Beethoven said that “Missa Solemnis”, his last setting of the Latin Mass, was his greatest work. I don’t know what that means. It doesn’t have the refinement or the unity of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It also doesn’t have the variety of styles, like we see in the older Master’s B Minor Mass. What the Missa Solemnis does offer is power, and between thudding redundancies and musical experiments that fail, glimpses of another world. These glimpses are so rarefied, and so exalted.
When I say parts of the piece are redundant, or that not every musical gesture “works”, I’m really saying that Beethoven had a high vision, and he wasn’t willing to compromise with it to make pretty music. He stayed true to that vision, even if I wish he had written a work on a smaller scale, and kept only the best ideas.
But hey! This is late Beethoven we’re talking about. Even the most crashing cliches in the Missa Solemnis somehow reflect Beethoven’s genius that lifts them to another plane. Take my least favorite feature of the Missa Solemnis- the extended violin solo in the Sanctus. It express pat, conventional religiosity. Beethoven was not a conventionally religious man. Therefore, when he writes overtly religious music, and the violin tune sounds based on an old hymn, it sounds a little strained. But when you hear it in the context of the piece, it sounds like the singers are basically oblivious to the violin line. But then, they wake up, and they interpret the melody sung by the violin in their own way, and then the orchestra comes in at the end with slow, ponderous steps, and I feel the presence of a great universal soul. I think the violin tune is Beethoven’s gracious encomium to religion, and its important role in offering some kind of supernatural hope. Beethoven found God in nature, I think, but he offers his dutiful service to those who must have the Church to see God.
Riccardo Muti conducted the Missa Solemnis here in Chicago last year. He said in the program notes that he’s wanted his whole career to conduct the Missa Solemnis, but he waited until he turned eighty-four, and about to lay down the baton forever, to actually take it up. He also said that no performance can embrace every aspect of the Missa Solemnis. It is too vast. He said that he tries to embody the beauty of the piece.
And Muti was right! Toscanini, in his 1935 radio recording, knocked it out of the ballpark with a deeply introspective reading. Toscanini was obviously a spiritual seeker. I didn’t hear that kind of spirituality in Muti’s rendition. Rather, I heard pure sound, beauty for beauty’s sake. I also noticed he made each strand of the piece clear and discrete for my ear, I could almost see each of the fibers that go into the composition. He made sure I could hear everything, layer after layer, that makes Missa Solemnis so unique, and so satisfying. Muti made the piece his own. I’m happy he chose the highest mountain for last. And I was there. One of my customers had to go out of town, so she gave me her tickets!
What a thrill that was!
