Missa Solemnis

[Sam van den Berg]

I am doing a little survey about something that I find puzzling. Of all the classical works I know, my passionate favourite for almost 45 years has been Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, yet it seems to be seldom performed and often little known to other music lovers that I have encountered.

Mozart's similarly named work or works seem better known, even though I have never been able to get hold of it/them.

What are your views? Please let me know -- I am beginning to wonder if I belong to some lunatic fringe (well, in most ways I do, but still ...)

Sam van den Berg
svdberg1@absamail.co.za

[Hollywood]

Interesting that you should mention Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" today, Sam. Tonight here in Vienna, Austria the "Missa Solemnis" is being performed in St. Stephan's Cathedral by the Cappella Musicale della Cattedrale di Cremona Orchestra, Città di Cremona, conducted by Fulvio Rampi. I only wish I was feeling better and that it wasn't so bloody hot, then I would definately think about attending this performance. Vienna is not known as a city of air conditioners in evry building and since it's already in the 90s, it'll be over 100° on the U-Bahn and Strassenbahns and I will be nothing more than a melted puddle of water on the floor by the time I travel from my flat in Heiligenstadt down to the Inner City.

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"God knows why it is that my pianoforte music always makes the worst impression on me, especially when it is played badly."
- Beethoven 1804.

[Rod]

I've known even self-confessed Beethoven fans to be in two minds about this piece, but I suggest if one work were to be highlighted as Beethoven's greatest (not a thing I usually concern myself with) then the Solemn Mass is that piece. Beethoven himself promoted the piece as his greatest work.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Sam van den Berg]

Wish I could be in Vienna in that lovely heat! Down here in the antipodes (Pietermaritzburg in the land of the Zulu, South Africa)it's pretty cold at the moment (but no snow). We have a lovely, huge old Victorian red-brick city hall [with a magnificent organ (still being maintained by the person who restored it many years ago)]. There are excellent choirs and soloists in the area, and in nearby Durban, a good symphony orchestra which condescends to visit us from time to time. Perhaps I should get a Solemnis Society together here!

Wonder what it would sound like arranged for organ?

Sam

Originally posted by Hollywood:
Interesting that you should mention Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" today, Sam. Tonight here in Vienna, Austria the "Missa Solemnis" is being performed in St. Stephan's Cathedral by the Cappella Musicale della Cattedrale di Cremona Orchestra, Città di Cremona, conducted by Fulvio Rampi. I only wish I was feeling better and that it wasn't so bloody hot, then I would definately think about attending this performance. Vienna is not known as a city of air conditioners in evry building and since it's already in the 90s, it'll be over 100° on the U-Bahn and Strassenbahns and I will be nothing more than a melted puddle of water on the floor by the time I travel from my flat in Heiligenstadt down to the Inner City.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hollywood:
I only wish I was feeling better and that it wasn't so bloody hot, then I would definately think about attending this performance. Vienna is not known as a city of air conditioners in evry building and since it's already in the 90s, it'll be over 100° on the U-Bahn and Strassenbahns and I will be nothing more than a melted puddle of water on the floor by the time I travel from my flat in Heiligenstadt down to the Inner City.

I know how you feel - I remember only too well the heat in the Theater an der Wien! Ironic, because that concert itself was a recreation of the Dec 1808 event when it must have been freezing!

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'Man know thyself'

[Sam van den Berg]

Hi Rod

"I've known even self-confessed Beethoven fans to be in two minds about this piece,"

I find it needs time -- I loved Mozart's Requiem in the beginning but have got rather tired of it; but each time I listen to the Solemnis, I seem to discover greater depths in it. (When I have problems falling asleep, I pop it onto my discman and it works every time ... except that I have to wake up at 3 in the morning to take off the earphones! Not because it's boring, but because it transcends the daily business of living and paying bills...)


"but I suggest if one work were to be highlighted as Beethoven's greatest (not a thing I usually concern myself with) then the Solemn Mass is that piece. Beethoven himself promoted the piece as his greatest work."

Oh, I agree with both you and Beethoven!

Sam

[/B][/QUOTE]

[Peter]

Originally posted by Sam van den Berg:
I am doing a little survey about something that I find puzzling. Of all the classical works I know, my passionate favourite for almost 45 years has been Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, yet it seems to be seldom performed and often little known to other music lovers that I have encountered.

Mozart's similarly named work or works seem better known, even though I have never been able to get hold of it/them.

What are your views? Please let me know -- I am beginning to wonder if I belong to some lunatic fringe (well, in most ways I do, but still ...)

Sam van den Berg
svdberg1@absamail.co.za

Well Sam you're probably in good company here! I also share your enthusiasm for this tremendous work.


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'Man know thyself'

[Sorrano]

The Missa Solemnis is not well understood by many of the more casual listeners. And it is such a large scope work that it requires much attention and concentration to listen.

[Amalie]

There is nothing like a live performance of this vast meditation on the awesome majesty of God! I shall be going to a performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in August, come rain, wind or shine.


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~ Courage, so it be righteous, will gain all things ~

[Ateach Asc]

Originally posted by Sam van den Berg:
...Of all the classical works I know, my passionate favourite for almost 45 years has been Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, yet it seems to be seldom performed and often little known to other music lovers that I have encountered.

The Missa Solemnis (Op 123) needs to be approached very patiently and quite intensely before it dawns in its full power.

Most people do not have the patience to do that and therefore remain latched onto the Ode of the 9th because it is so easily swallowed.

But much to my deepest satisfaction, personal persistence with the Missa led to the obvious conclusion that it was a far superior work than the 9th... even though the 9th is by far a much superior work to much of the musical output since then.



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Must it be? It must be!

[Sam van den Berg]

"Must it be?"

Yes, "es muss sein!"

Sam

[Sam van den Berg]

"But much to my deepest satisfaction, personal persistence with the Missa led to the obvious conclusion that it was a far superior work than the 9th... even though the 9th is by far a much superior work to much of the musical output since then."

The sad fact is that the Missa Solemnis belongs to the period of most intense suffering in Beethoven's life, just as his deafness resulted in the greatest innovation in the history of music.

From: Arthritis News Magazine: Volume 9, Number 3 (1991)By Roderick Jamer: "An Incurable Affliction" Beethoven's Twin Genius for Sublime Music - and Suffering:

Dr. Tom Palferman, a rheumatologist at the Yeovil District Hospital in Somerset, England, an amateur cellist and Beethoven enthusiast … startled the separate worlds of music and medicine last year with a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, in which he drew new conclusions about Beethoven’s ills and cause of death. Until now, the most widely held view was that Beethoven, the son of a heavy drinker, was himself a tippler and his death due to cirrhosis of the liver.

Not very likely, Palferman asserts. Palferman went a step further, offering “a single explanation for all the multisystem aspects, including the deafness.” What he suggested in his post mortem diagnosis was that Beethoven suffered from an obscure disorder called sarcoidosis.

“It was really the last 10 years when there were increasing problems, multisystem disorder, increasing pain and joint size, evidence of jaundice, liver disease and the complications one gets from cirrhosis, as they all set in. The last year or two must have been unendurable. He was totally deaf, badly affected with fluid retention, cirrhosis, heart and liver failure, bleeding spontaneously from various orifices, huge distended abdomen from his fluid – it was a ghastly experience.”

Had Beethoven lived today, though, much of his condition might have been treated. “I’m sure of that,” says Palferman. A regimen of corticosteroids “would have been highly effective. I’ve no doubt we could have had a more accurate diagnosis and treated him very successfully, and he would have had a much more comfortable existence.”

Would he have lived to a ripe old age? “He may well have done,” says Palferman, “but whether that would have been a service to mankind I’m not sure.” Palferman, who’s made a study of the “possible relationship between suffering and creativity,” is convinced there’s a case to be made for suffering as a form of inspiration. Beethoven’s most famous symphony, the 9th, with its rousing final chorus on Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” had its first performance only three years before the maestro’s death.

And, as Palferman wrote in his Journal paper last year, “as Beethoven’s decline accelerated during the last year or so, his music became more innovative and profound. Arguably his greatest masterpieces are the five late strong quartets, including the Grosse Fugue which Stravinsky, more than a century later, acknowledged as being ‘eternally contemporary’.”

Possibly Beethoven’s disappointments and struggles against the curse of ill health “resulted in the darker side of his nature: yet maybe those same adversities provoked and released emotions which were translated into the apocalyptic, sublime music left to us. Callous though it might appear, perhaps Beethoven’s increasing wretchedness and misery were ultimately to the benefit of mankind.”

" Muss es sein?" I am more and more troubled, with each listening of his sublime music, by the price that this intensely lonely and physically unattractive man paid for the sake of our enjoyment.

" Muss es sein?" I wonder.

[Amalie]

It was Beethoven's destiny to be a great artist. 'Enjoyment', I think , is a mild word - he was pointing to a transformed humanity and brotherhood of man.
In a letter of 1824, when the Missa Solemnis was finished, he said of it that " my chief aim when I was composing this grand Mass was to awaken and instil enduring religious feelings not only to the singers but also into the listeners".

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~ Courage, so it be righteous, will gain all things ~

[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited 07-02-2005).]

[Rod]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
The Missa Solemnis is not well understood by many of the more casual listeners. And it is such a large scope work that it requires much attention and concentration to listen.

This is true, but the large scale is not enhanced by the many attempts to make it even larger scale by the use of ponderous tempos (as so often is the case with Beethoven music!). From my experience the Credo especially is made a meal of in this respect, certainly in the various 'old-school' recordings I've heard.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[gprengel]

<<Of all the classical works I know, my passionate favourite for almost 45 years has been Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, yet it seems to be seldom performed and often little known to other music lovers>>

I wholeheartly can agree to that. By far it is also my favourite work, but at least here in the area where I live in Germany (Darmstadt/Franfurt) in the last 10 years I could attend 3 great local performances of this gigantic work and always it was very well received.