Good. Let’s have something playful this time, for example, the third movement, the allegretto, from the Quintet in E Major.
I. That’s K. 452. We shall be hearing Vladimir Ashkenazy and the London Wind Soloists.
The question of play in serious life has led us to the allegretto. Play is pursued in a wholly dedicated way by children. My question, then, is what place music had in your childhood. What was your relation to it then? Did you yourself play any music?
B. I tried, but it didn’t turn out so well. So I became a listener. My father was musical and played the piano well. As I recall—I mention it in my little book—it is impossible for me ever to forget—I was four or five at the time—how he played “I amino mine” (“Oh, happy fate!”) from The Magic Flute. This affected me—I can’t say how—and I remarked: He’s the one!
I. So you were not even a schoolboy at the time. Where was this, Professor?
B. In Berne.
I. Did you spend all your schooldays in Berne?
B. Yes, from the first grades to the highest. Then I began my university work in Berne and from there went to Germany. A highlight in Berlin was a semester I took with Harnack.
I. Did you go on to do a doctorate with him?
B. No, I went back to Berne for a semester.
I. Did you sing student songs?
B. Yes, I could manage that—a whole semester. But I didn’t work much. I had been a real worker in Berlin but I passed my days with student cheerfulness in Berne.
I. But that is also important in the sense of play.
B. Yes, it was perhaps the one time in my life I had to enjoy life. And I did so—very radically.
I. When you became a pastor, had you already done your doctorate?
B. No, I never did a doctorate at all. I …
I. So that is why you are listed only as an honorary doctor?
B. That’s all I am.
I. “All” in inverted commas! But is this possible?
B. It’s the way it was. I was not aiming at an academic career. I wanted to be a pastor. I was this for twelve years, first in Geneva, then in Safenwil. That was all I knew.
I. And why did you not remain a pastor?
B. In my work as a pastor I gradually turned back to the Bible and began my commentary on Romans. This was not meant as a dissertation. It was written for its own sake. I thought what I had found in Romans might interest others too. Then I received a call to Gottingen and became a professor. My whole theology, you see, is fundamentally a theology for pastors. It grew out of my own situation when I had to teach and preach and counsel a little. And I found that what I had learned at the university was of little help in this. So I had to make a fresh start and I tried to do this.
I. Did you not miss as a professor the daily round of the pastor’s life?
B. No, I cannot say that. I just did the same thing on another level, the academic level, teaching, talking with students, and so on. This was not a real break for me.
I. I suspect, Professor, that you have always done your work, as pastor or professor, with the same joyousness that one can continually catch in Mozart?
B. Yes, although naturally with the necessary changes and transpositions in view of the different circumstances. But I have always enjoyed my work. And if we are now to hear another piece of Mozart’s, I should like something in A major, which has always been a basic key in my own life. So perhaps we might turn again to the young Mozart and I suggest the andante, that is, the second movement, from the Symphony in A Major.
I. We shall be playing, then, from the little A major, K. 201, as recorded by Bruno Walter and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.
From the young Mozart we now go back to the young Barth and his commentary on Romans, which hit with the force of a bomb. How great its effect really was came out at the beginning of the Hitler era when you issued declarations which became authoritative for a great part of the church.
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