Missa solemnis premiere: First rites, The

Musical Times, Autumn 1998 by Jones, David Wyn

Beethoven habitually referred to the Missa solemnis as his greatest work. The initial stimulus of writing a work for the enthronement of Archduke Rudolph had been forgotten as the composer immersed himself in its composition. After four years he produced a work that simultaneously drew on tradition and stood foursquare apart from it - of its time and timeless. It would seem that Franz Xaver Gebauer and his Concerts Spirituels played a small but important part in this process.

Following Gebauer's death in December 1822 there was a break of over a year in the activities of the Concerts Spirituels, precisely the period when Beethoven might have welcomed one or more practice concerts of the Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei. When the concerts were reactivated in 1824 under Piringer's sole direction they continued to feature Beethoven's music, including symphonies, overtures, movements from the Mass in C and Christus am Oelberge.14 In 1827 the Concerts Spirituels returned to the first two movements of the Missa solemnis, performing the Gloria on 1 March and the Kyrie on 5 April, the latter only ten days after Beethoven's death.

Notes

1. [Wiener] Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung V (1821), col.706, transcribed as fig.l overleaf. 2. Eduard Hanslick: Geschichte des Concertswesens in Wien (Vienna, 1869) vol.l, pp.185-90; this survey gives details of programmes for the first two seasons only.

3. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte I (Leipzig, 1972), pp.342-43. 4. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte 2 (Leipzig, 1976), p.107.

5. Ibid., pp.21S19. 6. Sieghard Brandenburg, ed.: Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe (Munich, 1996) vol.4, p.407. 7. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte 2, p.87, p.130, p.204.

8. For a convenient summary see William Drabkin, Beethoven: Missa solemnis (Cambridge, 1991), pp.ll-17, especially the table `Principal manuscript sources for the Missa solemnis' on pp.l2-13.

9. See Ludwig van Beethoven: Missa solemnis op.l23: Kyrie, facsimile of the autograph score, with an accompanying booklet by Wilhelm Virneisel (Tutzing, 1965). Joel Lester's fascinating assessment of this autograph needs to be reconsidered in the light of Gebauer's likely performance; the 'Christe' section, in particular, may have been heavily revised after the performance. `Revisions in the Autograph of the Missa Solemnis Kyrie', in Journal of the American Musicological Society 23 (1970), pp.420-38.

10. Tomislav Malek & Jaroslav Macek: `Beethoven's rehearsals at the Lobkowitz's', in The Musical Times 127 (1986), pp.75-80. Elliot Forbes, rev. and ed.: Thayer's life of Beethoven (Princeton, 1967), pp.416-17. 11. David Wyn Jones: Beethoven: Pastoral Symphony (Cambridge, 1995),p.41. 12. Sieghard Brandenburg:

op. cit. vol.2, p.342. 13. Osterreichischer Beobachter (18 October 1821), p.1322.

14. Programmes from 1824 onwards are given in Martha Handlos: Studien zum Wiener Konzertleben im Vorm*rz (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1985), pp.173-77.

David Wyn Jones's The life of Beethoven is published in November by Cambridge University Press