On Christmas Eve, it’s not a carol that comes to my mind, but an aria, though not from Handel’s “Messiah” as you might expect. It is from a Mass, Mozart’s “Great Mass in C minor, K. 427,” from the “Credo.” More specifically, it is that pivotal point in the Creed, when, as our missals instruct us, we are to bow as we recite it, that kernel of our faith without which there is no Gospel truth, no Christmas. In the traditional Latin,
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto
Ex Maria virgine et homo factus est.
Or as we say it: He was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary and became man.
At Christmas Mass, we are instructed to kneel as we profess that, so solemn the moment.
It takes the inexplicable genius of one like Mozart to give those two lines, upon which our faith rests, not to the full force of the chorus to proclaim or to the full-throated tenor to pronounce with trumpet blasts, but to the soprano, a single voice that soars to the heavens. The strings sound ever so softly, and it is the flute, the oboe and the bassoon, instruments surely the angels must play, that accompany that single voice.
I can’t say what Mozart had in mind when he composed that music, but I know what I hear. The aria begins like a lullaby but develops into what might be the sheer joy of a mother seeing her child, and even more, an ecstatic joy as she cradles this great mystery, God-with-us, the One whom the entire world cannot contain, now at her breast, near to her heart. All the vocal ornamentation is given to the word “factus,” made, became, a new creation, the God’s own doing. Yet in the exquisite coloratura, do we detect a sorrow foretold, a heart yet to be pierced? Oh Mary, did you know?
Mozart must have understood.
Mozart never finished composing that Mass; indeed, he didn’t even finish the “Credo.” It ends with those famous Latin lines. But on Christmas Eve, what more need be said?
Let heaven and nature sing!
Click here to listen to the song. | Click here to find our Advent playlist. | Click here to find more Advent reflections.
