Program Notes

April 4, 2009

Ludwig Van Beethoven – Missa Solemnis

It has been called “one of the greatest masterworks in the realm of music” by composer Vincent D’Indy. Beethoven himself was reported to be “transfigured by it” during the time he spent writing it; in the end, he added this uncharacteristically dramatic epigraph to the score: “Coming from the heart, may it go to the heart.”

So why don’t we know the Missa Solemnis better?

It’s a tough question, one that bears the baggage of nearly two centuries of performance practicalities, critical inquiry, and audience interests. Certainly this music lacks nothing in melodic beauty, thrilling climaxes, or points of easy connection for uninitiated listeners.

Written between 1819-1823, during roughly the same period of the composer’s life as major masterpieces such as the Hammerklavier Sonata and the Ninth Symphony, this is music of supreme innovation. Beethoven had already begun to expand his creative palette well beyond the conventions of the classical form; insofar as he is viewed as the first major composer of the Romantic era, the Missa Solemnis serves as a prime example of an epochal transformation. This is evident in the pioneering treatment of the various sections of the Mass; the massive forces – pardon the pun -- necessary for performance (no previous composer had written a religious work that involved such a large ensemble); and the unbridled emotion that comes through in the music. “There is no other work of Beethoven’s which crushes the unprepared listener with such gigantic strength, at the same time raising him up again, deafened, delighted, confused,” wrote critic Eduard Hanslick.

In fact, part of the explanation for the work’s relative obscurity (when compared, for example, to the composer’s symphonies) must surely be the very scale of this work. Employing an expanded orchestra, organ, chorus, and four vocal soloists, the work requires greater resources even than the Ninth Symphony. Add to that the fact that this is supremely difficult music to perform well (due to Beethoven’s trademark shifts of tempo, dynamic, and so-on), and one gains an immediate understanding of the practical challenges of putting on a performance of the piece. Few community orchestras in America can manage to pull it off; even fewer can do so effectively.

Then there is the long history of critical ambivalence regarding the work. While no thinker in his right mind can disparage the beauty of the writing in the Missa Solemnis, numerous prominent critics have taken issue with the structure of Beethoven’s musical treatment.

One aspect of this criticism is not in question: Coming from a composer known for his masterly classical development of motives – structures of repetition and development – the Missa Solemnis is a largely linear work that does not dwell overmuch on its themes. Don’t listen here for endless repetitions of words, as one hears in many of the other great musical settings of liturgical texts. Numerous phrases in the Mass pass by once and are gone in Beethoven’s treatment.

Thus, while the instrumental arrangements, harmonies, rhythms, and melodies are all trademark Beethoven, the overall construction of the Missa Solemnis sets it somewhat apart from the composer’s other great works. This has certainly vexed some critics. “The Missa Solemnis was generally regarded as an incomprehensible production, the depths of which (if they really were depths) it was impossible to fathom,” asserted Nicolas Slonimsky in the Musical Times of London, in 1845. “This opinion I confess I adopted. After poring for hours over the ponderous pages, the only result was an absolute bewilderment among its mazes.”

More biting and influential has been the criticism that Beethoven’s composition is “not churchly.” This argument has dogged the work since its premiere, and seems to focus chiefly on one specific passage: A moment in the last, “Agnus Dei” movement, when the strains of a military band suddenly appear in the distance and transform the mood of the finale. A military band? In church music?

Then there is the ending, when the orchestra simply softens and fades away in a final, once-stated cadence that leaves the listener waiting, eternally, for an ending that might befit all this explosive, exploratory music.

Some critics seem to take all of this as an indication that Beethoven ultimately lost his thread of connection to the spiritual subject matter of the Mass. But can we really dismiss these surprising diversions so easily? Or might there be an overarching reason for their appearance?

Prominent music historian Joseph Kerman certainly thinks there is good reason for Beethoven’s unusual flights of fancy in the final movement.

“This is the notorious operatic battle scene which turns the Mass into an anti-war manifesto – with a prayer, as the composer puts it, for outer as well as for inner piece,” asserts Kerman. “…Its resolution is not entirely secure. But it holds out hope against hope.”

It is an intriguing observation, and one that ties in well with Beethoven’s personal spirituality. Though not a particularly religious man, Beethoven believed in the spiritual power of music to transcend and inspire. “It is not necessary to follow habitual usage,” he wrote to Count Dietrichstein, the imperial intendant of music, “when the purpose is sincere adoration of God.” In other words: If the spirit moves, let it move in its own way.

Turning back to the Ninth Symphony, one sees just as many unusual twists and turns (not least of them the inclusion of a chorus); the fourth movement even includes its own – more obvious – military band moment. Perhaps, then, the problem that critics have with the Missa Solemnis is its basis in the traditional Latin text of the Mass. 

It’s as if the composer simply wore the wrong clothes to church.

“All his music was to him religious,” wrote Hanslick. “In art he always felt himself to be in a church, and that is why, in this particular case, it did not occur to him to don specifically churchly raiment.”

If that is Beethoven’s greatest sin, let’s rejoice. Come as you are, and hear one of the great works of religious reverence in the history of Western culture.

Program notes written by Joe Nickell