Hans Urs von Balthasar
Symphony means “sounding together”. First there is sound, then different sounds and then we hear the different sounds singing together in a dance of sound. A bass trumpet is not the same as a piccolo; a cello is not a bassoon. The difference between the instruments must be as striking as possible. Each one keeps its utterly distinctive timbre, and the composer must write for each part in such a way that this timbre achieves its fullest effect. Bach is not the best example here, perhaps, adapting violin concertos for the harpsichord with only slight modification, but Mozart is the absolute master: his violin, horn or clarinet concertos always succeed in bringing out the pure essence of the instrument concerned. In the symphony, however, all the instruments are integrated in a whole sound. Mozart had this whole sound in his car to such an extent that, on occasion, he could write down the single instrumental line of an entire movement because he “heard” it within the sym-phony of all the parts.
The orchestra must be pluralist in order to unfold the wealth of the totality that resounds in the composer’s mind. The world is like a vast orchestra tuning up: each player plays to himself while the audience take their seats and the conductor has not yet arrived. All the same, someone has struck an A on the piano, and a certain unity of atmosphere is established around it: they are tuning up for some common endeavor. Nor is the particular selection of instruments fortuitous: with their graded differences of qualities, they already form a kind of system of coordinates. The oboe, perhaps supported by the bassoon, will provide a foil to the corpus of strings, but could not do so effectively if the horns did not create a background linking the two sides of this counterpoint.
The choice of instruments comes from the unity that, for the moment, lies silent in the open score on the conductor’s podium—but soon, when the conductor taps with his baton, this unity will draw everything to itself and transport it, and then we shall see why each instrument is there.
In his revelation, God performs a symphony, and it is impossible to say which is richer: the seamless genius of his composition or the polyphonous orchestra of Creation that he has prepared to play it.
Before the Word of God became man, the world orchestra was “fiddling” about without any plan: world views, religions, different concepts of the state, each one playing to itself Somehow there is the feeling that this cacophonous jumble is only a “tuning up”: the A can be heard through everything, like a kind of promise. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets. . .” (Heb 1:1).
Then came the Son, the “heir of all things”, for whose sake the whole orchestra had been put together. As it performs God’s symphony under the Son’s direction, the meaning of its variety becomes clear. The unity of the composition comes from God. That is why the world was, is and always will be pluralist (and—why not?—will be so increasingly).
Of course, the world cannot get an overall view of its own pluralism, for the unity has never lain in the world either formerly or now. But the purpose of its pluralism is this; not to refuse to enter into the unity that lies in God and is imparted by him, but symphonically to get in tune with one another and give allegiance to the transcendent unity.
As for the audience, none is envisaged other than the players themselves: by performing the divine symphony—the composition of which can in no way be deduced from the instruments, even in their totality—they discover why they have been assembled together. Initially, they stand or sit next to one another as strangers, in mutual contradiction, as it were. Suddenly, as the music begins, they realize how they are integrated. Not in unison, but what is far more beautiful—in sym-phony.
(c) 1987 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
