Program Notes
Beethoven Missa Solemnis

In the early 1820s, malicious rumors circulated in Vienna that, as a composer, Ludwig van Beethoven was spent. Indeed, in 1821 the music periodical Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung carried the following lines of gossip: "Beethoven occupies himself, as father Haydn once did, in the arranging of Scottish songs; for larger undertakings he seems completely written out."* Beethoven's close friends knew what the unnamed correspondent for the music magazine did not bother to find out: that at the time of that published report Beethoven was engaged in the composition of the supreme masterpieces of his career-among them the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.

In February 1824, partly because of their outrage at the slanders against Beethoven's genius, and partly because they knew of his dissatisfaction with the audiences and patronage in Vienna, thirty devoted followers (among them Prince Karl Lichnowsky, the publisher Anton Diabelli, and the pianist Carl Czerny) sent the composer an open letter in which they pleaded that he give a Viennese audience the first chance to hear his latest works. The letter referred to "a grand sacred composition...in which you have immortalized the emotions of a soul, penetrated and transfigured by the power of faith and superterrestrial light" and stated that "we know that a new flower glows in the garland of your glorious, still unequalled symphonies." Soon after Beethoven received the letter, he gave his consent and, with his friends' help and backing, began organizing a concert for the coming May.

The program as originally planned was long-the Overture op. 124, followed by the Missa solemnis, concluding with the Ninth Symphony-but Beethoven decided to shorten the program by omitting two of the movements from the Mass-the Gloria and the Sanctus. The remaining movements-the Kyrie, the Credo, and the Agnus Dei-were billed as Three Grand Hymns to allay the censor's fears of having sacred music performed in a theater. (On December 16, 2000, the Riverside Choral Society observed the 230th anniversary of Beethoven's birth by performing the first half of that concert, which took place on May 7, 1824, at the Kärnthnerthor Theater in Vienna.

It consists of a solemn slow march, followed by a passage of squarely rhythmic fanfares for trumpets, through which bassoons may be faintly heard in a sound suggestive of hurrying footsteps; then there is the tread of some concourse not less excited, but more certain of its goal; a moment of solemn calm; silence, and the first faint stirring of a movement impelled from some vast distance by a mighty rushing wind, which then seizes us in the career of a great orchestral fugue, rising from climax to climax in a world which is beyond that of action or drama because all that has been done and suffered is now accomplished and proved not in vain.

The spirit of Handel is invoked not only in the fugue's expositions, but also in the suddenly slow deceptive cadence which resolves with trills before the overture's brilliant conclusion.

Beethoven began composing the Missa solemnis in D in 1819 for his beloved patron and student Archduke Rudolph, to whom he had already dedicated his Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos, the "Archduke" Trio, the Piano Sonata in E-flat ("Les Adieux") op. 81a, and the "Hammerklavier" Sonata op. 106. The Mass was intended for Rudolph's installation as Archbishop of Olmütz on March 9, 1820, but composition of its vast formal arches occupied Beethoven until the Spring of 1823. Although he was working on other works concurrently, the period of four years required to write the Mass indicates the seriousness with which Beethoven regarded his task. While he could never be described as a devout Catholic-his disrespect for most human authority figures (priests included) prevented that-there are indications that early in the composition of the Missa solemnis Beethoven underwent a spiritual awakening. From 1815 to 1820, Beethoven had ruthlessly pursued legal action to gain custody of his nephew Karl; the composer, for reasons no one understood, regarded his late brother's wife as an unfit parent. He was finally awarded custody of Karl by the Court of Appeal early in 1820, but his letters from the period reveal moments of remorse. Maynard Solomon has written that Beethoven was "perhaps stunned by the implications of his own compulsive actions in the guardianship struggle." Whereas during the previous decade and a half, the twin gods of Nature and Reason seemed to have sustained Beethoven spiritually, around 1820, Beethoven undertook personal study of world religions and devoted considerable space in his diary to the recording of observations about religion. In a July 1821 letter to Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven was able to refer to a God who "sees into my innermost heart and knows that as a man I perform most conscientiously and on all occasions the duties which Humanity, God, and Nature enjoin upon me." Of the Missa solemnis, Beethoven wrote to another correspondent that "my chief aim was to awaken and permanently instill religious feelings not only into the singers but also into the listeners."

Beethoven also pursued musical-historical studies during his period of spiritual awakening. As with his other works of his last years, Beethoven drew upon both classical and pre-classical formal models in writing the Missa solemnis. In addition to his reliance on fugue as a formal process, Beethoven enlarged his tonal palette by judiciously employing old church modes along with the major/minor diatonic scales he had inherited from the Viennese classical masters. In 1819 he wrote in his diary:

In order to write true church music go through all the ecclesiastical chants of the monks etc. Also look there for the stanzas in the most correct translations along with the most perfect prosody of all Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns in general.

Beethoven took advantage of his royal friends' libraries in order to study sacred works by Palestrina and other Renaissance composers, as well as works by Handel, J.S. Bach, and C.P.E. Bach.

The opening movement of the Missa solemnis-Kyrie-further demonstrates the interpenetration of classical and baroque formal models. In his monograph on the Missa solemnis, William Drabkin observes that the Greek text of this introit ("Kyrie eleison/Christe eleison/Kyrie eleison") naturally leads to a three-part musical form. In Bach's B-minor Mass, the Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie texts are set as three separate movements. In Haydn's late masses, however, the entire three-line text is set as a sonata form, with the Christe eleison occupying either the second theme group of the exposition or the development section. In the Missa solemnis, though, Beethoven draws upon both traditions. The Christe has a distinct meter and tempo which sets it apart from the outer Kyrie settings, yet the first Kyrie, as Drabkin writes, "is open-ended, like a sonata exposition, its tonal and motivic arguments completed by the second [Kyrie]...." The unfolding of the musical texture is different in the two complementary Kyrie settings and the Christe. Drabkin notes that the D-major Kyrie "presents and expands cadential patterns"-after the orchestral introduction, we hear these patterns as great chordal statements by chorus and orchestra, from which individual yet related melodic lines (such as the beautiful oboe melody we hear about a minute and a half after the beginning) grow and expand one by one. The contrasting Christe (in B minor) unfolds as two-bar patterns of contrasting motives, with the words "Christe" and "eleison" set to contrasting melodies in counterpoint. While the orchestral introduction to the returning Kyrie begins in the home key of D, the chorus enters in the key of G, so that the reprise of the opening music is altered. In order to create a sense of closure, the oboe melody (mentioned above in connection with the first Kyrie) is developed through harmonic modulations which return to D major.

The brilliant opening of the Gloria, also in D major, recalls festive passages in the Handel oratorios Beethoven studied. The simple contour of the Gloria theme, an ascending scale fragment followed by a descending third, belies the formal complexity of the movement as a whole. The shape of the Gloria text-a rather long series of sentences, none more important than the rest-challenges the composer: an analogous succession of equally weighted musical ideas could create a tedious movement. Beethoven sought to create his own points of emphasis reflecting his own interpretation of the Gloria text, responding to it with a variegated musical form. While at its largest level the form of the Gloria could be said to be tripartite-the faster Gloria and Quoniam sections separated by the slower qui tollis-the subdivisions of these three sections are complex and subtle. For example, the "faster" Gloria section encompasses a slower and quieter section ("gratias agimus tibi") in the distant key of B-flat major. After this, music associated with the D-major Gloria theme returns twice, but (following the tonal shift begun with the gratias agimus) each recurrence continues the tonal motion away from D-E-flat major and F major, respectively.

F major is the key of the central section of the Gloria-Qui tollis-but its subsections alternate between D and B-flat before arriving at a startling F-sharp-major statement of "miserere nobis" in the full orchestra and chorus. The hushed restatements of that text continue to modulate (ultimately, to the key of C-sharp major) and introduce one of the textual liberties Beethoven took in this mass-the exclamation "oh" before the words "miserere nobis" ("have mercy upon us," clearly a line of great personal significance for Beethoven). After the voices are silent, a lone C-sharp held by the orchestra is joined by an A to form the dominant of D major, the key of the final section (beginning with the text "Quoniam tu solus sanctus") and of the Gloria as a whole. Chorus and orchestra state the Quoniam text through harmonic modulations which arrive at the great D-major fugue on "in gloria Dei patris, amen," the shortest line of text (after "miserere nobis") in the Gloria, but to Beethoven the most important, as the elaborate counterpoint and massed forces of this fugue demonstrate. After the fugue, a presto repetition of the opening "Gloria in excelsis" ends the movement in a blaze of D major.

The cadence in B-flat major which opens the next movement-Credo-effectively wipes away the last chord of the Gloria and with it the key of D which has predominated thus far in the mass. The Credo-the longest movement of the Missa solemnis-seems like a new beginning to the work. While the long Latin text has few full stops, the beginnings of sections can be defined by the lines which contain the four statements of belief:

Credo in unum Deum

Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum

Et in spiritum sanctum

Et in unum sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam

Beethoven took the liberty of revising the text to substitute the word "Credo" ("I believe") for "Et" ("and") in the last three statements. Thus, the striking four-note motive ("Credo, credo") which begins the movement could be used thematically to underscore the four statements of belief. In addition, Beethoven segregated the text dealing with Christ's life on earth ("Et incarnatus est," etc.) for special treatment. Consequently, the Credo falls into a large three-part formal arrangement: the opening Allegro encompasses the first two statements of belief, a central slow section concerns the life, crucifixion, and burial of Christ, and a third section with fast tempi encompasses the final two statements of belief. The dazzling double fugue ("Et vitam venturi") sets but a single line of text but lasts 167 bars; it functions as a glorious culmination of the beliefs professed in the three large sections which precede it. While the "Credo, credo" motive provides a sense of return, subdivisions of the first large section present a number of themes which are heard once and never appear again (the antiphonal statement of "Deum de deo," the fugal treatment of "consubstantialem patri," and the tender choral statement "Qui propter nos homines"). The central slow section features many dramatic moments, beginning with the hushed unison statement, in the Dorian mode, of "Et incarnatus est" by the tenors in the choir; the development of the tenors' melody by the vocal soloists is accompanied by a high trilling flute, generally recognized to be a musical representation of the Holy Spirit. In the "Crucifixus," a single word-"passus" (referring to Christ's suffering on the cross)-is prolonged over ten bars and invested with the intensity of tragic opera. The tenors' high proclamation of the resurrection ("Et resurrexit") begins the third section, a vigorous Allegro which drives to the reiteration of the "Credo, credo" motive and a rapid traversal of the text of the remaining two "belief statements," leading to the final fugue ("Et vitam venturi"), one of Beethoven's towering contrapuntal achievements (along with the fugue in the "Hammerklavier" Sonata and the Grosse Fuge for string quartet). After the fugue, a very long series of "Amen" cadences in the full ensemble dissipates the energy accumulated during this epic Credo.

After the final B-flat-major chord in the Credo, the B-natural played softly by bassoon and double basses at the beginning of the Sanctus creates an even sharper contrast than that between the Gloria and the Credo. In addition, a constant process of modulation in this solemn setting of the first two lines of text ("Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth!") prevents the music from resting on a home key. As the soloists finish singing these lines, the dominant ninth chord lingering in strings and timpani suggest D major by default. The key of D is confirmed by the brisk fugato ("Pleni sunt coeli") in the full chorus and orchestra. (Beethoven employed Bachian tone painting in the subject of this fugato: the choir sings the word "coeli"-heaven-on a high note and "terra"-earth-on a low note.) The fugato concludes in G but is immediately followed by a faster fugue in D on a different subject ("Osanna in excelsis").

After the "Osanna," communicants in Beethoven's time would have expected a break of a minute or so-to allow for the Elevation of the Host by the celebrant-before the start of the Benedictus. In the Austrian mass tradition, sometimes the cathedral organist would improvise some quiet music during this interval. Beethoven, however, broke with tradition by writing a quiet instrumental prelude to prepare for the Benedictus. Two flutes and a solo violin high in their registers shine out over the final chord of the prelude; Roger Fiske has written that these instruments' "close-knit strands slowly descend, symbolizing the Real Presence of Christ coming down from heaven to earth and entering the Host." After the choral basses intone the "Benedictus," the violin plays a solo which, by its length and sublime beauty, stands beside the great concerto slow movements. The violin's melodic line supplies motivic material from which Beethoven created all the vocal and orchestral themes in the Benedictus; indeed, when the liturgy requires the "Osanna in excelsis" to be repeated, Beethoven wrote a fugue whose subject grows out of the solo violin's music, rather than repeating the fugue at the beginning of the Sanctus, as many classical composers would have done.

The final movement-Agnus Dei-takes on even greater epic proportions than the Credo. Although there were only two lines of text to set ("Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. / Dona nobis pacem"), the scale of the previous four movements of the Missa solemnis demanded a weighty conclusion. Beethoven set the first line in B minor (the key he described in his diary as "die schwarze Tonart"-the black key), breaking it into musical sections ("Agnus Dei," "qui tollis…," and "miserere nobis"), and composing the whole in three large statements, in the manner of a litany, lasting for a total of 96 bars. The first statement is sung by the bass soloist with men's chorus, the second statement (in the subdominant key of E minor) is sung by the alto and tenor soloists with chorus (without sopranos), and the third statement (B minor) is sung by all four soloists with full chorus. A modulation on the last, hushed choral statement ("Agnus Dei") reveals the fact that this dark composition is an introduction to a great sonata form in D-major, the "Dona nobis pacem" ("Give us peace"). When Walter Riezler wrote that Beethoven "dared to allow the confusion of the world outside invade the sacred domain of church music," he was referring to this unorthodox sonata movement. Beethoven disrupted what would otherwise have been a classical development of the "Dona nobis pacem" theme by interjecting contrasting military music in the distant key of B-flat; notes in his sketches for this music clearly indicate that he associated this music with war, and we must assume that he had in mind the Napoleonic wars which had swept Europe during the previous two decades. The first brief interjection accompanies the return of the Agnus Dei text, sung by the alto and tenor soloists. However, the most extraordinary outburst occurs in the recapitulation of the "Dona nobis pacem," which is interrupted by a brilliant orchestral fugato culminating in a pounding statement of the B-flat war music, with manic fanfares in the trumpet and timpani, over which the choir cries "Agnus dei, dona pacem!" The D-major coda which concludes the mass is interrupted one last time by quiet timpani strokes in B-flat, indicating a retreat of troops and possible cessation of hostilities (Beethoven wrote in his sketch of this passage "a sign of peace"). Yet the choir's last statement of "Dona nobis pacem" ends on an upbeat and leaves the orchestra to close the Mass in a short passage of just a few bars, almost as if Beethoven was leaving open the question: will the plea of suffering humanity be answered?