Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Missa solemnis in D major Op. 123

One of Beethoven’s late works; together with his last sonatas, last quartets and Ninth Symphony, it blends in the astounding finale that crowns his oeuvre.
The fate of the piece itself abound in paradoxes. As early as in the winter of 1818, the first drafts appear of a mass that was to celebrate the ingress of Austrian Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olomouc, a pupil and patron of Beethoven. But the Archduke had to do without the music. Beethoven never had much patience for conventions and realities, let alone then, at time when he felt liberated from the here and now. The work grew and expanded. It was completed three years after the original deadline. Its premiere took place in the spring of 1824 in... St. Petersburg. Vienna simply could not afford it.
The result was a composition transcending all liturgy, even of the most solemn kind, a composition personal beyond all measure. Osip Mandelshtam saw in it the essence of “Beethoven’s Catholic joy.” According to Wiktor Hulewicz, Missa solemnis is “a prayer hitherto unknown and unuttered by anyone.”
KYRIE is an old prayer hymn that begins an encounter with God. Beethoven opens it with the full orchestra, yet contemplation is the main expressive category here. He has annotated the first bar “in concentration.” The choir’s calls and pleas find their complements in the soloists’ lyrical singing. As earlier in Bach, the choir will express common feelings, the voices of the soloists – individual emotions.
GLORIA is an explosion of sound to denote joy and elation, praise and admiration, a perfect contrast between bright and darkened tones. The former is “glory in the highest” given to God, the latter “peace on earth,” the right of people of good will. The rephrenic returns of “miserere nobis” bring accents dramatic and poignant.
CREDO is as a series of images and visions. Their power and violence allows the suspicion that Beethoven brought in himself into this part. First comes Credo in unum Deum; it is difficult to imagine it stated with even more power. This is followed by concentrated, softer music that accompanies the moment of the Birth. Crucifixus bursts in a cry of pain, expressed by brutal dissonances, the minor key, broken rhythms and, finally, mourning intonations. The moment of Resurrection comes as a small fugato that starts off with enough power to crush rocks and then to fly off and away. Two great fugues close Credo with a vision of “the life of the world to come.”
SANCTUS. Through music concentrated and spiritual, it reveals the mysterious and the sacred. The soloists enter timidly, as if in numinotic fascination. The choir takes on a series of fugatos with the call of “osanna in exelsis” rising into high and bright spheres. Benedictus, attuned to a mystical tone, reaches ecstasy.
AGNUS DEI comes as a surprise in its eschewal of all convention, dramatised beyond all ordinary expectations. It seems to carry traces of the recent turmoil, when Vienna found itself in the path of Napoleon. For what else could explain the sudden invasion – into a sphere of reflection and peace – of sharp, terrible music? How to justify the sudden presence of wartime intonations carried by trumpets and timpani? How to understand the word “miserere,” pronounced in fear?
One could easily agree with one of the interpreters of Missae solemnis, W. Oehlmann: “Beethoven does not close his Mass with a liberating apotheosis of heavenly peace. He leaves the audience in a world condemned to the constant choice between peace and war.”

Mieczysław Tomaszewski