Abstract
Engagement of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) in sacred music was quite liberal.
Although such a tendency could be partly explained as pantheism, which was widely
accepted in eighteenth-century German culture via Spinozism, this only applies in the
case of Schubert’s oeuvre to a limited period. His creation can be more comprehensively
explained by another archaic idea: the Gnosis. Its narrative—a godlike man falls to
the earth, endures its nihility, and aspires to return to the heavens—is dominant in
the Corpus Hermeticum, one of the most important Gnostic documents, which was
translated into German in 1781 and appropriated by the poet Johann Meyrhofer, one of
Schubert’s best friends.
This Gnostic intention is traced in Schubert’s “editing” of Credo-text in his six
Latin masses. Researchers have shown that this editing was gradually refined by the
composer himself, but its theological motivation remains unstudied. When considering
the archaic origins of Credo, the six passages Schubert excised are all crucial in that
the Roman Catholic tried to distinguish himself from the then-rampant Gnosis. In
this regard, reverse of the authority inherent in the original text—a “deconstruction”
that was observed in Schubert’s German-lieder and characterized as “interpretive
dramaturgy”—is thus clearly also recognized in his Latin masses.
