Beethoven - Missa Solemnis / New Mastering + P° (Century's recording: Herbert Von Karajan 1975)

MISSA SOLEMNIS: Form and Content. Beethoven's conception of the Mass was a big and unified one, based on symphonic designs and not on a multiplicity of separate numbers. The shape of each movement was dictated by its text, and because liturgical texts are by nature repetitive they make for spontaneously balanced movements: the Kyrie is automatically ternary in form. The Sanctus involves a reprise of Osanna after the Benedictus. The Gloria does not offer any such ready made formal solutions, but

here too Beethoven's design was able to be symphonic, even to a last reference, in the closing pages, to the opening theme. He created a similar reprise in the Credo by reintroducing the word Credo at Et in Spiritum Sanctum. The Mass in D consistently makes plain the awesome immensity of God's majesty and the feebleness of mankind: the first entry of voices in the Kyrie symbolizes this, when a mighty shout from the whole choir is answered by the cry of a single tenor voice. There was no questi

on of Beethoven establishing star status for his soloists; they are individuals calling from within a huge crowd, and they should appear dwarfed by that throng. Did Beethoven envisage the single figure of the new Cardinal Archbishop, focus of attention yet, to the eye, a tiny speck in the chancel of the huge cathedral, itself a microcosm of God's universe? Beethoven almost always begins the choral Kyrie on an unaccented beat for greater rhythmic impact. The two outer sections are marked Assai so

stenuto, above which he wrote Mit Andacht (with devotion). The Christie section moves a little faster, with shorter note-values; the appeal of mankind to God made Man is rendered more personal by using the solo quartet without chorus at the beginning. The use of double fugue for this section may or may not be a reference to Christ's dual nature. A purely musical point is that the word eleison suggested a swinging saraband rhythm to Beethoven. At the return to Kyrie eleison, Beethoven naturally r

ecapitulates the opening, but modulates to G major for the entry of the voices so as to add a new dimension to music already heard; the gradual return to D major by the end creates a grand release from the tension.The voices go on repeating their prayer at the end, as if moving out of earshot. The Gloria begins Allegro vivace, still in D major, with an unrestrained burst of praise. Bach's treatment of this, in the B minor Mass, seems quite different, but he and Beethoven both use basically the s

ame type of theme. Beethoven's design is almost that of a ritornello, constant change of mood and dynamics being swept aside by the impetuous flood of the opening Gloria theme. The chasm separating God from Man is again suggested at Benedicimus te, adoramus te, the latter phrase being set, with seemingly conscious archaism, to a bare fifth. The C major shout of Glorificamus te at the end of an aggressive fugato sounds modal in effect, but Beethoven uses it for the tonal purpose of modulating to

B flat (Meno Allegro) for Gratias agimus. After Deus Pater omnipotens the first theme sweeps back, and subsequently returns in E flat and F, a process of unconventional key-change that reappears elsewhere in the work for special structural effect. Qui tollis (Larghetto in F) is a section in which Beethoven's concern with human implications comes forward, and his repetition of isolated Words and pairs of words is deliberately expressive, as it is a little later, at Miserere nobis, where the music

turns into D flat with wonderfully rich effect, and the soloists soar above the murmuring chorus. From Quoniam the tension rises to the end of the text, and a remarkable sustained A major chord decrescendo poi crescendo leads into a gigantic fugue on In gloria Dei Patris (the subject is related to a prominent theme from the Kyrie) in the course of which the Quoniam clause returns, shortly after another extraordinary modulatory passage which jerks through B, C sharp, E flat, F and G minor in the

course of five bars. At the very end Beethoven returns to the opening theme and the opening sentence of the Gloria, and ends by making the chorus hurl the first word into the empty air with stunning impact. The Gloria ended in D, and the Credo begins boldly in E flat thereby to establish B flat which is the key of the whole movement. Credo, credo, affirms the choir to a robust theme which supports the structure of the movement. The upward chromatic scale (in octaves) for Patrem omnipotentem is

used elsewhere in the Mass, once for the same reference to God's omnipotence. There are violent contrasts — for example, between visibilium and invisibilium. The tempo becomes Adagio and the key D minor fot Et incarnatus est; the odd harmonic progressions here are caused by modal harmony, Dorian D minor. The first tenor entry here was allotted to a soloist in the first edition of the score, but to the choral tenors in the autograph. When the solo voices do enter, Beethoven reduces his string ban

d to a few players and writes hovering, fluttering music for flute solo, clarinets and bassoons, to suggest the Holy Spirit hovering in its symbolic guise as a dove. The amazement and ineffable warmth of the music for Et homo factus est have been mentioned earlier. The intimacy of response to this whole section is exceptional, and it continues into the Crucifixus, where the orchestra seems to depict the Cross being hoisted aloft. The voices dwell poignantly on the word passus, and again repeat e

t... et, as if trying to comprehend the full tragedy of the Passion; and then the miracle of the Resurrection which is announced a capella in the Mixolydian mode (perhaps an allusion to the old scriptures). At the passage about the Second Coming, a solo trombone adds a gratuitous reference to the Last Trumpet. Beethoven repeats the negative in non erit finis, as though thinking of the French meaning, and then returns to the opening of the movement for the subsequent renewal of faith. Et vitam ve

nturi inaugurates a new, grand double fugue (Allegretto) which balances In gloria Dei Patris at the end of the previous movement. It is even more momentous in scale and effect and technical ingenuity and diversity of expression; and it shoulders the rest of this immense movement, the subject persisting below the final chord, in a manner rather like the first movement of the eighth symphony. Just as the Credo began, ostensibly, a semitone higher than the closing key of the Gloria, so the Sanctus

begins in B minor after the B flat major of the Credo. Bach and Mozart and Verdi were at one in regarding the Sanctus as a shout of joy. Beethoven, in both his masses, treats Holy, Holy as an almost private confession: Adagio with devotion, he writes; he silences the massed voices of his choir, and brings out the solemn, hushed weight of trombones to evoke a great and fearful mystery. Sanctus, the soloists whisper together, after an imitative opening, and the strings and drums shudder in awe b

elow their hesitant repetitions. At which the heavens open, and the voices burst into a fast and brilliant fugato, Pleni sunt coeli, in D major. Many conductors unhesitatingly introduce the chorus here, but Beethoven does not indicate that the soloists are replaced either here or in the short Presto fugato for Osanna. The whole movement up to now has been short. Most composers start a fresh movement for the Benedictus but Beethoven at once sinks into a solemn Praeludium, sostenuto for flutes, ba

ssoons and lower strings who gradually move through rich harmonies (divisi violas and cellos) into G major — it is difficult not to think here of the introduction to the canonic vocal quartet in Fidelio. And then something altogether unexpected, but absolutely appropriate, happens. This is, in the Church service, the moment for the Elevation of the Host, when the bread and wine are metamorphosed to the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Beethoven points this miracle with the entry, very high up, of a s

olo violin and two flutes who hover aloft for a moment, then descend as it were to earth, while the choral basses greet the miraculous descent with a murmur, 'Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord'. The divine visitor is symbolized musically by the solo violin which proceeds to unfold a sublime slow movement melody, as it were of a violin concerto, but one adorned with vocal music for soloists and choir. The meditation moves serenely and timelessly onward, above a canon for voices to

the text of Benedictus. When the time comes to repeat Osanna the violin is silent, but the mood of exaltation is unbroken, and the return of Benedictus and of the violin solo is inevitable. Below the rapt song of the violin the choir repeats Osanna in excelsis, and the obbligato once again ascends to the heights and is lost. Music has never yielded a truer vision of Divine grace. The threefold prayer for mercy of the Agnus Dei is inescapably one with associations of self-abasement, and Beethov

en used the most abjectly despairing and dark key known to him, which was B minor, a key that he used seldom for this reason (though he planned a symphony in B minor in his last years). The colour of the music, as well as the key, is dark, with bassoons and horns trailing in the wake of a solo bass voice and the male chorus divided into four parts. Gradually the other voices and woodwinds enter, and a tide of consolation seems to flow gently from the violins. When the prayer has been uttered thr

ee times, its corollary, the plea for peace, inward and outward, steals in; the key becomes D major, the pace Allegretto vivace, and the mood more cheerful, with a dance-like lilt in the strings. The clause initiates a double fugue, crowned by a heartfelt refrain given to unaccompanied choir. The martial episodes discussed above interrupt the prayer, and at one point the orchestra launches into a decidedly assertive and jubilant double fugue. The final prayer in D major is broken several times b

y distant alarums on timpani in B minor, and it may be the echo of these in the mind which makes the end of the Mass seem so unsure of itself. Beethoven knew that man's salvation depended on works as well as faith. END