The Missa solemnis in D major, Op. 123, is a Solemn Mass composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819 to 1823. It was first performed on 7 April 1824 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Golitsyn; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei were conducted by the composer.[1] It is generally considered one of the composer's supreme achievements and, along with Bach's Mass in B minor, one of the most significant Mass settings of the common practice period.[2]
Written around the same time as his Ninth Symphony, it is Beethoven's second setting of the Mass, after his Mass in C major, Op. 86. The work was dedicated to Archduke Rudolf of Austria, archbishop of Olmütz, Beethoven's foremost patron as well as pupil and friend. The copy presented to Rudolf was inscribed "Von Herzen—Möge es wieder—Zu Herzen gehn!"[3] ("From the heart – may it return to the heart!")[4]
History
Composition history
The Missa Solemnis is Beethoven's third choral composition on a sacred subject, after the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (1802), and his earlier mass setting, the Mass in C major (1807). The new composition was written to celebrate the investiture of Rudolph of Habsburg-Lorraine as Archbishop of Olmütz, which took place on 9 March 1820.
Performance history
The first performance did not take place in a sacred setting, but at the Philharmonic Society in Saint Petersburg on the initiative of the Russian nobleman and patron Nikolai Golitsyn on 7 April 1824 (March 26 Old Style). The premiere, originally planned for Christmas 1823, was delayed by rehearsing the demanding choral parts, which proved to be more time-consuming than planned, and by incorrectly copied parts. Who conducted the premiere on 7 April 1824 is unknown.
Parts of the mass (Kyrie, Credo, Agnus Dei) were performed on 7 May 1824, under the direction of Kapellmeister Michael Umlauf at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna, together with the overture The Consecration of the House and the premiere of Symphony No. 9. The three movements of the mass performed were designated “hymns” because the Viennese censorship authorities objected to the performance of mass settings in a secular venue.
Another performance of the entire mass took place in a liturgical setting in 1830 in the Church of St. Peter and Paul in the Bohemian town of Varnsdorf.
The Missa solemnis consists of five movements, corresponding to the first five sections of the Ordinary.
Note: Under "Scoring", the performers are indicated with the following abbreviations: "S" vocal soloists, "C" chorus, "O" orchestra. Additionally, "T" stands for the tenor soloist in 'Et homo factus est', and "V" the violinist in the Benedictus. Under "Note", the remarks in italics were written into the score by the composer.
Duration: A performance of the complete work runs from 70 to 90 minutes.
Analysis
The writing displays Beethoven's characteristic disregard for the performer, and is in several places both technically and physically exacting, with many sudden changes of dynamic, metre and tempo. This is consistent throughout, starting with the opening Kyrie where the syllables Ky-ri are delivered either forte or with sforzando, but the final e is piano. As noted below, the reprise of the Et vitam venturi fugue is particularly taxing, being both subtly different from the previous statements of the theme and counter-theme, and delivered at around twice the speed. The orchestral parts also include many demanding sections, including the violin solo in the Sanctus and some of the most demanding work in the repertoire for bassoon and contrabassoon. The difficulty of the piece combined with the requirements for a full orchestra, large chorus, and highly trained soloists, both vocal and instrumental, mean that it is not often performed by amateur or semi-professional ensembles.
Kyrie
Perhaps the most traditional movement, the Kyrie is in a traditional ABA′ structure. The grand opening 3 D major chords motif, contrasts sharply with the 4th pianissimo response: (GOD/man) followed by humble stately choral writing in the first section and more contrapuntal vocal textures in the Christe section. The four (SATB) vocal soloists and chorus share the thematic material throughout, the former particularly in the Christe Eleison section.
Gloria
Quickly shifting textures and themes highlight each portion of the Gloria text, in a beginning to the movement that is almost encyclopedic in its exploration of 3 4 time. The movement ends with the first of the work's two fugues, on the text "In gloria Dei patris. Amen", leading into a recapitulation of the initial Gloria text and music.
Credo
The form of the Credo may be divided into four parts:
'Credo in unum Deum' through 'descendit de coelis' in B♭
'Et incarnatus est' through 'Resurrexit' in D
'Et ascendit' through the Credo recapitulation in F
Fugue and coda 'Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen' in B♭.
The movement opens with a chord sequence that will be used again in the movement to effect modulations. The word "Credo" is repeatedly sung in a two-note motif, and the work thus joins the tradition of so-called "Credo Masses", including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Missa brevis in F major, K. 192 and Mass in C major, K. 257 "Credo".[5] The Credo, like the Gloria, is an often disorienting, mad rush through the text. The poignant modalharmonies for the "Et incarnatus" yield to ever more expressive heights through the Crucifixus, and into a remarkable a cappella setting of the "Et resurrexit". Most notable about the movement, though, is the closing fugue on "Et vitam venturi saeculi" that includes one of the most difficult passages in the choral repertoire, when the subject returns at doubled tempo for a thrilling conclusion.
Sanctus
Up until the Benedictus of the Sanctus, the Missa solemnis is of fairly normal classical proportions. But then, after an orchestral preludio, a solo violin enters in its highest range—representing the Holy Spirit descending to earth in a remarkably long extension of the text.
Agnus Dei
A setting of the plea "miserere nobis" (have mercy on us) that begins with the men's voices alone in B minor yields, eventually, to a bright D major prayer "dona nobis pacem" ("grant us peace") in a pastoral mode. After some fugal development, it is suddenly and dramatically interrupted by martial sounds (a convention in the 18th century, as in Haydn's Missa in tempore belli), but after repeated pleas of "miserere", eventually recovers and brings itself to a close.
Some critics have been troubled that, as Theodor W. Adorno put it, "there is something peculiar about the Missa solemnis."[6] In many ways, it is an atypical work, and lacks the sustained thematic development that is one of Beethoven's hallmarks. The fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo align it with the work of his late period—but his simultaneous interest in the theme and variations form is absent.[7]
Instead, the Missa presents a continuous musical narrative, almost without repetition, particularly in the Gloria and Credo, the two longest movements. The style, Adorno has noted, is close to treatment of themes in imitation that one finds in the Franco-Flemish masters such as Josquin des Prez and Johannes Ockeghem, but it is unclear whether Beethoven was consciously imitating their techniques to meet the demands of the Mass text.[8]
Donald Tovey has connected Beethoven to the earlier tradition in a different way:
Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense of space and of sonority. There is no earlier choral writing that comes so near to recovering some of the lost secrets of the style of Palestrina. There is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord, every position, and every doubled third or discord.[9]
Michael Spitzer presents an alternative view of the historical context of Beethoven's mass composition:
Gregorian melodies, of course, continued to be used in the Mass throughout the eighteenth century; but by Beethoven's time they were relatively rare, especially in orchestral Masses. The one composer who still used them extensively is Michael Haydn, in his a cappella Masses for Advent and Lent. It is significant that in some of these he limits the borrowed melody to the Incarnatus and expressly labels it "Corale." In the Missa dolorum B. M. V. (1762) it is set in the style of a harmonized chorale, in the Missa tempore Qudragesima of 1794 note against note, with the Gregorian melody (Credo IV of the Liber Usualis) appearing in the soprano. I have little doubt that Beethoven knew such works of Michael Haydn, at that time the most popular composer of sacred music in Austria.[10]
Maynard Solomon has written about Beethoven's influences and compositional method:
Beethoven's musical archaisms and reminiscences—Dorian and Mixolydian modes, Gregorian "fossils", quotations from Handel's Messiah in the Gloria and Agnus Dei—and his employment of procedures and musical imagery derived from older liturgical styles are, in context, modernistic devices that also serve to stretch the expressiveness of his music beyond the boundaries set for liturgical music by his contemporaries.[11]
Recordings
Audio
Year
Conductor
Orchestra and choir
Soloists
Label
1928
Bruno Kittel
Berliner Philharmoniker, Bruno-Kittel-Chor
Lotte Leonard/Emmy Land, Elenor Schlosshauer-Reynolds, Anton Maria Topitz/Eugen Transky, Wilhelm Guttmann/Hermann Schey
Polydor
1935
Arturo Toscanini
New York Philharmonic, New York Schola Cantorum
Elisabeth Rethberg, Marion Telva, Giovanni Martinelli, Ezio Pinza
Archipel
1937
Thomas Beecham
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Leeds Festival Chorus
Isobel Baillie, Mary Jarred, Heddle Nash, Keith Falkner
EMI
1938
Sergey Koussevitzky
Boston Symphony, Radcliffe Choral Society, Harvard Glee Club
Jeanette Vreeland, Anna Kaskas, John Priebe, Norman Cordon
RCA
1939
Arturo Toscanini
BBC Symphony Orchestra BBC Choral Society
Zinka Milanov, Kerstin Thorborg, Koloman von Pataky, Nicola Moscona
Archipel
1940
Clemens Krauss
Chor und Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper
Trude Eipperle, Luise Willer, Julius Patzak, Georg Hann
Archipel
1940
Arturo Toscanini
NBC Symphony Orchestra, Westminster Choir
Zinka Milanov, Bruna Castagna Jussi Björling, Alexander Kipnis
Music and Arts
1946
Erich Kleiber
Teatro Colon Orchestra and Chorus
Nilda Hoffmann, Mafalda Rinaldi, Lydia Kindermann, Kolomon von Pataky
Archipel
1948
Bruno Walter
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Westminster Choir
Eleanor Steber, Nan Merriman, Walter Hain, Lorenzo Alvary
Music and Arts
1948
Erich Kleiber
Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus
Birgit Nilsson, Lisa Tunnel, Gosta Backlein, Sigurd Bjorling
Music and Arts
1950
Otto Klemperer
Wiener Symphoniker, Akademiechor Wien
Ilona Steingruber, Elsa Schürhoff, Ernst Maykut, Otto Wiener
Vox
1953
Arturo Toscanini
NBC Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw Chorale
Lois Marshall, Nan Merriman, Eugene Conley, Jerome Hines
RCA
1955
Otto Klemperer
Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Kölner Rundfunkchor, Chor des Norddeutschen Rundfunks
Annelies Kupper, Sieglinde Wagner, Rudolf Schock, Josef Greindl
Archiphon
1955
Karl Böhm
Berliner Philharmoniker, Chor der St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale
Maria Stader, Marianna Radev, Anton Dermota, Josef Greindl
Deutsche Grammophon
1955
Volkmar Andrae
Wiener Symphoniker, Wiener Singverein
Teresa Stich-Randall, Hilde Rössel-Majdan, Julius Patzak, Gottlob Frick
Archipel
1957
Carl Schuricht
Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, Chor der St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale
Maria Stader, Elsa Cavelti, Ernst Haefliger, Heinz Rehfuss
Archiphon
1957
Otto Klemperer
Concertgebouworkest, Toonkunstkoor Amsterdam, Collegium Musicum Amstelodamense
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Nan Merriman, József Simándy, Heinz Rehfuß
Archipel
1958
Jascha Horenstein
Philharmonia Orchestra, Leeds Festival Chorus
Teresa Stich-Randall, Norma Procter, Peter Pears, Kim Borg
