Kirill Petrenko conducts Beethoven’s Missa solemnis

About the Work

The Missa solemnis began as a present. In 1819 Beethoven learned that Archduke Rudolph of Austria, a son of Emperor Leopold II, was to be made Archbishop of Olmütz in Moravia. Rudolph had been his piano and composition pupil for years and was the most loyal of his patrons; the “Archduke” Trio and the “Emperor” Concerto are among the many works dedicated to him. Beethoven promised a new mass for the ceremony and wrote to Rudolph that the day on which it was performed would be “the most glorious day of my life”.

The ceremony took place on 9 March 1820. The mass was nowhere near ready. Beethoven had begun sketching in the spring of 1819, but the work kept growing, and he did not finish it until 1823. It occupied him for about four years, the same years in which he wrote his last three piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations and started the Ninth Symphony. He prepared with unusual thoroughness. He studied plainchant and the old church modes, looked closely at the sacred music of Palestrina, Handel and Bach, and had the Latin text of the mass translated word by word so that he could be certain of its meaning and accents.

What came out of this is unlike any earlier mass. It keeps the traditional five sections of the liturgy, and it uses many of the conventions of Austrian church music, but on a scale and with an intensity that no church service could contain. The demands on the chorus are notorious, and the fugues are among the hardest in the repertoire. At the head of the Kyrie, Beethoven wrote the words “From the heart: may it go again to the heart.”

He never heard the whole work. The first complete performance was given in St Petersburg in April 1824, arranged by his Russian patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin. In Vienna, on 7 May 1824, three movements (the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei) were sung at the concert in the Kärntnertor Theatre that also brought the premiere of the Ninth Symphony. Because the censor did not allow a mass to be sung in a theatre, they were advertised as “three grand hymns”.

Beethoven died in Vienna on 26 March 1827. These performances fall in the two hundredth year since his death.

What to Listen For

Kyrie. The mass opens with broad chords in D major, marked Mit Andacht (with devotion). The woodwinds sing the melody before any voice enters, and when the chorus comes in with “Kyrie”, solo voices emerge from it one at a time. The middle section, “Christe eleison”, is more active and belongs mainly to the soloists.

Gloria. An eruption: the orchestra rushes upward and the chorus hurls out the word “Gloria”. The movement keeps this energy for long stretches, pausing for a gentler “Gratias agimus” and a slow, pleading “Qui tollis”, where the soloists lead the cries of “miserere”. It ends with a huge fugue on “In gloria Dei Patris, Amen”, after which Beethoven, not content, brings back the opening shout of “Gloria” at even greater speed. The chorus has the last word, alone, after the orchestra has stopped.

Credo. The chorus declares “Credo, credo” on a blunt two-note figure that returns as a refrain. The centre of the movement is its quietest music. For “Et incarnatus est” Beethoven turns to an archaic church mode, with a flute trilling high above the voices; the solo tenor then announces “Et homo factus est” (and was made man) in a warm D major. The “Crucifixus” is marked by stabbing accents, and “Et resurrexit” bursts out from the chorus without any accompaniment. The movement closes with a long double fugue on “Et vitam venturi saeculi” (and the life of the world to come), which begins gently and returns at twice the speed.

Sanctus and Benedictus. Instead of the usual blaze of sound, the Sanctus begins in near darkness, with low instruments and the four soloists singing in hushed awe. After a brief, fast “Pleni sunt coeli” and “Osanna”, the orchestra plays a slow, shadowy interlude that Beethoven called a Praeludium. Then a solo violin enters at the very top of its range and slowly descends, joined by two flutes. It stays for the whole of the Benedictus, playing a long, serene melody above the voices. It is one of the most famous passages in the work.

Agnus Dei. The bass soloist begins the final prayer in a dark B minor, and the other soloists and the men of the chorus join him. When the music turns to D major for “Dona nobis pacem”, Beethoven adds a heading: “Prayer for inner and outer peace”. The peace is twice threatened. First, distant drums and trumpets sound a military signal, and the soloists renew the plea for mercy in frightened recitative. Later the orchestra breaks in with a violent, jagged fugal passage. Each time the chorus resumes its plea. The work does not end in triumph: the last “pacem” is followed by a few short bars from the orchestra, and it is over.