Missa Solemnis (Beethoven)

Ludwig van Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in D Major, Op. 123 was composed in 1817-1823.

Structure

Like most masses, the Missa Solemnis is in five movements:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Kyrie: Perhaps the most traditional of the mass movements, the Kyrie is in a traditional ABA' structure, with stately choral writing in the first movement section and more contrapuntal voice leading in the Christe, which also introduces the four soloists.
• Gloria: Quickly shifting textures and themes highlight each portion of the Gloria text, in a beginning to the movement that is almost encyclopedic in its exploration of 3/4 time. The movement ends with the first of the work's two massive fugues, on the text "In Gloria Dei Patris. Amen" leading into a recapitulation of the initial "gloria" text and music.
• Credo: One of the most remarkable movements to come from Beethoven's pen opens with a chord sequence that will be used again in the movement to effect modulations. The Credo, like the Gloria, is an often disorienting mad rush through the text. The poignant modal harmonies for the "et incarnatus" yield to ever more expressive heights through the "crucifixus," and into a remarkable, a cappella setting of the "et resurrexit" that is over almost before it has begun. Most notable about the movement, though, is the fugue on "et vitam venturi" at the close, that includes one of the most difficult passages in the choral repertoire when the subject returns at twice the speed for a thrilling conclusion.
• Sanctus: Up until the benedictus of the Sanctus, the Missa Solemnis is of fairly normal classical proportions. But then, after an orchestral "preludio,:" a solo violin enters in its highest range--representing the Holy Spirit descending to earth--and begins the missa's most simply beautiful music, in an remarkably long extension of the text.
• Agnus Dei: A setting of the plea misere nobis that begins with the men's voices alone yields, eventual, to a bright D-major prayer "dona nobis pacem" (grant us peace) in a pastoral mode. After some fugal development, it is interrupted by martial sounds (a convention in the 18th century, as in Haydn's Missa in Tempore Belli) but eventually brings itself to a stately conclusion.