Beethoven's Mass in D: Missa Solemnis -
A Personal Reflection
Music was always playing in my house when I was growing up, but it was not until many years later that I realised just how valuable would become this aural knowledge of such a vast body of the music of our Western civilization. During these early years, the music and larger than life personality of Ludwig van Beethoven came to form a dominating force in many aspects of my life. In a very real way Beethoven became something of a hero for me. The fact that this music by a dead German could have such a long-lasting and pervasive influence on a young boy growing up in rural Australia some two hundred years afterward is something I have both wondered about, and indeed also reflected in wonder over, ever since.
I remember well the day, therefore, when I first heard the Missa Solemnis. I must have been 14 or 15 when the Otto Klemperer recording of piece arrived in the mail direct from England. This was the only major work of Beethoven’s that I had never heard, but knowing how the composer himself felt about the piece I was excited to finally listen to it, so my father and I unwrapped the parcel and took the records out of the box - it was two LPs back in those days! It was a cold mid-winter’s day and my dad and I sat in the lounge room with the heater burning and listened to the Mass the whole way through, pretty much without speaking.
I didn’t get it.
There were parts that I liked, but I just didn’t get it. What was he talking about? What was I missing? I never doubted for an instant, however, that the fault lay with me and not the music, so for the next few years I consciously made the effort to come to know the piece better and better, and gradually it started to make sense, because the Missa Solemnis is not like any other work that Beethoven – or anyone else, for that matter – ever wrote. I suppose that first time I was, without realizing it, expecting something maybe like the pomp and grandeur of the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, with which the Mass is roughly contemporary; or the inspiration of the Seventh symphony or the Emperor Concerto; or even the combination of sensitivity and excitement shown in Beethoven’s only other Mass setting, more than 10 years earlier, when he could still hear at least a bit. But the Missa Solemnis has all of these things, and it has much, much more as well. Here too we find the heartbreaking beauty and anguish of the slow movements of the last quartets, we find the political commentary of Fidelio, and we find the turmoil and proportions of the Hammerklavier Sonata. We also find extreme difficulty. We find extreme demands on players and singers. Orchestral effects no one had ever dreamed of. Crazy balances. Bizarre textures. And holding it all together: blazing inspiration.
Some have doubted Beethoven’s sincerity concerning his own claim that this was his greatest achievement. Beethoven was not wrong: “Vom Herzen – Möge es zu Herzen gehen!” (“From the heart – may it go to the heart!”). These are the words the composer wrote on the first page of the score, and who familiar with this music could ever doubt that here Beethoven was laying down the deepest, most profound, and most sincere labours of his life?
What then is this music about? What is Beethoven’s message for anyone with the “heart” to listen? For me personally, I feel that despite its title and genre, whatever this music is about, it is not primarily about religion. Ostensibly a Catholic, Beethoven was not a particularly religious composer, and his known readings suggest his ideas concerning the nature of God were more broadly philosophical than any particularly dogmatic ideology would dictate.
The themes to which Beethoven returns over and over in this music pertain to a greater universality than religion can encompass, and Man is placed firmly in the spotlight of this vision time and time again. There is always a sense of struggle, of striving; a sense that it is the responsibility of humanity to make its own choices and to surmount its own frailties. Certainly there is a vision of a better place, of an ultimate glory, but for Beethoven this is always tangible, never something that is reserved for an ‘afterlife’ or some other existence. No, for Beethoven this is achievable for mankind of the future in a world that we make, not a world created for us and where responsibility is therefore ultimately abdicated. More than anything for Beethoven, life is about the struggle to attain this ideal world, a struggle that defines and justifies life itself, and a struggle that is glorious in and of itself. That Beethoven’s music can even suggest such universal and largely extra-musical themes has long been recognized – although never truly explained – but nevertheless this is why Beethoven remains an icon in our civilization. This is why Beethoven is the only musician who has ever truly influenced the course of Western cultural identity, and this is the reason his music is so important for everyone – even those who don’t know it – as it shapes us still, albeit less so than it should.
How does Beethoven’s achievement manifest itself in this work? The answers are simultaneously many and limitless, but the descriptions of each of the movements – which follow below – will hopefully shed some light on the extraordinary musical means by which Beethoven weaves his magic here.
The Kyrie opens with the sort of grand gesture that would have been familiar to Beethoven’s Viennese audience, but almost immediately – within one bar– the composer draws back from the public quality of this gesture to draw the listener into his intimate, personal world, a world seemingly infinitely divorced from that occupied by any of his predecessors. The layered wind counterpoint that follows speaks of personal pain in such ravishing terms that the heartbreak is almost complete even before the chorus (perhaps representing humanity) and soloists (representing the individual) cry out six times in the wilderness: “Kyrie!”
We have now heard the resources that provide the building-blocks for the first Kyrie section, and the development that follows also begins to reveal another aspect of the work that contributes to its ultimate power. Throughout the Mass, whether with slow music or fast, introspective or triumphant, Beethoven always ensures key climactic moments or important harmonic shifts occur off the beat, thus intensifying the constant sense of struggle and effort the music extols. We see this over and over again, and the effect is all the more mesmerizing the more one becomes aware of it.
The Christe, which follows, provides contrasts in tempo, melody, phrase-length, scoring and – most importantly – mood. We are soon plunged back, however, into a reprise of the Kyrie, except this time the main climax is even more overwhelmingly powerful, with once again the key gestures falling – and marked sf in the score – on syncopations or weak beats. The movement ends quietly and yet hopefully in anticipation of the Gloria to come.
One of, if not the greatest of all of Beethoven’s single movements, the Gloria defies comprehension even now, almost exactly two hundred years after its composition. From the very start we are thrust into a visionary world: Gloria in excelsis Deo! and yet even here, it is excelsis and the striving for it that are paramount for Beethoven, with the word Deo only added on at the end, virtually inaudible as it is subsumed in the wall of sound that bursts forth. The theme of Man’s struggle is further reinforced when we are suddenly ripped out of this vision and brought very much ‘down to earth’ with the text Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, via the strong accents demanded by the composer on the word ‘hominibus’.
The blazing intensity captured at the opening hardly ever relents during the course of this movement. Here is a composer and artist working in the white heat of pure inspiration, and the demands he places on all performers redefined what was and was not possible in music. It is generally accepted that whatever performances of this piece did in fact occur during Beethoven’s lifetime were probably neither complete nor competent, even by standards of the time. It really has been only in the last 30 years or so that performing standards – for the chorus in particular – have been sufficient to allow even a glimpse into the sheer genius of Beethoven’s inspiration. Even now it is hard to imagine an ideal performance. I personally have eight recordings of the work and none of them are really adequate. All others I have heard leave a great deal to be desired. One section that consistently fails to convince in just about all the interpretations I have heard occurs towards the end of this movement, and the issue is tempo. When the immense final fugue commences (In gloria Dei Patris, amen) the tempo is marked Allegro, ma non troppo e ben marcato, and this can't be too fast or the 'ben marcato' becomes lost. Yet this now set tempo is difficult to relate to the tempo that surely must apply after the change into 2:2 at the Poco più Allegro, where the soloists are employed to drive the music towards the final Presto. If this section is taken only a 'little' faster, the final section of the piece – for me – just can't quite ignite.
I believe there is a solution, however, albeit one that requires some imagination beyond the written score. Nineteen bars before the Poco più Allegro, Beethoven sets up a series of stretto entries over a dominant pedal (A), and it seems to me that a gradual accelerando from here to the Poco più Allegro not only allows the transition to the 2:2 to feel natural and seamless, but it is also enormously beneficial in facilitating the build-up of excitement the music itself demands. This is a solution I myself have used in performance. Maybe it is not possible to truly live up to the glories of Beethoven’s inspiration, but that is not really the point. It is the aspiration that is important (If pressed for time, I recommend starting the video at 9:50 to appreciate this greater passage in context. The stretto mentioned above starts at 13:26, and the accellerando around 13:45):
The Credo in the classical Mass-settings of the first Viennese school –as exemplified in its finest form within the Masses of Mozart, Haydn and Schubert – was traditionally a relatively four-square manifestation of what really is a fairly dogmatic statement of Catholic rhetoric. It is not surprising, therefore, that Beethoven’s setting clearly both recognizes that extant tradition, as well as subtly challenging its rigidity and predictability. The material of the opening section relies on short, sharp motives with much declamatory writing for both chorus and orchestra. Word-painting is clearly in evidence, with each section of the text receiving treatment that is unmistakably indicative of this method. From the beginning, however, things are not entirely as straightforward as one might assume they could have been considering the deployment of these reasonably obvious gestures. Even the very opening chordal interjection in the orchestra sustains a sonority so strongly that rhythmic context is not immediately obvious. Then, when the choir enters with the main Credo motive, the texture is immediately complicated by counterpoint, something the above-mentioned composers never did at this point. This method continues throughout the exposition, reaching its climax at the Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine outbursts from the chorus. At this point a doggedly determined, academic fugato commences – con substantialem patri, per quem omnia facta sunt – to bring the first part of the movement to a close. It is then, however, that Beethoven’s true colours are revealed, as immediately the text turns to the subject of ‘Man’ – with the qui propter nos homines section – the music is immediately more ingratiating and inviting.
This leads into the central part of the movement, in which the soloists are highlighted to great effect. There is one passage here, however, that has proven controversial in the past, with various editors and conductors basically assuming that Beethoven’s scoring of the opening of the Et in carnatus est for the choral tenors, rather than the tenor soloist, was a mistake on his or some other early copyist’s part. On closer inspection, however, it does seem clear that what we see here is exactly as Beethoven intended it, and this has now been importantly supported by the new edition of the score as published in 2000 by Bärenreiter. One of the most truly magical moments in all of Beethoven’s works, this section is characterized by the glorious wind writing for clarinets, bassoons and solo flute that accompanies the soloists. It is telling, however, that this visionary scoring does not begin until after that previously controversial first statement of the new idea by the choral tenors, surely removing any doubt that Beethoven’s original scoring was formulated to make the most of this textural contrast. This is one of a number of passages in the Missa that directly reflect the composer’s love of the natural world: his true ‘cathedral’, and the effect here is a virtual recreation of an idealized ’Garden of Eden’. The daring and startling inspiration of this passage just takes the breath away. When the text then turns to the imagery of Jesus being made Man via the Virgin Mary, Beethoven’s elemental humanism simply cannot resist the opportunity to once again convey his own hope for the species of Man with the tenor soloist’s enraptured Et, et Homo factus est!
Of course, as the narrative unfolds this rapture must be quickly and dramatically tempered – and indeed transformed into darkness – with the representation of the crucifixion. Beethoven’s depiction here supplies at least as much pathos as any previous (or subsequent) setting of this text has ever done, but once again, however, it is the representation of suffering and of injustice that stirs Beethoven most powerfully to transcend such things. Here it is his rejection of this ‘evil’ that brings forth his most powerful and exultant music, as the Et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas blazes forth unaccompanied, firstly in the choral tenors, then joined by the full chorus. From here to the end of the movement there is no letting up: it will be a headlong charge to the ultimate glory of the “life of the world to come”, as represented by perhaps the most amazing fugue anyone has ever written.
Getting there, however, still requires Beethoven to set the part of the text that refers most directly to Catholic dogma (Catholicism being the one true religion, baptism, etc), and once again Beethoven’s compositional choices leave very much open the probability that such statements of ‘institutionalized’ representations of faith made him uneasy. Throughout the section in which this part of the text is given out, Beethoven chooses to set the words on chant-like, rapidly repeated notes, moving from part to part. This technique in reality simply does not allow these words to be understood. Against this he places – over and over and over again –the Credo motive, jumping around everywhere in the chorus and orchestra, finally transforming itself into a sequenced variant on which the composer builds the transition to the final fugue.
It is this final fugue that perhaps most perfectly encapsulates Beethoven’s message in the Mass as a whole. It begins reasonably simply with a highly distinctive subject featuring four repeated notes and a descending broken chord pattern (Et vitam venturi). Rhythmically, however, the fugue becomes more and more complex, with the syncopated half-pulse more and more pervasive. This, and the complexity of the part-writing, makes the music exceptionally difficult for the singers in particular. Surely, however, this is exactly Beethoven’s point. It is the struggle itself to attain this hoped-for transcendent state that is important, and half-way through the fugue, as if to underline the point even further, Beethoven ups the ante to reinterpret the fugue at almost double time. This is – even now –almost un-singable music, and it is virtually impossible to imagine it ever having been accomplished effectively anywhere near the composer’s lifetime. Yet the striving goes on and on, culminating in the most amazing climax where the full choir and orchestra finally settle on an exultant Eb major chord; the sopranos blazing forth on high Bb’s at full throttle. After this, the ending sounds almost contemplative, speaking of a sense of undoubted accomplishment, but also perhaps of sheer exhaustion!
The Sanctus Beethoven conjures up here is surely one of the most sublime ever written. As an interpretation of a text set literally thousands of times, it is simply amazing the profound sense of dignity and humility Beethoven brings to this music. The movement also features some of the most extraordinary orchestral writing ever imagined, particularly in the composer’s use of violas and wind, and also not forgetting the gorgeous violin solo in the Benedictus.
Before speaking about the music directly, however, it is worth taking note of the fact that Beethoven scored the soloists and the chorus in two sets of four staves in his original score, but at the opening of the Sanctus only one set of vocal staves appears. There is no marking for either soloists or chorus. Conventional wisdom has traditionally seen this performed by soloists (every recording I had heard until very recently uses soloists), but English conductor and musicologist Nicholas Routley (under whose direction the first Australian performance of the Missa Solemnis using period instruments was performed in 1994 – a performance in which I was involved) has suggested that it just might have been Beethoven’s intention that this be performed by the chorus and not soloists. Certainly this solution makes infinitely more sense, as even the biggest voices are totally overwhelmed by the orchestra here (and in the Pleni in particular). I believe the sentiment of the music is also infinitely better served by this interpretation, so I too have performed the piece this way. It is with great satisfaction, therefore, that I noted that Barry Cooper's new edition of the score (Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2019) vindicates this reading, and that conductors the world over are now starting to perform this opening correctly.
The movement opens with a three-note motive cycling up through the low strings to be met by there strained and mellifluous tones of horns and trombones, before the chorus then layers a variant of the string motive on top of itself – multiple times – in a radiant D major. Throughout this section there are strong overtones of Renaissance polyphony, and the combination of old techniques with stunningly new approaches to orchestration and tonal relationships make the music that unfolds profoundly moving. A fine example of this is how Beethoven immediately reprises the first choral exposition down a whole step in C major; no coincidence as C major is reserved throughout the work as the key in which the grandest and most original passages appear.
After a hushed, almost fearful transition, the music of the Pleni bursts forth in two back-to-back fugal expositions that must have struck fear into the hearts of nineteenth century performers (not to mention twenty-first century ones!). These are only fleeting, however, as the music dramatically and magically suddenly returns to the opening mood in an interlude for cellos and violas that is simply without precedent in music prior to this time. If anyone gave license for Bruckner, Mahler and Richard Strauss to do what they did (in the case of the latter, over one hundred years later) it is Beethoven in this exceptional passage. This is Beethoven at his most anguished but also his most sublime, and the use of this music as a transition to the transcendent Benedictus is a stroke of pure genius.
This Benedictus, which features one of the most important and extended instrumental solos in all sacred music, is unified by what we have already heard in the opening section of the Sanctus: the composer’s continued reliance on old techniques combined with new inspirations. Here plainchant, canon and imitation are all employed not only in the vocal parts, but also within the fabric of the orchestra to create a truly magical and incandescent world full of light and wonder. The way Beethoven manages the final transition into the Osanna is yet another masterstroke of imagination, bringing the movement to a supremely satisfying close.
The Agnus Dei is the movement that is perhaps most easily interpreted in the Missa Solemnis. Beethoven lived in troubled times (it seems we can nearly always say that about most times!), and his music had already fairly bluntly reflected the composer’s political stance on matters of war, peace and the equality of Man. It is therefore no more surprising to see these themes again surfacing here as it would be in the Ninth Symphony not long afterwards.
The music of the Agnus Dei is based on three prominent musical characterisations, two of which are direct – even obvious – depictions of the text. The first is inspired not only by the general darkness and angst the first line and a half of the text reflects, but particularly by the concepts suggested by ‘miserere nobis’ (have mercy upon us). The second musical characterisation is the imagined paradise that awaits a world free from ‘sin’; a paradise that finds its companion in music of a major key and a gentle, even lilting, 6:8 time. The startlingly original aspect of the music of this movement, however, is the third type of music, one not specifically described in the text itself. Here Beethoven clearly interprets “the sins of the world” as war itself, and on three occasions the machines of war – represented by the trumpets and the drums (timpani) – threaten to overwhelm all. Each time, however, they are rejected by Beethoven, with ‘peace’ (pacem) symbolically triumphing. On the last occasion just near the end, however (and with the trumpets now silenced), only the timpani softly remind us all that vigilance should never be relaxed. Beethoven was ever the optimist, and yet he was never so blindly idealistic that true redemption would be imagined as coming too easily.
Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is so difficult that the piece has really only relatively recently been realistically performed at anything like a level approaching that worthy of the composer’s inspiration. This is a pretty amazing state of affairs considering the Mass was written almost exactly two centuries ago. It is at least in part explicable, however, by Beethoven’s deafness, which was truly profound many years before he started work on the Missa. Although he certainly considered his deafness a fatal flaw in his own makeup as an artist (witness the Heiligenstadt Testament), I feel there is no doubt that the composer’s deafness made him a better composer. Not a more realistic one, or a more pragmatic one, or an ’easier’ one; but certainly a better one. The deaf Beethoven was so removed from practical reality by the time he wrote his last great works that most of these seem to present themselves almost as compositions for a future time, a time when the impossible is achievable. This is what Beethoven’s legacy surely is for us now. Any performer who has struggled through the endless intensification of the final fugue of the Gloria, then to be rewarded by the ecstasy of the final Presto reprise of the opening will know that this is a journey worth taking. Any performer who has laboured through the impossibly challenging fugue at the end of the Credo will surely similarly be inspired to know that such work is glorious. At these and so many other moments, Beethoven’s music distills the very essence of life into something that is inexpressibly thrilling, enabling us for a moment to glimpse into the mind of one of the very greatest of us. That the questions the composer asks of all of us in this music still remain unanswered is the challenge Beethoven sets us as we undertake our own journey through life. That he enables us – at least for a while – to travel with him on this same path is a glorious achievement, and for anyone who has had the privilege of performing this amazing music, the experience will live in their hearts in a way that would have vindicated Beethoven’s own vision for the future of humanity, as well as his unquenchable optimism and compassion for us all.
