Though his home in Bonn was overshadowed by destitution, discord, and distress, and his first music teacher was his harsh and violent alcoholic father, Ludwig van Beethoven somehow persevered to pour into his remarkable music his pain, his hunger for peace and for happiness, and the strength of will that helped him survive a tumultuous and tortured life.

Settling in Vienna in 1792, he was for a time the unhappy pupil of Franz Joseph Haydn, from whom he claimed to have learned nothing. He made a living by giving music lessons and by playing the piano at the private homes and palaces of the music-loving Viennese aristocracy, where his dynamic, emotionally charged performances began to attract attention. He moved increasingly from a career as a virtuoso pianist toward one as a composer, writing piano concertos and sonatas, chamber works for winds and strings, and then symphonies. Although by 1800 his musical prestige was considerable and his material fortunes were blossoming, he became aware that his hearing was deteriorating, and deafness soon threatened—not only his musical life, but his social and personal life as well.

Beethoven became increasingly morose, withdrawn, and distrustful, and contemplated suicide in 1802, even writing a testament, addressed to his two brothers, describing his unhappiness over his affliction in terms suggesting that he believed that death was imminent. Only art, and his faith that he had much of importance yet to express musically, withheld him from ending his life. This document reveals not only how distraught, but also how determined a man Beethoven was: "Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. So I endured this wretched existence."  Beethoven not only endured, but, with his resolution strengthened, he entered a new creative period during which he wrote the Mass in C major and produced other works that established his reputation as the premiere composer of his time.

Each year, the Hungarian Prince Nicholas Esterházy II, whose family Joseph Haydn had served for many years as music master, had a new choral mass performed to celebrate his wife's name day, September 8. In 1807, Beethoven was commissioned to compose this mass, and wrote to the Prince: "I shall deliver the Mass to you with timidity, since you are accustomed to having the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn performed for you." His hesitancy indeed appears to have been warranted: He had never before composed a mass, he procrastinated for months, and then he produced a work that his patron and audience found unsatisfactory, since it was much humbler and more spiritual than the grand symphonic masses to which Prince Esterházy and the Viennese musical establishment had become accustomed.  It is said that Beethoven first survived a singer rebellion led by chorus master Johannes Hummel, who did not enjoy working with an "aurally challenged" conductor. Then at the public reception following the work's first performance on September 13, 1807, Prince Esterházy offended the composer with the somewhat cryptic comment, "My dear Beethoven, what is it you have done here?" and he later remarked that that he found the mass "unbearably ridiculous and detestable."

Beethoven therefore refused to dedicate the mass to the prince and never gave him the manuscript. The composer instead began negotiating with his publishers for the printing of the mass as a part of various packages that included his more popular fifth and sixth symphonies, but it was several years before the Mass in C Major was published. Beethoven did not write another mass until he composed the mighty Missa solemnis some fifteen years later.

Though Beethoven followed Haydn's general plan for a mass, including fugal settings for the "cum Sancto Spiritu" in the Gloria, "et vitam venturi" in the Credo and "osanna in excelsis" in the Sanctus, his interpretation seems quite individual. The mass contains no solo arias, and the solo quartet and choral parts are employed to provide contrasts of color, texture, and dynamics rather than to form separate musical sections. The use of juxtaposed dynamic extremes, of wide leaps (frequently of an octave, especially in the Credo) in the vocal lines, of contrapuntal passages contrasted with chordal and unison plainchant-style sections, and of sometimes startling harmonic changes, Beethoven seems to express musically his inner struggles and his desires for mercy and peace.

The general character of the Kyrie," said Beethoven, "is heartfelt resignation, whence comes a deep sincerity of religious feeling." It features alternating passages for chorus and four soloists, with the central "Christe eleison" being written in a key a third higher than the C major opening and closing sections. In the Gloria, joyous choral outbursts surround a central section in which chorus and soloists offer their petitions. In the Credo, the soloists do not participate until the middle section, in which Beethoven paints significant texts using such devices as the key changes and unusual harmonies, chromaticism, descending motives for Jesus' incarnation and suffering under Pontius Pilate, and rising motives for the resurrection and ascension. The opening section of the Sanctus, in A major, is tranquil, reverent, and chant-like, while the "pleni sunt coeli" is more lively and contrapuntal. The relatively lengthy Benedictus, in F major, is begun by the soloists, who are soon joined and accompanied by the chanting chorus. The same A major fugal Osanna that concludes the Sanctus reappears to close the Benedictus. The prayerful minor-mode Agnus Dei is characterized by key and tempo contrasts; its pained pleas for mercy give way to a soaring "dona nobis pacem." Beethoven brings the Mass to a close with the same gentle music that opens the Kyrie, thus providing the work with a satisfying unity as the listener accompanies him at last into the spiritual peace of the "higher world."

© 2004 Lorelette Knowles