What an immense project this is!  I was gratified to read in an article by New York Times music critic Alex Ross, that a perfect performance of this work is impossible—glad to know that I was not alone in discovering this.  Any performance of late Beethoven must necessarily include in its experience the striving, the sweat, the fatigue, the flawed heroism, the all-too-fragile mortality, as well as the genius, of Beethoven himself—as Ross wrote, only cyber-musicians could get it all right; and then we would miss the very life Beethoven expended in composing this masterwork.  Glenn Gould’s iconic recordings of Bach’s keyboard works would be incomplete without the pianist’s breathing, grunting, and singing, always present in the background as a part of the listeners’ experience; in like manner, the herculean attempts of Beethoven’s performers, sharing in the composer’s own humanity, to scale this mountain, reveal the truth behind Beethoven’s vision– exposing us, with Beethoven, as necessarily less-than-godlike in our striving.

Chicago architect Daniel Hudson Burnham, born nineteen years after Beethoven’s death, wrote, “Make no little plans…aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency…Think big.”  I wonder if Burnham’s vision, which shaped so much of the Chicago we know today, doesn’t have a lot to do with Chicago’s ever-renewed love affair with Beethoven.  Between them, Beethoven and Burnham dominated a century, informing and challenging all who followed them in their respective fields.  Beethoven is in our civic DNA; the very ground rises to meet him, when he walks abroad.  Hate him or love him, he grabs our attention.

The greatest, most profound challenge confronting the performers, is to hear and comprehend the work—to understand Beethoven’s harmonic, rhythmic, rhetorical vocabulary, to feel and be able to predict where he is going next, to sense the whole amongst all the seemingly random, awkward, disconnected details.   Really, they never are random, awkward, or disconnected; but Beethoven’s structure is so enormous, we don’t hear or feel or understand from one end to the other, without agonizing repetition and immersion in his seething cauldron of materials.  Vocal production, intonation, rhythmic clarity, pronunciation– all of these very important aspects of our performance finally hang from one central crosspiece: oneness with Beethoven and his vision.  One can rant, as I often have:  “This guy is an egomaniac!  He requires total conformity, total submission, total sacrifice; who does he think he is: God?” –and I expect that response will always inform at least a portion of my feelings about the man and his music. Finally, though, one has to trust, become what Beethoven wants one to become, and do ones darnedest to be faithful to him.  One can’t wait to sing the performance; and one can’t wait to be free of him, once it is over.

Like Shakespeare, Beethoven fires on every level.  No audience member is left out– he presents challenges, and joys, that can be shared by all.  My eight-year old son has been sitting in on rehearsals, and has memorized much of the “Et vitam venturi” fugue subject—not because he tried, or was required to do so, but because it is a great fugue subject; it is fun, it is clever, it is balanced.  He enjoys whistling it for his friends, tapping any surface within reach to keep his syncopations straight.   The whole experience sends him off into a different world.  In like manner—when the military, “Napoleonic” music interrupts the “Dona nobis pacem” theme of the final movement, causing soloists and chorus to scream out, “Agnus, agnus Dei!” in terror, Joey gets it—Beethoven’s technique is direct, visceral, compelling, immediately perceived by anyone within earshot.    Beethoven is not holed up in some sound-proofed office, with headphones on—he is among us, he shares our life, our joys and fears and pains and aspirations.

Beethoven is one of our greatest composers; he, himself, called Missa Solemnis his greatest work.

By guest blogger Megan Balderston, Chicago Chorale Managing Director

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles

Since it is Valentine’s week, it seems only fitting that I write about love. Perhaps it is not love as defined by the piles of books and stacks of music written on the subject – what does love have to do with Chicago Chorale working on the Beethoven Missa Solemnis? The answer is, everything. My goal today is to give you a little peek into the world of the avocational, amateur singer and tell you why exactly you will love hearing the Beethoven Missa Solemnis performed by our ensemble, and its wonderful counterpart, The Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest & Chorus.

Bruce’s Blog has detailed the incredibly painstaking effort that is going into the artistic production of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis from the perspective of both the conductor and the chorus director. It’s a testament to both Jay Friedman’s and Bruce Tammen’s talents and visions that they believed in both of their ensembles’ abilities to master this Mount Everest of symphonic/choral works that is the Beethoven Missa Solemnis. What both groups have in common is that the performers who spend so much time preparing the work are volunteers.

We all start that way. I look back on my formative years as a singer and musician with great fondness—particularly when I consider my high school choir. Many of us had dreams at that point of having a career in performance, but the reality has turned out differently. We grew up to be, in no particular order, a couple of doctors, a couple of lawyers, a handful of teachers.  We have careers in sales, and in marketing. Of my tight-knit high school choir, though, I know of two or three of us who continued to sing seriously—and we all have “day jobs.”

Maybe we have the basic talent, but not the singular drive required to be professional musicians. Some of us are simply better at other things—things that happen to be more reliably lucrative, perhaps. But most of us who grow up to be musicians, anywhere on the spectrum from amateur to professional, have in our pasts the experience of making music in an ensemble, and know all about its joy and agony. The joy might be self-explanatory, but the agony is about all of the daily work that is required to achieve the goal of singing something well. This definitely comes into play when one is learning an epic masterpiece like the Missa Solemnis. As one of Chorale’s altos said as she took her place at rehearsal last week, “Oh, I can’t wait! And also, I can’t wait until it’s over!”

Chicago Chorale is special, and meets a particular need in the community, both for our singers and our audience. Plenty of community-based, amateur music groups exist. But Chicago Chorale’s unique position was summed up by one of our guest lecturers this way: “In Chicago, there are amateur choirs, and there are professional choirs, and there’s Chicago Chorale.” Our ultimate goal in any concert is to sound as polished or “professional” as possible, and we usually achieve it. Many of our singers grew up in communities of music, and were serious about music in high school and college. Music majors and collegiate musicians in particular are a quirky, loving, and wonderful community. Our singers have performed in renaissance choirs and marching bands, a cappella groups focusing on popular music, and traditional choirs.

With all of the opportunities for formal and informal study of music in high school and college, often you are stranded without a real musical home when leaving university.  And that’s where groups like ours come in—particularly for the serious singer who doesn’t happen to be professional. At Chorale, we have great respect for the word “amateur” which is derived from the Latin word ‘amo,’ or love. We love to sing. But we also love to sing really difficult works that challenge us. (Anyone remember our fall concerts in 2011 that featured works sung in English, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Latin, Hungarian and Estonian? We’re not likely to soon forget that effort either! Here’s what critic Lawrence Johnson said: Review of Northern Light) For us, there is simply so much to learn about and enjoy in the Missa Solemnis that without sincere love and dedication for the craft of choral singing, it would not be possible to learn the work, let alone present it. What also makes Chorale special is its endearing social community that becomes a musical home for the singers. Not only do these people love to sing—they love to sing with each other.

In Missa Solemnis, you will hear the love and dedication of over 200 musicians, from Chorale and from The Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest and its chorus, who have spent the last several months learning the work, and fitting it into their busy lives. Interestingly, Chicago Chorale and SOPRF both boast musicians who are experts in many fields, including music, but who for the most part do not earn their livings as performing musicians. And it’s fascinating that the people who are willing to give up 5-10 hours per week to work on the kind of music we perform—difficult, but beautiful; brainy and challenging—are themselves highly intelligent, driven individuals. One of our tenors related, “The first week, you’re just hanging on for dear life. But we share this determination to master this work. Somehow, by hanging on, and practicing, and being defeated one week, and exhilarated the next, we get through. We achieve more than we thought possible.” Indeed, Bruce Tammen described the type of singer we have in this way: “These people are used to success in their lives—the students, the professionals—and it simply doesn’t occur to them that they will be anything but successful in this work.”

Singing is one of the most intensely personal forms of music. You are the instrument, and cannot hide behind your equipment. If something goes wrong, it is your body or your brain that is failing you, and if something goes well, you have simply done your job.  With this risk, there comes an incredible reward. As a listener, there is little that is more powerful than hearing a well-trained choir singing as one person.  And for that to happen, the individual voices must check their egos at the door; they must strive to sing as one; they must do their homework, show up for rehearsals, and humbly bear the thousand indignities and defeats along the way.  That is why it is amazing to see this group of very distinct individuals come together to perform, particularly knowing that all have multiple demands on their personal and professional lives.

When you come to the Missa Solemnis you will see all of this, and you will, I hope, understand that it is ultimately love that brings the whole work together and helps these amateur groups to achieve a memorable and intense musical evening.

Being the conductor of this upcoming performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is a great honor and a great responsibility as well. Besides preparing the orchestra I have the responsibility of preparing the soloists. Luckily we have choral director Bruce Tammen and the wonderful Chicago Chorale as well as our own symphony chorus, Bill Chin, chorus master, to fulfill Beethoven’s demanding choral writing. Beethoven’s writing for voices has long been viewed as some of the most difficult in the repertory. He seems to have viewed the human voice as an orchestral type instrument, capable of the facility of a violin or flute. He seemed to have no reservations about writing long, high exhausting, passages for soprano and alto voices, as well as the men. The fugues in the Missa Solemnis are especially taxing and have long been thought to be the most difficult to sing. As fiercely difficult as many tutti passages are for the chorus there are moments of great beauty and expression. It’s as if Beethoven had a vision of setting the Mass to music with no thought of sparing the performers any practical considerations toward that goal.

We deal with two separate but overlapping aspects of this debt question:  contributions to Beethoven’s overall compositional style and voice, and specific contributions to the Missa Solemnis, reflecting the composer’s concept of what the work should be, and represent.  The former issue is huge, and beyond my analytical powers to describe; the latter, however, is curiously present for us, throughout our study of the work.

In 1814, writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote an essay, published in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, entitled “Alte und neue Kirchenmusik,” in which he decries the steady decline in the quality and dignity of church music since the baroque period.  The only two works he values are Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem (Bach’s B Minor Mass was not even published until 1818, and few people knew of it); contemporary composers, he feels, write in far too theatrical a style, when they write church music at all.  He ignores Beethoven’s earlier Mass in C altogether. Twentieth century writer Carl Dahlhaus suggests that Beethoven’s Missa was composed against the background of this essay, and that Beethoven, ever a fierce competitor, saw an opening here in which to produce something that would draw Hoffmann’s attention and praise.  He wrote as early as 1809 that “in the old church modes the devotion is divine…and God permit me to express it someday;” we know, through remarks in his conversation books and letters, that, having determined to compose the Missa, he set about systematically studying the religious music of earlier periods, from the time of Gregorian chant, through Palestrina, Handel, and Mozart– all composers whom he greatly esteemed– and that his musical language throughout the Missa often hearkens back to such “old-fashioned” procedures and archaisms as chant, modal harmonies, recitative, fugues, and plagal cadences.  Just prior to beginning work on the Missa, he wrote “In order to write true church music go through all the ecclesiastical chants of the monks etc.  Also look there for the stanzas in the most correct translations along with the most perfect prosody of all the Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns in general.”  The resulting Missa is a combination of modern and archaic styles, more deeply connected to older traditions than any other work Beethoven composed.  In the hands of a lesser composer, it would be a pastiche; but Beethoven never simply co-opts procedures and styles from earlier composers or musical forms; he completely absorbs what he co-opts, and synthesizes a statement that is wholly his own.  Performing the Missa, one seldom stops to scratch ones head and say, “Aha!  I know where he got this!” It all sounds like Beethoven, but Beethoven enriched.

As a boy, Beethoven studied and performed published keyboard works of J.S. Bach.  We have no record of his expressing great affection for Bach (in comparison to his effusive, public admiration of Handel), but, in his own way, he absorbed Bach’s commitment to counterpoint, if not his ease and gracefulness with it.  He later studied counterpoint with Haydn, who did acknowledge his debt to Bach, and he seems to have absorbed, second hand, much of what Haydn learned from studying Bach.  Beethoven’s first mass had no fugues, and he was criticized for this by the very man for whom he composed the Missa; he made up for this in the Missa Solemnis, which contains two, in both the Gloria and Credo movements.  Neither fugue sounds anything like Bach; but each contains procedures Bach perfected, worked out in excruciating detail.  For many, Bach’s music typifies German church music of the 18^th century; and to the extent to which this is true, Beethoven perhaps grudgingly acknowledges his debt to Bach, and to that tradition.  Clearly though, his greatest admiration and loyalty is reserved for the music of Handel and Haydn, and particularly for their best-known major works, Messiah and The Creation, each of which seems to lurk just below the surface of the Missa Solemnis. Bars 216-240 of the Beethoven’s Agnus Dei movement are linked by many writers to the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah, which Beethoven is known to have particularly admired; Beethoven’s sketchbooks do not suggest that he knowingly quoted this passage, though the music corresponds closely to Handel’s passage “And He shall reign forever and ever.”  Similarly, the Präludium, the instrumental passage beginning at bar 79 of Beethoven’s Sanctus/Benedictus movement, with its improvisatory character and lack of tonal center, recalls the “Representation of chaos” with which Haydn’s Creation commences.

Beethoven ends his Missa in a manner totally his own, without reference to anything preceding him.  Instead of a triumphant, Handelian assertion of the rightness of the cosmos, he ends a grand, 75-minute “Divine Heroic Symphony” (Paul Bekker) on what feels like a quiet question mark.  As Maynard Solomon concludes in his magisterial biography, “one wonders whether Beethoven indeed felt that he, or humanity, would win the prize of life everlasting.”  No antecedent existed for that sort of doubt;  here, Beethoven ventures into uncharted territory, pointing the way for those who followed him.

“My name is Adrienne Bertsche, and I am currently a senior at Whitney Young High School in Chicago. It has been exciting for me to sing with the ChicagoChorale for the last two seasons, where I have learned some wonderful choral repertoire, increased my depth of knowledge about music, and developed my understanding of what it means to be a singer in the contexts of different eras, works, and composers. Singing in Chorale has also helped to develop my sight-reading, technical proficiency, and language pronunciation. My experience in Chorale has nurtured my passion for music to the point where I am now applying and auditioning at a number of conservatories, and looking to continue my vocal studies as a performance major. “

“My name is Maggie Blackburn and I am a senior at Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox. I sing in my school choir, church choir, University of Saint Francis Singing Saints Choir, and now sing with the Chicago Chorale for this production. I plan on pursuing a degree in vocal performance and cannot wait to see where that takes me. Singing with the Chicago Chorale is a wonderful opportunity for me to grow as a singer and performer, and also gives me a chance to get a feel for how my career might be. I am extremely excited for the opportunity to participate in this production of Missa Solemnis and hope to sing with the Chicago Chorale again in the future.”

“Hello, my name is Sasha Lilovich and I am a sophomore at Crown Point High School. I’ve enjoyed music since I was small, and began music lessons at around the age of nine. I’ve since begun classical voice studies with Brenda Roberts, and had the opportunity to sing with the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra. I was a member of Northwest Indiana Childrens Choir for five years. I also was able to receive gold status each of the four years I competed in ISSMA. I’ve used my talents in singing at benefits raising funds for various charities such as the St. Jude battered Women’s Shelter and the Northwest Indiana Food Pantry. Right now I’m in my school’s concert choir and take lessons with Brenda. I hope that my time with Chorale will help me improve my sight reading, as well as be a pleasant experience. As for my future, that’s a mystery even to myself. Although I’d love a career in music, I also want a steady income. Nonetheless I still plan to, at the very least, double major with music when the time comes.”

My name is Elijah Smith and I am currently a junior at ChiArts High School, studying classical voice. I plan to go to college for and make a career out of classical singing, and Chicago Chorale will help me prepare for what lies ahead. Outside of the Chicago Chorale, I perform with my high school, ChiArts at many events around Chicago. I chose to audition for the Chorale in hopes of gaining musical and professional experience in the music world. Not only does it help me with the actual singing part of classical voice, it helps me learn more about music theory and the actual rehearsal life of being in a choir. I hope to continue singing with Chicago Chorale in the events to come.”

Each singer has as “mentor” a regular member of Chorale, who makes them feel at home and helps to interpret Chorale’s culture for them. We are exploring ideas about specific programs and opportunities we might institute in the future; mostly, though, these young singers have had to jump right in and do the work that adult singers do, and experience the learning of this very difficult music just as the adults do.  So far, things are going very well; we plan to continue with, and expand, this program in the future.

Good Advices for All Conductors (by Robert L. Shaw)

1. Love your singers.

2. Love humanity.

3. Insist on personal and musical integrity.

4. Study your music until you know it as well as the composer.

5. Study your music again and again until you know it as well as the composer.

6. Strive to perfect the technique of music so that the heart of the music may shine through.

7. Love your family.

8. Spend time with your family.

9. Maintain your sense of humor

In its original form, this list is presented in faux-gothic script, centered on the page—like Charlton Heston’s ten commandments.  Mr. Shaw always maintained his sense of humor. I would like to add a couple more, from my own experience (it’s my blog, after all):

10. Pay attention to what your colleagues are doing.

11. Keep up your instrument.

12. Get outside.

Now for Lutheran catechetical exegesis:

1. & 2. These can be pretty tough.  He also said (though apparently did not commit to print) that a nice person could never be a good choral conductor.  Mr. Shaw could be pretty rough on his singers, and so can the rest of us.   On the one hand—where would we be, without them?  They are our voice, and the voice of that humanity he advises us to love.  Their physical, intellectual, and emotional gifts transform dots, lines, and circles into Bach and Beethoven.  They show up rehearsal after rehearsal, put up with our inadequacies, sing their hearts out, and thank us when it is all over.  They also will take advantage of any nuanced understanding we demonstrate regarding their personal situations, and push us to the edge regarding their special needs and desires.  They will expect to be favored, complain that they are ill-treated and misunderstood, and be unable to sing week after week because of a cold.  But Mr. Shaw is right—if our honest, heartfelt love for them does not triumph, if we cannot keep our appreciation, admiration, and gratitude ever before us, but instead let frustration, fatigue, and impatience get the better of us, if we cannot rescue our hearts from the abyss of disappointment, we will lose them —  and then it is time to look for a new profession.  Easier I think to “love humanity”—I am an Aquarius, and we are pretty happy to contemplate the glory of the human race and its endeavors; we are not so good with the nitty gritty.  Mr. Shaw’s number one really speaks to me.

3. I’m not quite sure if we are to insist on our OWN integrity here, or on that of our singers.  Mr. Shaw was a competitive, ambitious man—I can imagine him advising himself to behave.  But I do know that he demanded the same of his singers– if we were caught “cheating” in some sense, we lost his respect—even if that cheating was an expression of fearfulness or inadequacy.  He was hard on us, and he was hard on himself.    One thing I am sure of—a conductor must never demand of his singers, what he does not demand of himself.

4. & 5. There is no quicker way to derail a rehearsal, than to show up unprepared. It is not OK to think, Oh well, the singers are just starting to learn this, the concert is weeks away, I have time.   If one insists on programming first-rate repertoire, one had better work hard to learn it—and work hard at ones presentation of it.  Mr. Shaw was not a facile musician—he did not have a lot of formal training, and he had to work very, very hard to learn scores.  And he always did.  His score preparation and musical discipline were incredible examples of how to do things right.

6. Musicians like to ”feel” things– technical work and preparation can feel tedious, contrived, lacking in spontaneity; it can seem to destroy the soul of the music, whatever that may be.  Or so I thought back when I was eighteen and beginning my serious study of music.  I have had wonderful teachers; I have had the undeserved good fortune to recognize and stay away from charlatans.  All those wonderful teachers stressed, ad infinitum, the need for objectivity, clarity, patience, repetition, and open-eyed self-criticism in learning this craft.  They rarely talked about talent; they talked about putting one note in front of the other.  I have sung under many, many conductors who did not really understand the nuts and bolts of their craft, did not know how to solve problems—so when I began singing with Mr. Shaw, I wanted to jump for joy, both because of his demands, and because he knew how to help us meet those demands.  He did not always have a clear sense of style or period, and occasionally he drilled awkwardness into us, rather than out of us; but his principles were always sound.

7. & 8. I think Mr. Shaw learned the value of family the hard way.  But he learned it, and it sustained him powerfully, to the close of his remarkably long career.  Plenty of conductors do not have families, in the conventional understanding of the term, and this may be prudent, given the requirements of career.  I think one must broaden the understanding of family implied here—family can take many forms.  Whatever that form, it should be expressive of such elements as mutual loyalty, dependability, longevity, support, nurturing– ones craft and art are not diminished, sucked dry, by this interconnectedness and dependency, but rather fed and nourished by them.

9. I remember Mr. Shaw running really intense, demanding rehearsals, chewing us out, yelling at individuals, accusing us, the whole gamut of questionable personal behaviors of which he has accurately been accused– and then he would tell a joke or a story, and the whole atmosphere would change, lighten up, and he had us again.  Our acceptance and forgiveness of his harshness and his demands were essential to our relationship with him — we knew he was as flawed as we were, we saw ourselves in him; and his often corny, self-deprecating humor and quick wit felt like a sharing of himself.  He knew he was nuts; we were glad he knew it, and quick to defend him. l have experienced other, humorless, unforgiving conductors who asked somewhat less than Mr. Shaw, yet really angered me because of the wall they maintained between themselves and their groups.  They probably did not intend to do this, but didn’t trust us sufficiently to be one with us when we needed it.  When I find myself erecting this same wall, I understand them better—but wish I didn’t do it, wish I had a lighter soul.

10. I think it is very important to attend concerts, even rehearsals, of my colleagues, listen to their CDs, look at their programs, check out their websites.  Good bad or indifferent, they all have something, and know something, of which I am unaware; they all have something to teach me.  I am very happy to steal from them, and happy to give them credit.

11. We have all these singers at our disposal; we (and the composers) ask a great deal of them. We are critical and accusing when they cannot produce, and impatient when they don’t respond as we expect them to.  If we keep continue singing or playing, ourselves, we will not so easily lose sight of the issues which they confront while they work for us, and we will have firsthand information about how they can more closely satisfy our requirements.   I think it especially important that we get on the other side of the podium every once in a while—even regularly, if time and energy permit; remind ourselves of what it feels like to be conducted, to be criticized, to be trying to adjust to those around us while reading new music.  Singers—instrumentalists, too, I am sure—confront so many problems, so many variables, in practicing their craft; a good choral singer multitasks on the highest level, and part of his task is trying to follow and get along with us, who conduct them.  It is good as well to experience for ourselves the visceral and spiritual joy of singing — good to remember why our singers want to be present.

12. The world has changed drastically in the past 100 years.  Our crowding, our technology, our speed of travel, our mobility—these things have completely changed the way people live.  We know that Beethoven and Brahms loved their walks in the woods, their long summer vacations in rural retreats; I think we can assume that their experience was not that hard to come by.  What we don’t seem to realize is that their art was largely shaped by their perception of the natural world around them, a world they could hardly escape, even of they wanted to.  Today, we can escape it very easily — and most of us do.  We live at some distance from it, and perceive it second-hand.  I find that I am most enthused/inspired/enthralled, as well as most clear-headed, when I take the time for daily walks along the lake, through the parks, watching the birds, the clouds, focusing my eyes on the distance this affords me.  I have no doubt that it is this love of nature, which, more than anything else, transforms the notes I read in the score, into the shapes and emotions I find and express in musical performance.  It is good for my health, and it makes me a better musician and communicator.  Many of my colleagues say the same thing about their own experience.  But one must make a conscious effort to set aside time and organize ones life in order to enable this.

The basic text and function of the Roman Catholic mass originated in the very early church.  This early development included the division of the text into an unvarying portion, called the “Ordinary,” and a portion appropriate to given days and festivals in the cyclical church year, called the “Propers.”  Originally chanted in unison (think Gregorian chant), the presentation of the mass text became increasingly elaborate; by the late Medieval period, and forward through the Renaissance, it had developed into the single most important musical form available to composers, inspiring their imagination, ingenuity, and creativity.

Most Mass settings include only the five parts which constitute the Ordinary—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Santus/Benedictus, and Agnus Dei– which are fixed, presenting the same texts each time mass is celebrated.  The term Missa Solemnis refers, technically, to a musical setting of all parts of the mass (except the readings)—the Ordinary and the Propers.  Because the Propers are specific to each day in the liturgical calendar, a true Missa Solemnis could be performed only once a year.  Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis comprises only the five Ordinary portions.  So why does he title it Missa Solemnis?

By the latter part of the eighteenth century, the term had come to stand for any mass setting which was particularly elaborate, or longer than average; Beethoven’s title is best understood in this sense of the term.  It can last anywhere from 71 minutes (John Elliott Gardner) to 83 minutes (Herbert von Karajan)– too long, practically speaking, for liturgical performance;  it utilizes  a very large orchestra (by the standards of the early nineteenth century) and chorus, as well as soloists; and it features expressive language and devices which would overwhelm a worship service, even if it were not so long.

Beethoven was raised a Roman Catholic.  His grandfather was kapellmeister and bass singer at the electoral court in Bonn; his father was a court tenor.  As a child, growing up in this environment, Beethoven would naturally have assumed that he would one day hold a kapellmeister position himself, and compose music for the church.  Things did not work out that way for him; and as an adult he was not a regular church-goer, and was fundamentally opposed to a social order in which ordinary people were expected to defer to any sort of higher authority, including ecclesiastical authority.  He composed very little sacred music—and the two works preceding Missa Solemnis, Christ on the Mount of Olives and Mass in C, lack the weight and importance of other of Beethoven’s works which are contemporaneous with them, such as the Eroica and Pastorale Symphonies.  He did not actively oppose the Church, or Christianity in general; he just was not very interested, at least through most of his life.  Commentators suggest that he experienced a spiritual crisis around 1819—that he finally needed to come to terms with God and with his spiritual life, which he had largely put to the side, up to that point.  German music critic Paul Bekker wrote:

“Beethoven’s new material was the poetry of transcendental idealism.  He abandons such symbols from the visible world as he had used in the Eroica and succeeding works, and turns toward the invisible, the divine…the Mass became the second great turning-point of his art, as the Eroica had been the first.  The third symphony embodies the ‘poetic idea’ to which Beethoven was groping in preceding works; the Mass presents the same idea, transfigured and spiritualised.  Freedom, personal, social and ethical, is consecrated and raised to heights where every activity, even of an apparently earthly kind, is flooded with unearthly light.”

Beethoven began composing the Missa in the spring of 1819, upon learning that one of his most important patrons and students, Rudolph, Archduke of Austria, was to be made Archbishop of Olmütz, in Moravia.  Rudolph was one of the most generous and reliable of Beethoven’s patrons during the final twenty years of his life, and the composer dedicated many major works to him.  He told Rudolph of his planned presentation in a letter of June, 1819, and hoped that the mass would be performed during the installation ceremony.   The work grew to be larger and more complicated than he had anticipated, however, and he missed the date of the installation (March 9, 1820) by more than three years!  There seems little doubt, however, that his friendship and regard for the Archduke were sincere, and that, whatever else he hoped to gain, he intended the work as a gift of heartfelt appreciation; his inscription at the head of the score:  “von Herzen—möge es wieder—zu Herzen gehn!” (May it go from the heart to the heart!) seems to apply to his relationship with the archduke, as well as to his audience.  There is some indication, as well, that Beethoven hoped, even expected, to become the Archbishop’s kapelleister, though this expectation was never fulfilled.

Romain Rolland wrote that Beethoven had “a great need to commune with the Lamb, with the God of love and compassion,” but the Missa Solemnis “overflows the church by its spirit and its dimensions.” Beethoven’s personal regard for Rudolph did not lead him to exercise any sort of submission to the Catholic Church as a whole.  The work is not a good fit for either church or concert hall; Beethoven himself, on several occasions, called it “a grand oratorio,” and its first full performance, in St. Petersburg, was as an oratorio, rather than as a vehicle for worship.  He presented the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei in May, 1824, in Vienna’s Kärntnertor Theatre, under the title “Three Grand Hymns with Solo and Chorus Voices.”  And he offered to provide the Bonn publisher Nikolaus Simrock with a German-language version, to facilitate performance in Protestant communities.

But these various particulars do not diminish the religious significance of the work.  Beethoven later wrote, “My chief aim was to awaken and permanently instill religious feelings not only into the singers but also into the listeners;” and in a letter to Archduke Rudolph, he wrote, “There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals and by means of that contact to spread the rays of the Godhead through the human race.”  He seems to stress, here, a special, personal (read, Protestant) relationship with God, as opposed to the hierarchical relationship so important in Catholic polity and theology.

Beethoven clearly intended to make money off the work, as well, and was not above manipulating the market for maximum profit.  William Drabkin writes, “The steps [Beethoven] took to sell the work are likewise exceedingly complex, and they do not reveal the composer in the best light as a human being.”  Already in 1820, years before the Missa was completed, he reached an agreement with Simrock for the publishing rights, and was paid a generous advance.  Two years later, when the work was completely sketched out, Beethoven secretly agreed to sell it to C.F. Peters, in Leipzig, for a higher fee yet.  And as completion of the work approached, he entered into negotiations with Artaria and Diabelli in Vienna, Schlesinger in Berlin, H.A. Probst in Leipzig, and B. Schott’s Sons in Mainz.  Finally, in 1825, he agreed to give it to Schott, presumably for the highest bid.  Simultaneously, Beethoven sent invitations to important personages to subscribe to hand-written copies of the Missa; ten copies were made and sent out in response, in 1823.    (As one can imagine, so complicated a publication and distribution history, along with the fact that proofreading and publication coincided with Beethoven’s final illness and death in 1827, contributed to a number of textual problems which have never been resolved.

This, then, is the background upon which the performers build their performance.

The Missa is reputed, among singers– soloists and choristers alike– to be the most difficult major work in the standard repertoire.  Beethoven expects his singers to sing for long periods of time at the extremes of their capacity– very high and very low, very loud and very soft, very fast and very slow.  He seeks always to extend the expressive possibilities in music– and rarely lets singers feel comfortable.  Palestrina, Handel, and Mozart are far easier on the voice and the intellect, and more gracious to sing—these composers seem to know and like the human voice, as well as the expressive and intellectual capacities of singers, and always make allowances for difficulties performers might encounter; singing their music, even their choral music, is almost like singing vocalises chosen by good teachers, to help maximize ones potential for tonal beauty and efficiency, as well as give one the framework for heartfelt expressiveness, free of the anxiety which is likely to make singers “clutch.” Even at their most dramatic, these composers prepare their crescendos and decrescendos, provide lots of support in the orchestra for difficult pitch changes and high notes, and never leave singers at their fatiguing extremes for very long.

Beethoven, on the other hand, is likely to leave a singer, or singers, on a high note for several measures in a row, at a continuous forte or fortissimo, and then suddenly require a pianissimo in another range entirely, arrived at by an awkward leap reflective of an unexpected harmonic modulation, with no doubling in the orchestra.  Not content to establish and then maintain a single tempo for the duration of a particular line of text and its musical setting, Beethoven, in the “Et vitam venturi, Amen” fugue of the Credo (bars 306-472), requires three:  Allegretto, Allegro, and Grave—and at the Grave (the slowest tempo in the entire Missa, up to this point), the choral voices sing at the highest extremes of their vocal ranges, at a forte volume level, with no fewer than seven sforzando accents in the course of five measures.   This, immediately after 126 measures of very demanding fugal coloratura.

Beethoven presents his performers with challenges that are physical, aural, and philosophical– his works are difficult to imagine and encompass, from beginning to end, and singers who are not accustomed to singing them have a hard time just getting up the nerve to dive into them with any confidence.  As one would expect, Chorale’s singers are not particularly cowed by the metaphysical content of the work– they are highly educated people, accustomed to grappling with difficult intellectual problems, and their relative success in the demanding professions they have chosen gives them confidence in confronting new and otherwise daunting challenges.  The response of individuals with whom I spoke, after our first rehearsal on the work, two weeks ago, was upbeat, excited, even cocky; I did not hear much fear or dread in their voices.  As time goes on, though, they will come to realize, on the most visceral level, that Beethoven demands far more than metaphysical understanding and appreciation–  he requires muscle, sinew, blood, and tears.

Chorale is up to eighty-five singers for this program—at least twenty-five more than we usually have.  We will be joined by forty singers from the chorus sponsored by the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, prepared by their regular chorus master, Bill Chin, for a final ensemble of 125– a good size for this work, one that will balance the orchestra, and sound good in Symphony Center, where we will perform it.  We are somewhat crowded in our rehearsal hall, Hyde Park Union Church, but have been experimenting with seating arrangements, and are approaching a workable solution.  Enthusiasm, and the recognition that we are performing a fantastic program, will go a long ways toward easing our discomfort.

Missa Solemnis is not often performed, despite its position, along with J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor, as one of the two greatest settings of the Mass ordinary.  I suspect this is more because it is so very difficult to mount, rather than because audiences are uncomfortable with it.  Performances in which I have participated have never failed to elicit an over the top response from the audience.  We are thrilled to present it, and thrilled to have such able partners in this venture, in the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, under the baton of Jay Friedman.  We have many weeks of hard work ahead of us (the concert is March 5), and and even then we will depend upon the peculiar spirit of Beethoven to carry us over the top.

But we do not ignore the season altogether.  Each Advent, a subset of Chorale’s membership participates in an Advent Vespers liturgy at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.  Far from being a “holiday celebration,” the vespers liturgy is a living, cyclical aspect of monastic life, and features concerted music at those points for which it was originally composed, rather than as “concert music.”  At Holy Cross, both monks and choir sing in a mixture of Latin and English, and the repertoire ranges from Gregorian psalm tones to complex, highly sophisticated choral polyphony.  This year’s repertoire includes service music and motets by Victoria, Byrd, and Palestrina, all composers active at the close of the sixteenth century.  At several points during the service, Chorale and the monks will sing antiphonally, taking alternating verses of the psalmody and the Magnificat.

Monastery of the Holy Cross

The event bears little resemblance to Advent and Christmas commemorations one is likely to find elsewhere in our area.  Far from feeding the listeners’ desire for excitement, comfort, or nostalgia, the liturgical framework, the music, and the chapel building itself (one of the best acoustic spaces in the region) inspire reflection, soul-searching, and a sense of timeless peace—the moment one enters the chapel, one becomes a participant in something older and more sacred even than Christianity itself:  the mystery of the numinous, in sharp juxtaposition to our daily cares and concerns.  The monks enter quietly, each at his own pace and in his own way, yet all of them similar in their lack of hurry, lack of concern, lack of tension; those who come to listen and participate from the pews, as well, seem to leave off their hustle and bustle as they enter the space, and sit quietly, without impatience, as the liturgy unfolds.  We musicians learn our music in advance, with appropriate tension, fear of failure, concern for correctness and stylistic appropriateness–   then we, too, succumb to the ritual of the liturgy, the unfolding of the event, as one rarely does when singing for an “audience.”

People do not beat down the doors to attend this Vespers; there are no posters, no advance ticket sales, no reservations, no ushers to seat you.  The monks, and Chorale, have enough of a following that the chapel is comfortably occupied—but even this doesn’t seem to matter:  the glory of this music, sounding as an integral part of this liturgy, at this particular season, has beauty and purpose and life on its own.  One senses that the world changes, is quietly shocked into a better place, through this “incarnation,” this focusing of our gifts during this ritual, whether anyone hears it or not.   I personally find myself upheld in profound, quiet beauty , supported and nourished by the totality of the experience–  I am sorry to leave the building afterward, to reenter Advent and Christmas and the business of music as we know it;  I linger until the monks finally nudge me out the door, telling me they have to be up and functioning early the next morning and need their sleep.

I tend not to invite friends to this event.  I fear the austerity and simplicity will disappoint them, and that their disappointment will stand between them and the experience itself.  I expect that people who know what they are in for, will come, and that that is enough.  Then, each year, after it is over, I am sorry I did not let people know– so, consider yourselves invited.  Sunday, December 4, 5 p.m., Monastery of the Holy Cross, 31^st and Aberdeen on Chicago’s South Side.

Add the Chicago Chorale, now in its 11th season, to the roster of local ensembles that deserve to be much better known. Led by artistic director Bruce Tammen, the ensemble presented “Northern Light,” a concert of 20th-century Scandinavian and Baltic sacred music Friday night at Hyde Park Union Church that for stylistic variety, polished vocalism, and depth of expression was a success across the board. (The program repeats 8 p.m. tonight at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Lincoln Park and should not be missed.)