Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (131 page)

Within the contrapuntal fabric of the Gloria we hear the upbeat motif, appearing much of the time as the old contrapuntal device of syncopations and suspensions tied over the bar. Here is another case in Beethoven of a familiar idea or device that was traditionally a local event—an arpeggio, a trill, a Neapolitan sixth, a suspension tied over the bar—turned into motif and expression by being treated as a theme. The
fortississimo
chord on
omnipotens
is a climactic example of the upbeat motif: the glory of the word comes in early on the third beat, ecstatically shattering the meter.

Ecstatic upbeats and displaced downbeats run riot in the apparently unsurpassable climax of the
Amen
. Then Beethoven surpasses it. He brings back the opening
Gloria
theme at a hair-raising pitch, the shouts of
Gloria!
seeming to fill heaven and earth, until his final coup: the last
Gloria
comes in on an upbeat, the orchestra plays a crashing
fortissimo
chord on the downbeat, and the choir alone finishes its triumphal shout in midbar, as upbeat to a breathtaking silence. The audience feels lifted, hearts pounding, into the air. In this mass full of thrilling visceral moments, in a work intended to raise us closer to God, this is the most exalting of all.

 

Credo

 

This part of the service is a series of avowals of belief, distilled in the two blunt syllables of the word
Credo
with which Beethoven begins the movement and punctuates much of it:

 

 

First proclaimed by the trombones in octaves, the theme is assertive, the word
Credo
repeated twice, the first as upbeat to the second, where its two syllables stride emphatically on the beat. This movement, with its proclamations of faith, will mostly stay rooted on the beat and within the meter. In its dimension as a quasi-symphonic mass, if the Kyrie is like an introduction and the Gloria a fast-tempo quasi–first movement, the Credo is a middle movement whose core tempo is moderate.

By now Beethoven's treatment of the text is established. At the outset he decided on the primacy of the word, in its sense and its sound. Like all composers in some degree or other, but with more intensity than most, he expresses the words in several dimensions at once.

First, there is the overall expressive atmosphere of the section at hand: the staunch assertion of the
Credo
, for example, sets the fundamental tone of the movement, and that enfolds the hushed mystery and awe of the
et incarnatus
.

Second, there is a constant attention to painting individual words and phrases:
omnipotens, invisibilium, ascendit, descendit, pacem
. Each word and phrase gets its distinctive melodic contour, rhythm, and color within the larger profile of the section and the movement. At times the orchestra does the word painting, or amplifies it, as in the trembling strings under the wailing lines of
miserere nobis
. All this word painting is firmly within the tradition of Handel in
Messiah
and elsewhere. (Recall, for one small example, how pictorially Handel sets the phrases “have gone astray” and “the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.”)

Third, as noted before, Beethoven translates the spoken inflection and rhythm of the text into the music, then uses sound as expression: the hard
c
and
d
of
Credo
become a pounding affirmation; the
d
's of
Deum de Deo
are set to a soaring line evoking divine power;
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto
is mystical starting in its
s
's and open vowels. Because of the varying rhythms of the words, Beethoven never wields the monorhythmic effects he used in the Fifth through Seventh Symphonies. There is a constantly shifting rhythmic variety and forward drive, all of it founded on the text. Flexible, driving, constantly varied rhythm is one of the glories of the
Missa solemnis
.

Fourth, at times he inflects a word or a line with symbolic gestures, such as the flute's birdcalls behind the
et incarnatus
. At times he reinterprets a phrase in differing tones: in the Agnus Dei, the
dona nobis pacem
begins as a prayer in a pastoral mode; in the course of the movement, those words become a demand, a terrified entreaty, once again a prayer. Finally, at times he picks out a single unexpected word to make a point: the repeated
et
at several points in the Credo, all of them pointing forward to the most important
ands:
et resurrexit, et ascendit
.

 

In the Credo Beethoven again reflected Viennese mass traditions and at the same time adapted and amplified them. He laid the movement out in the usual three sections, fast–slow–fast. The key is B-flat major, his leading secondary key (a mediant, not a dominant). The first section issues its assertions of belief: in one God, the son of God, true God, the Son consubstantial with the Father, the Son who descended from heaven for our salvation. Most of this is set in a forceful stride,
forte
to
fortissimo
, largely with full orchestra and staunch trombones. There are dizzying descents on the phrase
descendit de coelis
, came down from heaven. (The sopranos are required to make a cruel plunge of an octave and a half from a screaming high B-flat, then to leap back up to the B-flat.) In the middle of the first section there is a sudden turn to a hushed D-flat major, lines flowing up in a long ascent to herald the coming of Christ. Those long ascents will return memorably.
³³
This is a movement full of foreshadowings, among them the winds' E-flat-major chord of the beginning, a high harmony that is going to emerge as another symbol of divinity.
³⁴

At the end of the first section comes a sudden hush to announce the central mystery of the faith:
Et incarnatus est
. To paint the sublime incarnation in the Virgin Mary, Beethoven takes up two ancient topics. The music is in Dorian mode, the old church scale whose character, he read in the work of the Renaissance theorist Zarlino, is “the donor of modesty and the preserver of chastity”
³⁵
—fitting for Mary's immaculate conception. Beyond that he was interested in these modes for an antiquity that implies holiness. He wrote, “In the old church modes the devotion is divine . . . and [may] God let me express it someday.”
³⁶

Hovering over hushed and mystical Dorian-mode phrases in the choir is a flute playing fluttering birdcalls. Here Beethoven paints an image that originated in scripture. After John the Baptist baptized Jesus, there was a vision of the Holy Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove. Another old tradition says that Jesus was conceived by that dove of the Spirit through Mary's ear—so by means of the Word. The holy dove turned up in Renaissance paintings portraying the incarnation. The flute's birdcalls here are not literally those of a dove or any other bird but imaginary birdcalls to conjure a spirit not of this earth. (Beethoven added the flute flutters as an afterthought to the “final” manuscript.)
³⁷

The incarnation, then the crucifixion. As the tragic center of the mass for many composers, including Bach, the “Crucifixus” is a movement in itself. Beethoven treats it relatively briefly, but distinctively: mostly inward, a spiritual as much as physical agony. At first the words are chanted by the choir in anguished harmonies while the strings play shuddering, piercing figures in accompaniment. The word
passus
brings a wailing line from bassoon and strings, the music finally falling to
pianissimo
darkness for the descent into the sepulchre.
³⁸

Many composers also make a whole movement of the joyous next section:
Et resurrexit
, And resurrected on the third day, according to the scriptures. Beethoven handles that announcement briskly in six bars of pealing declamation, first announced by the tenors on a high G and then in the choir in modal harmonies.
³⁹

More so than the resurrection, Beethoven is interested in the ascent to heaven:
et ascendit
in long, rocketing lines. Now comes the most dogmatic and troublesome part of the Credo. Christ sits at the right hand of God in judgment of the quick and the dead; then come the declarations of belief in the Trinity, in the one true church, in one baptism, in the resurrection of the dead. Again, it is not recorded precisely what Beethoven believed in regard to eternal life, likewise the celestial family and their cosmic courtroom. Of course, he could not presume to edit out the phrases dealing with these matters. Instead, he turned them to musical purposes: while the foreground takes up the opening
Credo
figure, in the background the dogmatic phrases are chanted like a priest rushing through the liturgy, creating a rhythmic energy that adds tremendous exhilaration to the cries of
Credo!
It comes down to the concluding “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and to life ever after,” finished with mighty
Amens
.

But Beethoven is not finished with that last phrase,
et vitam venturi saeculi, amen
. On those words he erects a lilting, gentle tour de force of a fugue fleshed out with various contrapuntal devices: double fugue, inversion, stretto, diminution. The main theme is built on a chain of seven descending thirds that keep cycling in voice after voice, an evocation of eternity.
⁴⁰
The fugue stretches out in a great arch, gathering and intensifying. Then with an
allegro con moto
injection it sprints forward, once again straining the limits of human voices. Once again, rhythms ecstatically spill over the bar line. As coda there is a slowing to
grave
, and amid chains of long scalewise ascents the music sinks to meditative exhaustion. Finally one more rising scale figure, the longest yet in the mass, starts from the bottom of the orchestra and flows upward until it reaches the flute that represented the holy dove. As scale figures rise up again and again, answered by scales sinking down, the movement ends on the same high E-flat chord it began with, now made ethereal. That coloration will soon return, unforgettably.

Here Beethoven reveals what he means by these lines flowing up and down. Recall Kant's words, in Beethoven's phrasing: “The moral law within us, and the starry sky above us.” In the late music, in high and luminous sonorities Beethoven viscerally evokes that image of the divine—in the shimmering trills of the late piano sonatas, in the
Missa solemnis
and the Ninth Symphony, in the string quartets to come.
⁴¹
The long lines rippling up and down are another part of that image: the spirit of humanity reaching upward, the divine spirit descending. Christ stands as the prime avatar of that cosmic circuit. Here again is Kant's interchange of God and humanity, the order of nature and human morality being reflections of divine order.

 

Sanctus

 

The first words of the Sanctus are adapted from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, who had a vision of God on His throne surrounded by six-winged seraphim eternally crying praises:
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth!
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of thy Glory! Hosanna in the highest! For many composers, including Bach, the operative word is
glory:
the music evokes the majesty of God as He holds court from His throne.

Beethoven takes an entirely different path. It is in this and the next movement that he journeys the furthest from traditional interpretations of the text. He begins the Sanctus softly in D major, in a tone of solemn, ceremonial devotion. Much of it will be quiet, sung by the soloists rather than the full choir. He presumably had several reasons for this choice, including some needed calm and textural variety, but one choice is particularly meaningful. The central point of the Mass in church, and a central point of Catholic devotion, is the Eucharist. In a reenactment of the Last Supper, the celebrant raises the cup of wine, which is transubstantiated into the actual blood of Christ. Salvation depends on this sacrament, drinking the blood and eating the bread, which has become the body of Christ.
⁴²
In the
Missa solemnis
that sacrament which occurs in the middle of the Sanctus casts its influence backward to the quiet orchestral beginning of the movement. The great perorations and towering climaxes that marked the Gloria and Credo will not be heard here.

The Sanctus begins with a sigh in the basses that rises to a texture of low strings with divided violas, horns, and low clarinets. The effect conjures the sound of an organ in quiet stops. The brass intone solemn chords, bringing in the soloists with their prayerful phrases.
⁴³
The mood is the opposite of the glorious panoply often associated with this text. Beethoven was not so concerned with eternal salvation or six-winged seraphim. He was concerned with deeper mysteries. He aimed the movement toward its conclusion, the Benedictus.