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.