We are remembering Brendan Doyle, an 18-year veteran and pioneer of the Creation Spirituality movement in its earliest years. He taught Art as Meditation courses, including singing Hildegard’s music and courses using the hermeneutic of the Four Paths to understand musicians for the mystics and prophets that they are.
We are sharing portions of an interview I did with him in 1983, the year ICCS moved from Chicago to Holy Names College in Oakland, and my book Original Blessing first appeared.*
Fox: You have done a lot of relating of medieval mystics to musicians of western culture. For example, you have taken Eckhart’s four paths and said you found it very useful in understanding Wagner’s Ring. Could you comment on that?
Doyle: Well, the four paths are there. The Ring Cycle itself is four music dramas. I see Das Rheingold as the via positiva.
Fox: Why?
Doyle: The most obvious example is the beginning of Rheingold with the E flat major prelude that portrays nature, the beginning of the Rhine. The beginning. It’s as if Wagner was saying “in the beginning was the word.” The beginning was Dabhar. In the beginning was this primordial energy and musically all the themes in the Ring flow from that one theme.
Other themes emerge in Das Rheingold, the theme of the gold as something beautiful, as something meant to be enjoyed, a blessing. It also shows what you talk about so much, which we can’t forget and that is that there are sins against the via positiva. The positiva themes can be turned away from, and abused and rejected. This is the prophetic side to Wagner.
Fox: Briefly now the other three.
Doyle: In Die Walküre, the via negativa culminates with Wotan’s letting go of Brünhilde. It’s about pain. It’s about being in touch with one’s own pain. The pain of another. Where Brünhilde is in touch with Siegmund’s pain.
Siegfried is the via creativa, and has all these creative images such as Siegfried’s sword, fearlessness, Siegfried forging the broken sword and the imago Dei, use of the imagination. Wagner also comments on the sin of lack of imagination. For example, Fafner the giant turns himself into a dragon and sits on the gold and doesn’t do anything with it. He just sits on it, protecting it. No imagination….
Götterdämmerung represents the via transformative. Brünhilde puts an end to the greed and gives the ring back to the Rhine maidens out of compassion. So there we have that theme of the eternal feminine. Redeeming the world through compassion….
Brendan saw the four paths in Gustav Mahler’s works this way: Briefly, I see Mahler’s first four symphonies as the via positiva. I see Symphonies Five, Six and Seven as the via negativa. I see symphony Eight as the via creativa, the Veni Creator Spiritus. And I see Symphony Nine, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) and his unfinished tenth symphony as the via tranformativa.
The first four symphonies have to do with panentheism, which we find in the first and the third symphonies, God in nature. The fourth symphony, the child, the theme of the child. The beauties in nature. The second symphony, the resurrection symphony, is about the promise of resurrection. The second symphony has very prophetic comments to make about how fear and lack of trust can destroy the via positiva.
What is death about? Mahler comes to the conclusion that we have nothing to fear because at the end of the symphony we find out there is no judgment.
Fox: Unconditional love. Our existence is purely gratuitous. Here, too, we come close to Julian of Norwich, saying we’ve been loved from without beginning.
Doyle: Right.
*Bear & Company: The Little Magazine, pp. 1-4, 21.
Gustav Mahler in 1892, photo by Leonard Berlin, Wikimedia Commons; and Richard Wagner in 1871, photo by Franz Hanfstaengl, Wikimedia Commons. Composite created by team member Rosanna Tufts.
Queries for Contemplation
My mentor, Père Chenu, said that “the greatest tragedy in theology of the last 300 years has been the divorce of the theologian from the artist, musician, potter, sculpturer, poet and film maker.” Do you sense in listening to Doyle that this tragedy is being bridged? What difference does it make in your spirituality?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.
Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times.
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letter and Songs, pp. 363-365.
Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life.
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic…and Beyond.
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality.
4 thoughts on “Brendan Doyle on Wagner & Mahler as Mystics and Prophets”
Thank you Matt. It’s wonderful to remember dear Brendan’s work. I so enjoyed a course of his in ICCS ‘84-‘85 offered at the home of Jean ? In her elegant penthouse in downtown Oakland. The course transformed my appreciation for classical music,
for the rest of my life. 🙏💙🌌
I find today’s quote of Père Chenu about the tragic divorce of Theology from Art (in its deep “yoga=articulation” sense) very accurate and inspiring. That divorce is indeed the ultimate (and very Cartesian) split between concept and experience. Another name for it in Christianity is hamartia (sin): it represents a major civilizational sin that left so many orphaned. In Buddhism, a fitting name would be dukkha (dislocated articulation or wheel-axle, something warped, dis-ease).
Theology divorced from Art is like a whale stranded on a beach. No wonder so many are tempted to conclude that God is dead.
I very much like the Japanese term “Wabi-Sabi”. The common understanding is rustic but it is clearly so much more. To me, it is a combination of nature, art, and spirituality. I feel that whenever two of these three are present, the third automatically follows.
I once read the triad “the one, the true, and the beautiful” (capitalized?) as a way of describing God. Beauty is seen in nature/creation by many, and scientific and mathematical truth is called beautiful by some. The Creator is called an artist by many, and many artists work with spiritual devotion. As the Creator said to theirself in Genesis, “Let us make [the human] in our image.” Many mystics perceive God in nature; reverent awe is a common sensation to those who behold the power and sublimity of the created world.