Study Guides
Missa Solemnis Study Guide
We are thrilled to once again offer a pre-concert Study Guide for our upcoming concert of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, on March 5th.
Each Study Guide, complete with listening excerpts, questions and commentary, is designed to help guide a group discussion, almost like a book club.
We would be delighted if you would invite your friends and family to join in a pre-concert potluck in your home. Allow about one hour to follow this study guide. You will need a CD player to play several short audio clips. Groups of six to ten are ideal. You and your guests will learn about one of the significant works in the Western choral tradition.
Although the materials are tailored to group discussion, you are more than welcome to follow along with the listening guide and questions on your own or in a small group of two or three.
We are excited to be expanding the ways we connect with our community through this initiative. If you find that opening your homes and hosting a pre-concert study group helps enrich your concert experience, deepen your relationships or recruit new audience members, then please let us know. We deeply appreciate your continued patronage and support of Chicago Chorale!
You can download the Missa Solemnis Study Guide as a zip file by clicking here.
If you are interested in hosting a study group and have questions or would like advice on how to do so, please email Bill Bennett for more information and ideas.
Missa Solemnis Top Ten Moments to Listen For
In addition to the seven questions and commentary from Bruce, we introduced a new element in this year’s study guide: the “top ten moments to listen for” complete with short mp3 excerpts. You can click through a few examples right here on our website, and if you are interested in seeing more, simply click here to download the Missa Solemnis Study Guide.
Press Play to start. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through the ten tracks
1.) Very opening of work, through measure 6.
This is called the germinal motive, and is made up of the notes f#, b, a, g, f#. One theorist suggests that the entire mass is built upon this motive.
2.) Movement 2 (Gloria), measures 6-38.
Commentators say the music here is very suggestive of Handel’s Messiah. In this segment Beethoven uses a technique called word painting (also a favorite technique of Handel’s), meaning that the music represents the meaning of the text much like a picture. The music climbs to a high note on “in excelsis” (in the highest), then falls to a low register and a peaceful mood at “in terra pax” (peace on earth).
3.) Movement 2, measures 292 and surrounding.
This is the most extreme harmonic and rhythmic disruption in the work. Beethoven also edits the text of the mass by adding the word “O” in front of miserere in measures 296, 298, etc. The composer is striving after intense expressiveness with both text and music here.
4.) Movement 2, measure 525.
The Gloria returns here. Repeating the text this way is non-liturgical, but it satisfies Beethoven’s need for sonata form (recapitulation, or a return to the music that opened the movement).
5.) Movement 3 (Credo), measures 6-10 (also repeated in measures 37-48 and 267-271).
Once again, Beethoven rewrites the liturgical words, in this case by inserting the word “credo” before each of the three articles of the Creed. This insertion feeds the musical structure – the same music with the same words lends musical and formal unity to the movement.
6.) Movement 3, measure 194 ff.
The text here is “et ascendit in coelum” (and ascended into heaven). Notice the word-painting in the ascending choral lines.
7.) Movement 3, measures 433 ff.
Beethoven marks this section “grave”, bringing us to the slowest tempo in mass up to this point. This slow tempo continues to the end of the movement, as though to say, “life everlasting.”
8.) Movement 4 (Sanctus/Benedictus), beginning through measure 34.
In this section, there is no clear sense of key or harmonic direction until the music finally arrives at D Major in bar 34. Similar to the opening of Haydn’s Creation, the effect is echoed more forcefully in the Präludium, beginning in bar 79. Beethoven studied with Haydn, and greatly admired the older composer.
9.) Movement 5 (Agnus Dei), bars 159-202 (approximate).
The lilting, pastoral, 6/8 music of Dona nobis pacem is suddenly interrupted by military music, which causes the alto, tenor, and soprano soloists, as well as the chorus (supported by orchestral tremolo) to respond with fear, trembling, and anxiety, before a reassuring return of the 6/8 pastoral mood.
10.) Movement 5, measure 216 (N).
The theme, which starts in the choral basses and is taken up by each of the voices in succession, is possibly a quotation from Handel’s Messiah (“and He shall reign forever and ever”). We don’t know for sure whether Beethoven intended to quote Handel here, but the resemblance is easy to hear.
