Albert Schweitzer
Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer was a German polymath from Alsace. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. As a Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of the historical Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current at this time, as well as the traditional Christian view. His contributions to the interpretation of Pauline Christianity concern the role of Paul's mysticism of "being in Christ" as primary and the doctrine of justification by faith as secondary.
He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", becoming the eighth Frenchman to be awarded that prize. His philosophy was expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, French Equatorial Africa. As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ Reform Movement.
Early years
Schweitzer was born on 14 January 1875 in Kaysersberg in Alsace, in what had less than four years previously become the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine in the German Empire. He later became a citizen of France after World War I, when Alsace became French territory again. He was the son of Adèle and Louis Théophile Schweitzer. He spent his childhood in Gunsbach, also in Alsace, where his father, the local Lutheran-Evangelical pastor of the EPCAAL, taught him how to play music. The tiny village would become home to the Association Internationale Albert Schweitzer.The medieval parish church of Gunsbach was shared by the Protestant and Catholic congregations, which held their prayers in different areas at different times on Sundays. This compromise arose after the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years' War. Schweitzer, the pastor's son, grew up in this exceptional environment of religious tolerance, and developed the belief that true Christianity should always work towards a unity of faith and purpose.
Schweitzer's first language was the Alsatian dialect of German. At the Mulhouse gymnasium he received his "Abitur" in 1893. He studied organ in Mulhouse from 1885 to 1893 with Eugène Munch, organist at the Protestant cathedral, who inspired Schweitzer with his enthusiasm for the music of German composer Richard Wagner. In 1893, he played for the French organist Charles-Marie Widor, for whom Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music contained a mystic sense of the eternal. Widor, deeply impressed, agreed to teach Schweitzer without fee, and a great and influential friendship thus began.
From 1893 Schweitzer studied Protestant theology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University in Strasbourg. There he also received instruction in piano and counterpoint from professor Gustav Jacobsthal, and associated closely with Ernest Munch, the brother of his former teacher, organist of St William church, who was also a passionate admirer of J. S. Bach's music. Schweitzer served his one-year compulsory military service in 1894. Schweitzer saw many operas of Richard Wagner in Strasbourg under Otto Lohse, and in 1896 he managed to afford a visit to the Bayreuth Festival to see Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, both of which impressed him.
In 1898, he returned to Paris to write a PhD dissertation on The Religious Philosophy of Kant at the Sorbonne, and to study in earnest with Widor. Here he often met with the elderly Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. He also studied piano at that time with Marie Jaëll. In 1899, Schweitzer spent the summer semester at the University of Berlin and eventually obtained his theology degree at the University of Strasbourg. He published his PhD thesis at the University of Tübingen in 1899.
In 1905, Schweitzer began his study of medicine at the University of Strasbourg, culminating in the degree of M.D. in 1913.
Music
Schweitzer rapidly gained prominence as a musical scholar and organist, dedicated also to the rescue, restoration and study of historic pipe organs. With theological insight, he interpreted the use of pictorial and symbolical representation in J. S. Bach's religious music. In 1899, he astonished Widor by explaining figures and motifs in Bach's Chorale Preludes as painter-like tonal and rhythmic imagery illustrating themes from the words of the hymns on which they were based. They were works of devotional contemplation in which the musical design corresponded to literary ideas, conceived visually. Widor had not grown up with knowledge of the old Lutheran hymns.The exposition of these ideas, encouraged by Widor and Munch, became Schweitzer's last task, and appeared in the masterly study J. S. Bach: Le Musicien-Poète, written in French and published in 1905. There was great demand for a German edition, but, instead of translating it, he decided to rewrite it. The result was two volumes, which were published in 1908 and translated into English by Ernest Newman in 1911. Ernst Cassirer, a contemporaneous German philosopher, called it "one of the best interpretations" of Bach.
During its preparation, Schweitzer became a friend of Cosima Wagner, then resident in Strasbourg, with whom he had many theological and musical conversations, exploring his view of Bach's descriptive music, and playing the major Chorale Preludes for her at the Temple Neuf. Schweitzer's interpretative approach greatly influenced the modern understanding of Bach's music. He became a welcome guest at the Wagners' home, Wahnfried. He also corresponded with composer Clara Faisst, who became a good friend.
His 1906 pamphlet "The Art of Organ Building and Organ Playing in Germany and France", republished with an appendix on the state of the organ-building industry in 1927, effectively launched the 20th-century Orgelbewegung, which turned away from romantic extremes and rediscovered baroque principles—although this sweeping reform movement in organ building eventually went further than Schweitzer had intended. In 1909, he addressed the Third Congress of the International Society of Music at Vienna on the subject. Having circulated a questionnaire among players and organ-builders in several European countries, he produced a very considered report.
This provided the basis for the International Regulations for Organ Building. He envisaged instruments in which the French late-romantic full-organ sound should work integrally with the English and German romantic reed pipes, and with the classical Alsace Silbermann organ resources and baroque flue pipes, all in registers regulated to access distinct voices in fugue or counterpoint capable of combination without loss of distinctness: different voices singing the same music together.
Schweitzer also studied piano under Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory.
In 1905, Widor and Schweitzer were among the six musicians who founded the Paris Bach Society, a choir dedicated to performing J. S. Bach's music, for whose concerts Schweitzer took the organ part regularly until 1913. He was also appointed organist for the Bach Concerts of the Orféo Català at Barcelona, Spain, and often travelled there for that purpose. He and Widor collaborated on a new edition of Bach's organ works, with detailed analysis of each work in English, French, and German. Schweitzer, who insisted that the score should show Bach's notation with no additional markings, wrote the commentaries for the Preludes and Fugues, and Widor those for the Sonatas and Concertos: six volumes were published in 1912–14. Three more, to contain the Chorale Preludes with Schweitzer's analyses, were to be worked on in Africa, but these were never completed, perhaps because for him they were inseparable from his evolving theological thought.
On departure for Lambaréné in 1913, he was presented with a pedal piano, a piano with pedal attachments to operate like an organ pedal-keyboard. Built especially for the tropics, it was delivered by river in a huge dug-out canoe to Lambaréné, packed in a zinc-lined case. At first, he regarded his new life as a renunciation of his art, and fell out of practice, but after some time he resolved to study and learn by heart the works of Bach, Mendelssohn, Widor, César Franck, and Max Reger systematically. It became his custom to play during the lunch hour and on Sunday afternoons. Schweitzer's pedal piano was still in use at Lambaréné in 1946. According to a visitor, Dr. Gaine Cannon, of Balsam Grove, N.C., the old, dilapidated piano-organ was still being played by Dr. Schweitzer in 1962, and stories told that "his fingers were still lively" on the old instrument at 88 years of age.
Sir Donald Tovey dedicated his conjectural completion of Bach's The Art of Fugue to Schweitzer.
Schweitzer's recordings of organ music, and his innovative recording technique, are described [|below].
One of his pupils was conductor and composer Hans Münch.
Theology
In 1899, Schweitzer became a deacon at the church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg. In 1900, with the completion of his licentiate in theology, he was ordained as priest, and that year he witnessed the Oberammergau Passion Play. In the following year, he became provisional Principal of the Theological College of Saint Thomas, from which he had just graduated, and in 1903 his appointment was made permanent.In 1906, he published Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. This book, which established his reputation, was first published in English in 1910 as The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Under this title the book became famous in the English-speaking world. A second German edition was published in 1913, containing theologically significant revisions and expansions: this revised edition did not appear in English until 2001. In 1931, he published Mystik des Apostels Paulus. A second edition was published in 1953.
''The Quest of the Historical Jesus'' (1906)
In The Quest, Schweitzer criticised the liberal view put forward by liberal and romantic scholars during the first quest for the historical Jesus. Schweitzer maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus' own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and apocalypticism. Schweitzer writes:Instead of these liberal and romantic views, Schweitzer wrote that Jesus and his followers expected the imminent end of the world.
Schweitzer cross-referenced the many New Testament verses declaring imminent fulfilment of the promise of the World's ending within the lifetime of Jesus's original followers.
He wrote that in his view, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks of a "tribulation", with his "coming in the clouds with great power and glory." In Mark 13:30
Jesus says "This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." In Matthew 16:28 Jesus says “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Obviously, Jesus and his followers truly believed that he would return within the disciples lifetime and specifically states the timeframe that it will happen, but it has not! "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" or, "have taken place". Similarly, in 1st Peter 1:20, "Christ, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you", as well as "But the end of all things is at hand" and "Surely, I come quickly.". Either Jesus, his disciples and/or the noted chapter authors were and remain seriously mistaken; the promised second return timeframe has long ago passed.
Schweitzer concluded his treatment of Jesus with what has been called the most famous words of twentieth-century theology: