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Beethoven Mass in C Major, op. 68.
1. Kyrie
Andante con moto assai vivace quasi Allegretto ma non troppo
2. Gloria
Allegro, Andante mosso, Allegro ma non troppo
3. Credo
Allegro con brio, Adagio, Allegro, Vivace
4. Sanctus
Adagio, Allegro
5. Benedictus
Allegretto ma non troppo, Allegro
6. Agnus Dei
Poco Andante, Allegro ma non troppo, Andante con moto, tempo del Kyrie
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings, organ, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists, and chorus.
Duration: approx. 50 minutes
Beethoven composed his Mass in C, opus 86, in 1807, on commission from Prince Nicolaus Esterházy II for the name-day of the prince’s wife. It was his first foray into the oeuvre of the mass. Josef Haydn, Beethoven’s former teacher, had written six such masses for this Esterházy prince, but, at Haydn’s retirement from the service of the Esterházy establishment, the prince sought out other composers to provide celebratory masses. Beethoven was in an highly productive and mature compositional phase–his output for the year preceding the writing of the mass included the three “Razumovsky” string quartets, the “Appassionata” piano sonata, Fourth Symphony, Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Violin Concerto. Nevertheless, he was awed at the prospect of following in his former teacher’s footsteps and he approached the composition of his first mass with hesitancy. He wrote to the prince, “I shall deliver the Mass to you with timidity, since you, Serene Highness, are accustomed to having the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn performed for you.” Beethoven procrastinated and completed the mass just in time to begin rehearsals for the slated performance.
Beset by hearing loss, Beethoven is reputed to have been churlish during rehearsals, and chorus master Johann Hummel, taking advantage of Beethoven’s disability, led a rebellion of the singers: Some of them simply stopped attending rehearsals! Esterhzay had to intervene and insist that all the singers attend the final rehearsal. Beethoven conducted a private performance of the Mass in the church in Eisenstadt on September 13, 1807, attended by Prince and Princess Esterházy. It was, by all accounts, a failure. At a reception afterwards and in the presence of the other musicians, the prince is reputed to have said, “But my dear Beethoven, what is this you have done now?” at whichHummel snickered, according to Beethoven biographer, Anton Schindler. How must Beethoven have felt?
We know that Esterházy subsequently wrote of the mass that the music was “unbearably ridiculous and detestable” and that Beethoven dedicated the work, not to its commissioner, but to Prince Kinksy, one of Beethoven’s patrons. The Mass was heard by a wider public just over a year later when, in December 1808, it was part of a concert of all Beethoven works given at the Theater an der Wien, where it was more successfully received. But it was several years of negotiations before Beethoven was able to get the mass published.
Perhaps some of the unfortunate circumstances of the première, having spilled into history, have tainted and dogged the Mass’s acceptance by music lovers. Certainly, the work has not achieved the same resounding popularity as its big sister, the Misa Solemnis, birthed fifteen years later, or the Ninth Symphony choral movement. But this is a loss for concert audiences because, decidedly, the work is magnificently crafted and inspired, combining classical formal elements with romantic expressivity. Although a sacred work, it leans toward the celebratory and the dramatic.
The music’s structure follows the traditional liturgical sectional delineations. It uses the standard classical orchestra, choir, and four soloists; the solo parts, however, do not stand alone, but are integrated with the choir throughout. The writing contains progressive orchestration, bold harmonic and rhythmic language, and striking textual tone painting. Typically, Beethoven uses the inherited formal classical models and infuses in them a revolutionary, deeply affective musical content. Perhaps it was just more than this Prince Esterhazy could grasp.
The tripartite structure of the Kyrie echoes the ternary text iteration. The C-E-C major tonal structure sets off the central “Christe eleison” cry with more urgency than the surrounding two “Kyrie eleison” sections. The apotheosis comes in the last section’s fortissimo choral appeal for mercy. Beethoven himself refers to the mood of this movement as “heartfelt resignation, whence comes a deep sincerity of religious feeling.” The absence of the more extrovert flutes, trumpets, and timpani in this first movement gives an introspective, dare one suggest mystical, hue. Usually, a composer will provide for the performer a brief tempo and character indication –a word or two. But, at the start of this movement, Beethoven writes: “Andante con moto assai vivace quasi Allegretto ma non troppo” (Walking leisurely, with much motion, lively, as if somewhat fast, but not too much.) Looking beyond the obfuscation, we see a nascent romantic commitment to the expressive–tied to tempo, for sure, but with a deliberate intention to convey character.
The Gloria opens exuberantly, in C major, with the full orchestral forces, the brilliant flutes, trumpets, and timpani on board. Each phrase of the text is uniquely captured and colored in the music and tone painting abounds. In the “laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te” the contract of loud and high and soft and low suggests the supplicants’ appropriate bow while reciting the liturgy. “Gratias agimus” has a contrasting dolce, legato feel. “Deus ominpotens” is powerful and its fortitude is punctuated by timpani and trumpet fanfare. The sobbing “misere nobis” is set in f minor, in triple meter, with catches of breath captured in the tension between the lower strings on the beat and the upper three strings on the backbeats. “Quoniam tu solus” is in sturdy unison and sets up several buoyant fugatos, “Cum sancto spiritu.” Beethoven is a master of the extended cadence and he uses it for protracted “amen”s both here and in the Credo.
The Credo opens with four quick succession, intensifying iterations of “credo.” In this movement, tone painting abounds: “descendit,” “ascendit,” “visibilium” (forte) and “invisibilium” (piano), “Omnia” (iterated over and over) and “et unum” in unison. The mellifluous E flat major Adagio is interrupted by “Crucifixus” shouts in B flat minor. The chromatic, descending, submissive “sub Pontio Pilato” is followed by an hushed “et sepultus est” and agonizing cries of “passus.” “Et resurrexit” fast, G major, ascending calls are punctuated by syncopated “judicare”s. “Unam sanctam” in unison sets up another vivacious fugal setting of “et vitam” and protracted “amen”s.
The Sanctus opening three note motif in the woodwinds, supported by lower strings, is perhaps the most tender moment of the entire mass: in the key of A, it descends, falters, stops, and breathes, before it is repeated a step higher, and then elaborated and finally taken by the choir. Liquid violin lines are punctuated by a piano drum roll, and the “pleni sunt coeli” breaks forth, forte, leaping upward, and triumphant. A first “Osanna” fugato opens piano and grows to a triumphal forte “in excelsis.”
In the F major Benedictus, Beethoven, seeming to smile, almost content, Beethoven masterfully elaborates on the play between soloists and chorus, creating agreement and reinforcement between the two vocal ensembles, with woodwind filigree embroidered over the top of the homophonic texture. The “Osanna” is reprised, this time forte, as if in affirmation.
The Agnus Dei opens in c minor and is the only movement set in compound meter, the inner triple pulsing heard at the opening like a quiet heartbeat, and perhaps symbolic of the holy trinity. Over this, the choir quickly erupts in an anguished “Agnus Dei” cri de coeur of “Agnus Dei.” The penitential plea for mercy, “misere,” is heard. The most dramatic and terrifying moment occurs when the music shifts abruptly from C major to C minor: an upward arpeggiated tremolando in the strings, a timpani roll underneath, and the chorus call out again, “Agnus Dei.” This is quickly followed by shuffling, restless rhythms as “misere” is tossed back and forth from men to women. Heraldic upward leaps of “pacem” dissolve into a breathtaking reprise of the opening Kyrie theme, in which the “dona nobis pacem” text receives its last sublime repose. The work ends in a spirit of hushed, contemplative repose: Awe and wonder, beauty and acceptance linger like a mantle, magnificently spread.
Program notes by Shulamit Hoffmann |
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Ancient Airs and Dances Suite I
Ottorino Respighi
(1879 – 1936)
1.
Balletto
2.
Gagliarda
3.
Villanella
4.
Passo Mezzo e Mascherada
Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, harp, harpsichord, strings,
Duration: approx. 17 minutes
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, conductor, and musicologist and an enthusiastic scholar and editor of Italian music of the 16th-18th centuries. This lifelong interest was first ignited when Respighi was a student at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna. Respighi also spent time in St. Petersburg, Russia, playing principal viola in the Imperial Opera orchestra. While there he studied composition and orchestration briefly with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Respighi returned to Italy, continuing to work as a violinist and violist, and teaching, for a time, at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he also became director. After a few years he relinquished his position to devote himself to composition.
Perhaps his most charming and easily appealing music is contained in three suites of “Ancient Airs and Dances,” his own arrangements of early music. Respighi’s scores are really modern interpretations of earlier composers’ works; he was not a purist in terms of performance practice. In fact, he wrote at least some of his Airs and Dances first for piano and then transcribed them for orchestra. These arrangements beautifully feature the unique character of each orchestral instrument. And Respighi preserves the archaic charm of the original music by retaining the modal basis of the music (modes were used before major and minor became commonplace and they have a remote, folk-like quality). This is elegant, delightful, and enchanting music, easy on the ear, tuneful, and brilliantly hued.
The first set of “Ancient Airs and Dances,” written in 1917, is based on four Renaissance pieces for the lute, a delicate-sounding, pear-shaped, guitar-like, plucked string instrument. The first piece is a balletto by Simone Molinaro (1599): the music moves, just like the dance, in formal steps, dainty and graceful. A piquant first theme is offset by a more lyrical counterpart.
A gagliarda follows; its composer, Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo Galilei. This is an athletic dance, characterized by leaps, jumps, and hops, some quite large, and requiring the dancers to land with one leg ahead of the other. The music moves in leaping intervals. The galliard was a favorite dance of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and although it is quite a vigorous dance, in 1589 when the Queen was in her mid fifties, John Stanhope of the Privy Chamber reported, “the Queen is so well as I assure you, six or seven galliards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary exercise.”
The third piece is the only one of the set that is not a dance: it is based on an anonymous Villanella, a form of lyrical vocal music that originated in Naples. It makes a delightful contrast with the dances on either side of it. The composer requests that the music be performed cantabile (singing), instruments imitating voices, and dolce espressivo e triste (sweetly expressive and sad).
The finale is another anonymous tune, Passo Mezzo e Mascherada. Bursting with the mystery and romance of masqueraders at a Venetian Carnival, the music depicts twirling dancers engaged in intimate fleeting flirtations–hear the playful exchanges between piquant woodwinds and strings, alternately luscious and bustling. The trumpets have waited all through the suite, and here they make their grand entry: the suite ends on a final festive trumpet fanfare.
Program notes by Shulamit Hoffmann |
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