This image is the cover for the book Mozart and Masonry

Mozart and Masonry

A noted musicologist looks at the eighteenth-century composer’s connection to Freemasonry and its profound influence on his music.

Speculative masonry was a pervasive intellectual force in eighteenth-century European society. Like many of his colleagues, as well as his father before him, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart joined a Masonic lodge in 1784. The philosophy and symbolism of the Masons would be a major source of inspiration for his compositions from then on.

This book provides an overview of Mozart’s relationship to the fraternity and a detailed account of the numerous pieces he wrote specifically for Lodge events or ritual, as well as the many pieces adapted by others for Lodge use. It also includes an in-depth explanation of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” and its Masonic themes and imagery.

Paul Nettl

Paul Nettl (1889–1972) was a musicologist and author born in Hohenelbe, Bohemia. Nettl was a lecturer in musicology in Prague from 1919 until 1939, when he immigrated to the United States. He taught in Chicago and at Indiana University until 1960, and had lectureships at Roosevelt University in Chicago and at the Cincinnati Conservatory. His studies and numerous essays, as well as many books in German, won him a reputation as a specialist in every phase of Bohemian and Moravian music. Nettl’s works include The Beethoven Encyclopedia (1956), The Story of Dance Music (1947), The Book of Musical Documents (1948), Forgotten Musicians (1951), and Mozart and Masonry (1957). He even coined the term “utility music.”

Philosophical Library/Open Road Media