Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

  There is also the question of Jesus. For Bach as for most Christians, Christ was the central figure in the faith. That was never true for Beethoven. He wanted to deal with God man to man. True, at one point in his last years he said, “My models are Socrates and Jesus.” By that he meant Christ not necessarily as the literal Son of God but more likely as an ethical ideal, along with Socrates. Nonetheless, for the places in the Mass relating to Christ—the incarnation, the Eucharist—he made his music believe. He embodied that text and that faith, as was his job.

  So in his age he returned to the ancient Latin rite of the kind he first heard, unknowing, at his baptism, when the priest touched his ear and proclaimed, “Adaperire.” Be opened. Now, despite his prayers, God had let his ears close. And his religious opinions remained his own, his spirituality personal, emotional rather than dogmatic.

  Worldly considerations played their usual part. He hoped to be named Kapellmeister for Cardinal Rudolph. There was also the matter of pride. As far as the musical world was concerned, the greatest contemporary masses were the six that Haydn wrote for the Esterházys in the last years of his productivity. Long after his death, Haydn remained a rival in Beethoven’s mind, perhaps the only member of his central pantheon—Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart—whom he believed he could surpass. With the mass he could go up against Haydn on holy ground.

  Another impulse lying behind the Missa solemnis was the challenge of mastering a towering tradition involving mass settings going back hundreds of years. In particular, the Viennese grand mass, called Missa solemnis, was a venerable genre. Now it meant simply a big piece with full orchestra in something approaching symphonic style. Since the mass had to do with faith, with the spirit, with God, it was a kind of work in some respects more exalted than any other. Bach and Beethoven wrote their most ambitious masses not only as a personal testament of faith but also because the mass was one of the supreme genres in music, something they wanted to leave for posterity.

  Beethoven had already mastered opera, symphony, string quartet, and the other traditional media and genres. Now he added another one. That he was rarely found inside a church, that its rites and liturgies did not ordinarily inspire him, that if he had somehow witnessed his own baptism he might have been unmoved by the rituals and spells, did not deter him from taking up the words of the Latin ritual most central to the Catholic Church: the heart of every service, built around the moment of the Eucharist where Christ is present in body and blood. Still and all, Beethoven’s Bonn-shaped indifference if not hostility to priests and ritual and dogma was inevitably going to inflect his mass. Because he was who he was, it could not be other than a personal statement.

  For decades, Beethoven had wanted to find a new sacred style, far from opera, symphonic but only to a degree. He wanted to forge a sacred music never imagined before. Probably he did not realize it as he worked, but part of the solution had to be a new context. If as he worked he imagined the Missa solemnis performed as part of a church service, it was because that was the only familiar setting for a mass. The practice of mounting liturgical pieces outside church was a recent development. When he was done with the mass, Beethoven seized on the idea. In fact, with a work of this size and difficulty, a concert-hall performance was the only kind remotely likely to happen. For more than a century it rarely happened at all.

  As it took shape, the Missa solemnis in D Major, op. 123, is a work on the order of a five-movement choral symphony. Necessarily, though, it has to be laid out quite differently from a symphony. In that respect Beethoven worked, to a degree, in the formal traditions of the Viennese Missa solemnis, including calling his mass by that name. Like other Viennese masses, his forces are an orchestra, chorus, and four solo singers. There are no arias; the solo parts are involved in a steady dialogue with the choir. At one point he described it as “in oratorio style,” and that is relevant as well. For him and his time the genre of oratorio was inextricably associated with Handel in general and Messiah in particular. That and Mozart’s Requiem were the sacred works Beethoven most admired, and they would have their influences.17 And Messiah is not liturgical music but a sacred work for the concert hall.

  In every Catholic service, the Mass has two elements: the Ordinary, which is the same five-part text in nearly every service (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei); and the Proper, which is specific to that week in the liturgical calendar. Like most composers Beethoven set the Ordinary, which makes the piece appropriate throughout the year. He studied the Latin text minutely, annotating his copy with notes about proper pronunciation and the precise meanings of words. He wrote in his Tagebuch, “In order to write true church music . . . look through all the monastic church chorales and also the strophes in the most correct translations and perfect prosody in all Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns generally.” With his well-thumbed Latin dictionary he traced the subtle differences between the various words for “born” and “begotten”: natum, genitum, incarnatus.18 He returned to the Renaissance theorist Zarlino to see what that authority said about the qualities of the archaic church modes: Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian.

  In Archduke Rudolph’s enormous music library he looked through masses and Gregorian chants reaching back centuries. He studied sacred works by Mozart, Haydn, Handel, and Bach by copying out passages. He returned to Palestrina, whose austere a cappella polyphony from the sixteenth century Beethoven and his time still called the wellspring of polyphony and the purest and most spiritual of all sacred music.

  All those elements made their way into the Missa solemnis in the course of its more than six hundred pages of sketches and drafts. Which is to say, Beethoven’s mass is steeped in musical and liturgical traditions. It is at the same time sui generis. He remained an evolutionist, not a revolutionist. Now his evolution was more deeply than ever within himself, in his silent world.

  He would pay dearly for the scope of his evolution. For nearly two centuries to come the Missa solemnis drifted around in the repertoire like an orphan. At nearly an hour and a half it is too big and too special for church, it is formidably difficult to mount in any circumstances, and with its enormous spans of time and kaleidoscopic contrasts of material without the familiar landmarks of musical forms—repeats and recapitulations and developments and codas—it is formidable to listen to as well.

  Yet it is hard to put aside Beethoven’s conviction that it was his greatest work. That it was his greatest challenge for himself and for everybody else was, for him, part of its significance: What is difficult is good. In many ways its essence is a phrase he wrote on the manuscript at the beginning of the Kyrie: “From the heart—may it return to the heart.”19 The Missa solemnis is a work from Beethoven’s heart to the heart of his listeners, across time. As Beethoven himself wanted to deal with God man to man, there is no pious prayer to God to accept it, no “finished with God’s help.” This is one man’s declaration of faith, in the form of the central liturgical text of the Catholic Church, and it is addressed not to congregants but to humanity.

  Kyrie

  The opening is marked mit Andacht, with reverence and devotion. The Greek words as a plea for mercy go back to deep antiquity: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison, Lord and Christ, have mercy on us. Usually each of the three phrases is repeated three times, symbolizing the Trinity. In Viennese mass settings the ABA of the text is usually reflected in the musical structure. Beethoven conforms to those traditions, the return of the A material resembling a sonata-form recapitulation.

  He begins the Missa solemnis on a great D-major upbeat. That opening gesture begins to shape structure and symbol. The mass will be full of emphasized upbeats and notes held over the bar. Listeners do not immediately perceive the opening chord as an upbeat, or realize that the trumpets and timpani mark the downbeat, but the music settles into the bar line and the point is made, however subtly. The massive upbeat chord on Kyrie will return over and over.

  Many resonances begin there. Beethoven knew that musicians will execute a
n upbeat, even a tutti forte one, differently than a downbeat; they will play it as though on a rising breath. The rhythm he gives the word Kyrie is the usual one in a musical setting, reflecting its spoken rhythm:20

  But when the accented syllable is written as an upbeat, it is as if in its urgency to be heard the word has spilled over the bar line, come in early. That effect of spilling over will be heard myriad times in the mass, often at moments of greatest exaltation. A downbeat is an arrival; an upbeat points forward. It is that primal pointing forward, or more relevantly pointing upward, that Beethoven is concerned with. It begins on an upbeat pointing forward and upward. Later, the same idea will be heard in his strange repetition of the article et, “and.” Articles are words that point forward.

  As always with Beethoven, the beginning sets up a nexus of generating ideas and motifs for the work. But those leading ideas are not going to be handled as he usually does. Most of the mass text cannot be shoehorned into sonata form, rondo, and the like. The text allows sonata overtones in the Kyrie, and Beethoven handles it that way. But otherwise the form has to be shaped around the divisions and the implications of the text.

  The Viennese mass had evolved various ways of structuring the sections, a sense of where the climaxes are, where material can return, where one can place a fugue, and so on. Beethoven conformed to much of that. But to an extraordinary degree, in the mass he let go of a lifetime of habits, of thinking in terms of regular returns of material, of motivic development, introductions, and codas. He also gave up the harmonic underpinnings of Classical form, with its center of gravity the tonic–dominant axis, and with major points in the structure marked by returns of the home key.

  For the mass he put aside, in other words, the Classical coordination of theme and key geared to structure that one would hear in a symphony or the like. Here keys form patterns, but there is usually no regular structure for them to relate to—though all movements but the Credo begin and/or end in the home key of D. There is more a sense of evolving tonality that touches on some keys again and again, especially ones related by thirds: in the first Kyrie he surrounds D major with its mediants B minor and F-sharp major and minor. The dominant of D, A major, plays no part in the Kyrie at all. B-flat major will be a familiar secondary key (as it is in the D-minor Ninth Symphony). The harmony of much of the mass has the searching, restless quality of much of his late music, sometimes at the service of exaltation, sometimes conveying suffering.

  Instead of Classical form and key relations, he decreed the absolute primacy of the text: the rhythms for both singers and orchestra are the rhythms of the text, the moods are the moods of the text, the ecstasies and moments of mystery explicate the text: Gloria! Et resurrexit! Et incarnatus est. As Beethoven pounded his hands and feet and bellowed as he worked, composing with his whole body, he wanted us not only to understand but to feel every phrase and every significant word, not only in our hearts and minds but also in our bodies, like the rocketing scales and ecstatic cries of Gloria and Hosanna, and the shuddering of the “Crucifixus.” In theory he deplored overt pictorial representations in music, but he had enormous powers of musical description when he wanted to use them, and he had painted plenty of pictures in works including the Pastoral Symphony. In the mass there is not a single image suggested by the text that is not mirrored viscerally in the music: ascendit races up, descendit plunges down. That both gestures are clichés does not concern him. He is after bigger matters.21 More than any other single element, the unity of music and text is the driving force, the form, the logic, the meaning of the Missa solemnis.

  The melodic foundation in this work is not going to be themes subdivided into motifs and those motifs developed, but rather motifs that will be used to build themes and gestures in myriad forms and permutations. The first motif is the great D-major upbeat. From there the bass sinks from D to B: that descending third is another primal motif, first sung as Kyrie. The B-minor chord over that bass prophesies the B minor that is going to be a shadowy presence in the mass, including the bleak opening of the Agnus Dei. Dropping down another third, the next harmony is G major, the subdominant chord, setting up an emphasis on the subdominant throughout. Like most of the leading ideas, that harmonic tendency is both motivic and symbolic: the subdominant relationship is associated with gentleness and the pastoral topic (as in the Pastoral Symphony), and with harmonic ambiguity (because the tonic is dominant of the subdominant). At the same time, the subdominant–tonic harmonic cadence is the traditional musical setting of Amen. In a way, the whole of the Missa solemnis is a gigantic Amen.

  In bars 3 and 4 there are brief chords on the downbeat and then silence. Beethoven was the first composer to make silence a thematic presence beyond a momentary effect, and so it will be in the mass. At the same time, in those two quiet chords placed on silence and the humble, head-bowed phrase that follows it, the violins trace a figure: F-sharp–B–A–G–F-sharp:

  That is the prime generating motif of the Missa solemnis.22 Its myriad forms and permutations are too many to cite, but here are a few:

  As usual with Beethoven, the generating motif signifies both as a whole and in its parts. The rising fourth F-sharp to B will mark many themes; likewise the falling line B–A–G–F-sharp. Those last two notes, G and F-sharp, in themselves like a miniature Amen, will keep a regular presence. The descent down to F-sharp will echo all the way to the sopranos’ last notes at the end: A–G–F-sharp on the word pacem, “peace.” The notes A–G–F-sharp outline the primal falling third. So in its course the mass will present a cavalcade of themes, far beyond anything that would be coherent in a symphony. Instead of themes and developments, the music is made from these seed-motifs that continually sprout new themes.

  After the opening gestures we hear three calls in the winds: first the clarinet’s descending third D–B; in answer the oboe’s poignant G–C-sharp; then the flute’s A–G–F-sharp (the last notes of the generating motif). All these calls wordlessly intone Kyrie.

  (The falling-third motif rises from the spoken inflection of the word Kyrie.) These woodwind figures establish the principle of imitation, of call-and-response becoming fugue and fughetta and fugato that enfolds the whole mass. Most of the music will be contrapuntal, the voices constantly echoing one another like an ongoing affirmation.

  As far as the text is concerned, the Kyrie’s three pleas for mercy from Lord and Christ have in themselves no particular context, dramatic overtones, or imagery. For that reason, composers were traditionally free to interpret them at will, in moods from anguished to magisterial. Meanwhile, in a Missa solemnis the Kyrie tends to serve as a kind of introduction to a grander Gloria. Beethoven gave his Kyrie a tone of ceremony and humble devotion—humility, but not submission. The big opening chord is forte, not fortissimo; it prefaces music of great gentleness in the first and last Kyrie. When the voices enter Beethoven sets up the call-and-response of soloists and choir, the individual and the group, that also will mark the piece.23 The first section ends with the cadential G–F-sharp whispered on eleison.

  The Christe eleison is marked by a new three-beat meter and faster tempo, its theme a flowing line based on the generating motif. Hereafter, Christ will tend to be represented in lines flowing up and down. The second Kyrie returns sounding like a sonata recapitulation, but varied and shortened. The movement ends in a tone of intense reverence, pianissimo.24 In the last two bars Beethoven crossed out the original orchestral doubling and left the choir singing the last syllables quietly alone, an intimate, tender effect that will happen again and again.25 Always it highlights and intensifies the words.

  If the Missa solemnis is laid out on a gigantic scale, it is filled with intimate moments like that ending, dozens of them added as Beethoven returned to the nominally completed score. There is sometimes a great deal of complexity in the counterpoint, sometimes more than the ear can fathom, but the expression is always direct and unmistakable. Every note of the Missa solemnis is an avatar of the words. That too is symbolic.
One ancient metaphor for Christ is Logos, “Word”: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

  Gloria

  The essence of this movement is praise and exaltation: Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of goodwill. In the New Testament that is the song of the angels announcing the birth of Jesus, the moment of supreme joy in the faith. In this part of any mass the music must be as radiant as music can be. The text moves quickly from one idea to another, all of it addressed to God: We praise, glorify, acclaim, adore you, Lord God, King of Heaven, Domine Deus, rex coelestis. The middle, usually a separate and slower section, turns to pathetic entreaties: Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Then, text and music return to praise: Quoniam tu solus sanctus Dominus, For You alone are holy, Lord. Often there is a big fugue on the final Amen; Beethoven follows that tradition. But after the Amen he returns to the Gloria in excelsis, partly as coda and partly as recapitulation.

  These sections of text and their changing moods are the reason why a mass movement can’t be encompassed by sonata form or any other conventional pattern, though it may involve repeated material.26 Beethoven’s layout of the Gloria movement is the traditional fast–slow–fast. Within that broad outline he presents a parade of ideas and themes, each part projecting its particular text: in all some nine distinct themes or ideas, the Gloria theme returning within the sections. Toward the end he piles climax on climax, ecstasy on ecstasy, the full orchestra roaring on for page after page. Here as elsewhere in the late music, Beethoven no longer feels obliged to give either performers or listeners a rest but rather mobilizes his singular skill in carrying us to a peak and then to a higher one.