speak\u2019, but perhaps he wanted to identify the term as a quotation? \u2013 though he never reveals his source. The book, written for a large readership, has hardly any footnotes or a list of secondary literature; if citing a quotation source at all, Einstein usually does so on the spot. We could therefore speculate as to which author the comprehensively educated Alfred Einstein might have read. My best guess is the writings or ideas of Ernst Akiba Simon, who had, at about the same age, also had to flee Germany because of Nazi barbarism. Possibly providing information about this could be Einstein\u2019s estate, preserved in the Hargrove Music Library<\/a>, University of California at Berkeley; however, the short indices offered online do not list the names Wust, Ric\u0153ur and, above all, Simon. Unfortunately, my relevant inquiries have so far remained unanswered.<\/p>\n

The conscious or unconscious transfer of the phrase \u2018second na\u00efvet\u00e9\u2019 from the theological to the musico-hermeneutical sphere, especially in the so clear-sighted reference to Mozart\u2019s creativity, remains as far as I can see, to Alfred Einstein\u2019s sole credit in any case.<\/p>\n

\n

[i]<\/a> Alfred Einstein, Mozart. Sein Charakter, sein Werk<\/em>, Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer-Verlag 1947; full text available here<\/a>. Einstein\u2019s preface is certainly not dated 9 May 1945 fortuitously (end of the World War II).
\nEnglish original edition: Alfred Einstein, Mozart, His Character, His Work<\/em>, translated by Arthur Mendel and Nathan Broder, New York: Oxford University Press 1945; paperback reprint ibid. 1962 and later; link<\/a> to the reading extract. Though Einstein wrote the book in German, of course (see also Eva Einsteins memoir<\/a>), the quotations cited here are taken from the Mendel-Broder English translation.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> An example: Regarding the fragmentary Allegro in G minor K. 312, probably composed in 1790\/91 [see K.6<\/sup>: 590d], Alfred Einstein admits without excuse that \u2018I myself dated [it] quite mistakenly, alas, when I placed it among the \u201cMunich\u201d sonatas.\u2019 (p. 250 f.).<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> W. A. Mozart, The Ten Celebrated String Quartets. First authentic edition in score based on autographs in the British Museum and on early prints<\/em>, ed. by Alfred Einstein, London: Novello 1945.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> In the German edition: \u2018zweite Naivit\u00e4t\u2019. In conjunction with the \u2018Ave verum\u2019 K. 618 he formulates this as: \u2018second simplicity\u2019 (p. 352).<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> Joachim Negel, Zweite Naivit\u00e4t. Begriffsgeschichtliche und systematische Erw\u00e4gungen zu einem vielbem\u00fchten, aber selten verstandenen Konzept<\/em>, in: Thomas M\u00f6llenbeck and Ludger Schulte [eds.], Weisheit \u2013 Spiritualit\u00e4t der Menschheit, <\/em>M\u00fcnster: Aschendorff 2021, pp. 279\u2013305; full text available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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