Alienated Masterpiece

The Missa Solemnis

Neutralization of culture-the words have the ring of a philosophical con-
cept. They posit as a more or less general reflection that intellectual con-
structs have forfeited their intrinsic meanings because they have lost any
possible relation to social praxis and have become that which aesthetics
retrospectively claims they are-objects of pure observation, of mere con-
As such they ultimately lose even their own aesthetic import;
their aesthetic truth content disappears along with their tension vis-a-vis
reality. They become cultural goods, exhibited in a secular pantheon in
which contradictions, works which would tend to destroy each other, find
a deceptively peaceful realm of co-existence, e.g., Kant and Nietzsche, Bis-
marck and Marx, Clemens Brentano and Biichner.
1
This wax museum of
great men finally admits its own disconsolateness in the innumerable ig-
nored pictures of each museum and in the editions of the classics in miserly
locked-up bookcases. But no matter how widespread the consciousness of
all this has meantime become, it is still as difficult as ever to grasp this
phenomenon in its entirety, at least if one ignores the fashion of biograph-
ical writing which reserves a niche for this queen and that microbe hunter.
For there is no superfluous work of Rubens in which at least the cogno-
scenti would not admire the incarnate value and no house poet of the Cotta
Firm
2
in whose work there are no non-contemporarily successful verses
awaiting resurrection. Every now and then, however, it is possible to name
a work in which the neutralization of culture has expressed itself most
strikingly; a work, in fact, which in addition is also famous, which occupies
an uncontested place in the repertoire even while it remains enigmatically
incomprehensible; and one which, whatever else it may conceal, offers no
justification for the admiration accorded it. No less a work than Beet-
hoven's Missa Solemnis belongs in this category. To speak seriously of this
I
work can mean nothing less than, in Brecht's terms, to alienate it; to break
through the aura of irrelevant worship which protectively surrounds it
and thereby perhaps to contribute something to an <:1Uthentic aesthetic
experience of it beyond the paralyzing respect of the academic sphere. This
attempt necessarily requires criticism as its medium. Qualities which have
been assigned without any thought by traditional consciousness to the
Missa Solemn is must be tested in order to prepare for a recognition of its
content, a recognition which to this day is still missing. This effort is not
one of JelJ1mki11g", of tearing down recognized greatnl'ss ior the sake of
tearing something down. The disillusioning gesture which pulls down
from the heights the very thing it attacks is by that very act subservient
to the substance of that which it pulls down. Instead, criticism with regard
to a work of such demand and with regard to the total oeuvre of Beethoven,
can only be a means of penetrating the work. It is the fulfillment of a duty
vis-a-vis the work and not a means of gaining malicious satisfaction from
knowing that once again there is one less great work in the world. It is
necessary to point this out, because neutralized culture makes certain that
the names of the authors are taboo while the constructs themselves arc no
longer perceived in their original contents. Rather they are merely con-
sumed as socially acceptable works. Rage is immediately p r o v o k ~ when-
ever reflection about the work threatens to touch the authority of the
author.
This situation must be anticipated whenever one prepares to say some-
thing heretical about a composer of the highest authority, one whose power
is comparable only to the philosophy of Hegel and is still undiminished at
a time when the historical preconditions of his work are irrevocably lost.
But Beethoven's power of humanity and of demythologization demands
by its very existence the destruction of mythical taboos. There is, of course,
among musicians an underground tradition of critical reserve about the
Missa. They have also long known that Handel is no Bach and that the
actual compositional qualities of Gluck are questionable. Only fear of es-
tablished public opinion made them keep their own opinions to themselves.
So too they have known that there is something peculiar about the Missa
:ole11111is. Little truly penetrating has been written about it. Most of what
has been written makes general pronouncements of awe about an immortal
chef d'oeuvre, and it is easy to note the embarrassment of these writers
which prevents them from stating wherein this supposed greatness actu-
ally lies. The neutralization of the Missa to cultural produce is reflected in
such writings, but it is not overcome. Hermann Kretzschmar, who comes
from a generation of music historians which had not yet cast off the, ex-
!ilic1111/1d 'rflt' Missa Solemnis I
.'>7'
periences of the ninetenth century, expressed the most significant admi-
ration for this work. According to his writing, the earliest performances
of the work, before its official acceptance into Valhalla, made no lasting
impression. He sees the chief difficulty in the "Gloria" and "Credo" and
supports his view with reference to the large number of short musical
images which require the listener to organize them into a unity. Kretz-
schmar has at least named one of the alienating symptoms which the Missa
exhibits. On the other hand, he has overlooked the manner in which this
symptom is connected to the essence of the composition and has, thncfore,
expressed the erroneous opinion that the resultant musical difficulties
could be overcome by the use of an enclosure of these short sections by
powerful major themes in both the long movements. But this is as little
the case as asserting, for example, that the listener comprehends the Missa
as soon as he has present in mind the preceding parts in concentrated form
in accordance with the principle of comprehending the great symphonic
movements of Beethoven. The listener then supposedly follows in this
manner the creation of unity from diversity. This unity itself is of a com-
pletely different type from the productive power of fantasy in the Eroica
and in the Ninth Symphony. It is not a crime to doubt that his unity is so
obviously comprehensible.
Indeed, the historical fate of this work is an alienating factor. It could
only be performed twice during Beethoven's lifetime; once, but in incom-
plete form, in Vienna in 1824, together with the Ninth Symphony, and a
second time that same year in Petersburg in complete form. Up to the
beginning of the 1860s, it was performed only occasionally. It was more
than thirty years after the composer's death that it achieved its current
standing. The difficulties of interpretation-above all in the treatment of
the vocal parts, and not, in most sections any particular musical complex-
ities-arc not sufficient reason for this late discovery. Contrary to legend,
the last quartets, which are in many ways far more exposed and far more
demanding, found from the outset a respectable reception. But Beethoven
had lent his own authority directly on behalf of the Missa in a manner
decidedly different from his usual custom. He designated it "['oeuvre le
plus acw111pli," his most successful work, when he offered it for subscrip-
tion, and he wrote over the "Kyrie" the words "from the heart-may it
go to hearts," a confession the like of which one may search for in vain in
;111 the other printed editions of Beethoven's works. It is not possible to
treat his own attitude to his work either lightly or to accept it blindly. The
tone of that remark is conjuring, as if Beethoven had sensed something of
the incomprehensible, reserved, and enigmatic quality of the Missa and
"''
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I Co111positio11, Composers, c111d Works
had tried through the force of his will (as that force of will had ever
stamped the content of his music) to force the work externally upon those
whom it did not of its own power compel. This would hardly be conceivable
if the work did not itself contain a secret quality which Beethoven believed
justified him in influencing the history of this work. But when it had
eventually established itself it was much aided by what had become in the
meantime the unassailable prestige of the composer. His major sacred work
was vouchsafed as a sister work the same admiration accorded to the Ninth
Symphony without anyone daring to ask questions which might merely
reveal the lack of depth of the questioner, as in the fairy tale of the em-
peror's new clothes.
The Missa would never have attained to an unquestioned place in the
repetoire if it had caused a drastic shock, like Tristan, by its difficulty. But
that is not the case. If one ignores the occasionally unusual demands made
on the singing voice, a demand the work shares with the Ninth Symphony,
the work may be seen to contain little that exceeds the circumference of
traditional musical language. Very large parts are homophonous and even
the fugues and fugati fit without difficulty into the thorough-bass pattern.
The progressions of the harmonic intervals and with them the surface
context, are seldom if ever problematic. The Missa Solemn is was composed
far less against prevailing compositional traditions than are the late quar-
tets and the Diabelli Variations; above all, it does not fall under Beet-
hoven's final conception of style as derived from the quartets and varia-
tions, the five late sonatas and the bagatelle cycles. The Missa is
distinguished more by certain archaicizing moments of harmony-church
modes-rather than by the advanced compositional daring of the great
Grosse Fuge. Not only did Beethoven always keep a stricter separation
among the compositional genres than one suspects, but he also incorpo-
rated in them temporally different stages of his oeuvre. If the symphonies
are in many respects simpler than the major works of the chamber music
because of or despite the richer resources of the orchestra, the Ninth Sym-
phony is clearly different and returns retrospectively to the classical sym-
phonies of Beethoven without the sharp edges of the last quartets. In his
late period the composer did not, as one might think, blindly follow the
dictates of his inner ear, nor did he forcibly estrange himself from the
sensual aspect of his work. Instead, he disposed sovereignly over all the
possibilities which had grown up in the history of his composing. Desen-
sualization was but one of these possibilities. The Missa shares with the
last quartets an occasional abruptness, i.e., the lack of transitions. Other-
wise there are few similarities. Altogether it reveals a sensuous aspect quite
1\lic1111lcd Mt1slc1pic(t': r/11 Missa Sole11111i s I
57.3
opposed to the intellectualized late style, an inclination to splendidness and
tonal monumentality which usually is lacking in that late style. This aspect
is incorporated technically in the process which in the Ninth Symphony
is restricted to brief moments of ecstasy, doubling the parts through
brasses, above all the trombones but also the French horns, which carry
the melody. The frequently powerful octaves are related to this aspect as
well, coupled with harmonic bass effects of the type contained in the well
known "Die Himmel riihmen des Ewigen Ehre" and decisively in the pas-
sage "Ihr stiirzt nieder" in the Ninth Symphony, later important in Bruck-
ner. Clearly it is to no small extent these sensuous high points, an incli-
nation to the tonally overwhelming, which gave the Missa its authority
and helped its audiences over their own lack of understanding.
The real difficulty is greater than any of these. It is one of content, of
the meaning of the music. It can perhaps be best formulated by asking
whether someone ignorant of the work would recognize the Missn, npart
from certain sections, as a work of Beethoven. If one ph1yed it to those
who had never heard any part of it and had them guess who the composer
was, one could expect some surprises. As little as the so-called imprint
(Handschrift) of a composer forms a central criterion, its absence never-
theless reveals all the more that something isn't quite right. If one searches
among Beethoven's other works of church music, one encounters this ab-
sence of the Beethoven imprint again. It is significant how difficult it is
even to dredge up his Christ on the Mount of Olives or the by no means
early C Major Mass, op. 86. The latter could, by contrast to the Missa,
scarcely be attributed to Beethoven even in separate sections or phrases.
Its indescribably tame "Kyrie" would seem at most to indicate a weak
Mendelssohn. But throughout this work there are sections which reappear
in the much more demandingly formed and more splendidly planned
Missa. These include the dissolution into often short, hardly symphoni-
cally integrated parts, a lack of decisive thematic inspirations which oth-
erwise characterize each work of Beethoven, and a lack of discharging dy-
namic developments. The C Major Mass reads as if Beethoven had decided
only with difficulty to feel his way into what was for him a strange genre.
It is as if his humanism rebelled against the heteronomy of the traditional
liturgical text and as if his composition of this text surrendered to a routine
which cost it all its genius. In order to get to the enigma of the Missa at
all it will be necessary to call to mind this moment of his early church
music. In the Missa, of course, it becomes a problem against which he
struggles, wearing out his strength, but it helps in identifying something
of the conjuring nature of the work. The problem cannot be separated from
the paradox of Beethoven composing a mass at all. If one could understand
fully why he did it, one would certainly be able to understand the Missa.
It is customary to assert that the Missa far exceeds the traditional form
of the mass and to accord it the entire wealth of the secular compositions.
Even in the music volume of the Fischer-Lexicon recently edited by Rudolf
Stephan, which otherwise does away with many conventional platitudes,
the piece is credited with being an "extraordinarily artistic thematic
work. "
3
In so far as one can talk about such work in the Missa at all, it
utilizes a method of kakidoscopic mixing and supplementary combinations
exceptional in Beethoven. The motifs do not change with the dynamic pull
of the composition-it has no such pull-but rather constantly reappear
in changing light though they are always identical. The idea of exploded
form may apply to the external dimensions at best, and Beethoven doubt-
less considered this idea when he contemplated concert performance. But
the Missa does not at all break out of the pre-planned objectivity of the
model through any subjective dynamic, nor docs it create the totality in
symphonic spirit out of itself. On the contrary, the consequent denial of
all this removes the Mi ssa from any dirl'Ct conmction with Beethoven's
other works, with the exception of his previously mentioned earlier church
music. The internal construction of this music, its fever, is radically dif-
ferent from everything which distinguishes Beethoven's style. It is itself
archaic. The form is not achieved through developing variations from basic
motifs, but arises largely from sections imitative in themselves, similar to
the method of the Nethcrlandish composers around the middle of the fif-
teenth century, and it is uncertain how well Beethoven knew their work.
The formal organization of the whole work is not that of a process devel-
oping through its own impetus-it is not dialectical-but seeks accom-
plishment by a balance of the individual sections, of the movements, ul-
timately through contrapuntal enclosure. All the estranging characteristics
can be seen in this light. The fact that Beethoven did not use his own type
of themes in the Missa-who after nil can sing a passage from it the way
one can sing a passage from any one of the symphonies or from Fidelio-
can be explained by the exclusion of the organizational principle of devel-
opment. It is only wherever a presented theme is developed and has,
therefore, to be recognizable in its subsequent development, that it needs
plastic form. Such an idea was foreign to the Missa as well as to medieval
music. One need only compare the Bach "Kyric" with that of Beethoven.
In Bach's fugue there is an incomparably memorable melody which sug-
gests the image of humanity as a procession dragging itself along while
bowed down under the heaviest of burdens. In Beethoven's work there are
1\lic1111tcd M11ste1pitcc: Fite Missa Solemnis I
575
complexes almost without melodic profile which delineate the harmony
and avoid expression with a gesture of monumentality. This comparison
leads to a real paradox. According to the current if questionable view, Bach,
in recapitulating the objective-closed musical world of the Middle Ages,
had brought the fugue to its pure and authentic form even if he was not
the creator of this musical form. The fugue was as much his product as he
was the product of its spirit. He stood in a direct relationship to the fugue.
For that reason many of his fugue themes, with the possible exception of
his speculative late works, have a kind of freshness and spomaneity about
them comparable only to the cantabile-like inspirations of the subjective
composers. At the historic moment of Beethoven's creativity, however, that
form of musical organization, the reflection of which Bach still regarded
as an n priori of his compositions, was no longer valid. With it disappeared
a harmony of the musical subject and the musical forms which had per-
mitted something akin to naivete in Schiller's sense of the word. The ob-
jectivity of the musical forms with which Beethoven worked in the Missa
is mediated and problematic-an object of reflection. The first part of the
"Kyrit'" includes Beethoven's own standpoint of subjective-ha"rrnonious
being. 13ut since this standpoint is also immediately pushed into the ho-
rizon of sacred objectivity, it takes on a mediated character as well, sepa-
rated from the composed spontaneity-it is stylized. For that reason the
smooth harmonious opening section of the Missa is more remote and less
eloquent than the contrapuntal learnedness of Bach. That is particularly
true of the actual fugues and fugati themes of the Missa. They have a
peculiar character of quotation as if they had been built according to mod-
els. One could speak of compositional topics analogous to the widespread
literary custom in antiquity, or of the treatment of music according to
latent patterns through which the objective demand is strengthened. That
is very likely responsible for the peculiar incomprehensibility, for the with-
drawnness from any primary completion, which is characteristic of these
fugue themes and is then also encountered in their further development
in the work. The first fugal section of the Missa, the "Christe cleison" in
B minor, is an example of this and at the same time demonstrates the
work's archaicizing tone.
In point of fact, the work stands removed both from all subjective dy-
namics as well as from expression. The "Credo" hurries over the "Cruci-
fixus" -in Bach this is one of the expressive high points-marking it,
however, with a very striking rhythm. Only at the "Et sepultus est," at
the end of the Passion itself, does the section reach an expressive concen-
tration in thoughts about the frailty of the human being, however, and
I
not about the Passion of Christ. But that pathos cannot be attributed to
the contrast of the following "Et resurrexit" which, at an analogous point
in Bach, reaches toward the extreme of that emotion. Only one section,
one which has also become the most famous of the work, is an exception
to this, and that is the "Benedictus," the chief melody of which suspends
stylization. The prelude to this section is a piece of intensely deep har-
monious proportions having an equivalent only in the twentieth of the
Diabelli Variations. But the "Benedictus'( melody itself, rightly praised as
inspin:d, resembles the variat1011 theme of the E-lbt Major Quartet, up.
u7. The entire "lknedictus" reminds one of that custom attributed to
certain artists in the late Middle Ages-those who are said to have included
their own portraits somewhere on their tabernacles for the host so that
they would not be forgotten. But even the "Benedictus" remains true to
the color of the entire work. It is divided into sections by intonations, like
the other sections, and the polyphony always paraphrases the chords fig-
uratively. That in turn is the result of the planned thematic looseness of
the compositional process. It permits the themes to be treated imitatively
yet to be conceived harmoniously in keeping with the basic homophonous
consciousness of Beethoven and his era. The process of archaicizing was
to respect the limits of Beethoven's musical experience. The great exception
is the "Et vitam venturi" of the "Credo" in which Paul Bekker correctly
saw the nucleus of the entire work.
4
It is a polyphonically fully developed
fugue; in certain details, particularly in harmonic twists, it is related to the
finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata, leading into a grand development.
Therefore, it is also quite explicit melodically and heightened to an extreme
by its intensity and power. This piece-perhaps the only one which is
entitled to the epithet "explosive" -is the most difficult one in terms of
complexity and performance, but together with the "Benedictus" is the
simplest by virtue of the directness of the effect.
It is no accident that the transcendental moment of the Missa Solemnis
does not refer to the mystical content of transubstantiation but to the hope
of eternal life for humanity. The enigma of the Missa Solemnis is the tie
between an archaism which mercilessly sacrifices all Beethoven's conquests
and a human tone which appears to mock precisely this archaism. That
enigma-the combination of the idea of the human with a somber aversion
to expression-can perhaps be deciphered by assuming that there is in the
Missa a tangible taboo which determines its reception-a taboo about the
negativity of existence, derived from Beethoven's despairing will to sur-
vive. The Missa is expressive wherever it addresses or literally conjures up
salvation. It usually cuts off that expression wherever evil and death dom-
c -1
l I I
inate in the text of the mass, and precisely through this suppression the
Missa demonstrates the gradually dawning superior power of the negative;
despair and yet anxiety of having that despair become manifest. The "Dona
nobis pacem" assumes in a certain sense the burden of the "Crucifixus."
The expressive potential is accordingly held back. The dissonant parts are
only rarely the bearers of this expression (e.g., in the "Sanctus" before
the allegro opening of the "Pleni sunt coeli"). The expression clings much
more often to the nrchnic portions, to the sen le sequences of the old church
mudes, lo die awe aboul if1, pasl , as ii' llll' :ufferi11g were 111 be d1n1w11
back into the transitory realm. Not the modern but the ancient is expres-
sive in the Missa. The human idea asserts itself in this work, as it did in
the works of the later Goethe, only by virtue of convulsive, mythic denial
of the mythical abyss. It calls upon positive religion for help whenever the
lonely subject no longer trusted that it could of itself, as pure humnn
essence, dispel the forward-surging chaos of conquered and protesting na-
ture. The recourse to mention of Beethoven's subjective piety as an expla-
nation of the fact that the composer, emancipated to the extreme and self-
reliant, tended toward traditional form, is as unsatisfying as the opposite
extreme found in the academic sphere. There the explanation for this
which is offered claims that his religiosity in this work, which subjects
itself with zealous discipline to the liturgical purpose, extends beyond
dogma to a kind of universal religiosity. The claim, therefore, is made that
his is a mass for Unitarians. But confessions or announcements of subjec-
tive piety in relation to Christology have been repressed by the work. In
the section where the liturgy dictates unavoidably the "I believe," Beet-
hoven, according to Steuermann's
5
astonishing observation, betrayed the
opposite of such certainty by having the fugue theme repeat the word
Credo as if the isolated man had to assure himself and others of his actual
belief by this frequent repetition. The religiosity of the Missa, if one can
speak unconditionally of such a thing, is neither that of one secure in belief
nor that of a world religion of such an idealistic nature that it would require
no effort of its adherent to believe in it. Expressed in more modern terms,
it is a matter for Beethoven of whether ontology, the objective intellectual
organization of existence, is still possible. It is a question of whether the
musical salvation of such ontology in the realm of subjectivism and the
return to the liturgy is intended to effect this salvation in a manner par-
alleled only in Kant's evocation of the ideas of God, Freedom, and Im-
mortality. In its aesthetic form the work asks what and how one may sing
of the absolute without deceit, and because of this, there occurs that com-
pression which alienates it and causes it to approach incomprehensibility.
7 ~
I
This is so perhaps because the question which it asks itself refuses even
musically the valid answer. The subject then remains exiled in its finite-
ness. The objective cosmos can no longer be imagined as an obligatory
construct. Thus the Missa balances on point of indifference which ap-
proaches nothingness.
Its humanistic aspect is defined by the plenitude of chords in the
"Kyrie" and extends to the construction of the concluding section, the
"Agnus Dei," which prefigures the "Dona no bis pacem," the plea for inner
and outer peace. Beethoven superscribed the section with the equivalent
German words, and the piece once more breaks out expressively after the
threat of war allegorically presented by tympani and trumpets. Already at
the "Et homo factus est," the music begins to warm as if breathed upon.
But these are the exceptions. Most of the time, despite stylization, the
work proceeds in tone and style back toward something unexpressed, un-
defined. This aspect, resulting from the mutually contradictory forces in
the work, is perhaps the one which interferes most with its comprehension.
Having been conceived in a flat and undynamic manner, the Missa is not
arranged according to pre-classical "terraces." In fact, it often erases even
the slightest contours. Short inserts frequently do not converge into the
whole nor do they stand on their own; rather they rely upon their pro-
portions to other parts. The style is contrary to the spirit of the sonata and
yet not as much traditionally ecclesiastical as secular in a rudimentary
ecclesiastical language dredged up from memory. The relationship to this
language is as deflected as it is to Beethoven's own style. It is distantly
analogous to the position of the Eighth Symphony with regard to Haydn
and Mozart. Except in the "Et vitam venturi" fugue, even the fugue sec-
tions are not genuinely polyphonic but are also in no measure homo-
phonously melodious in the manner of the nineteenth century. While the
category of totality, which in Beethoven's works is always the major one,
results in other works from the internal development of the individual
parts, it is retained in the Missa only at the price of a kind of leveling. The
omnipresent stylization principle no longer tolerates anything which is
truly unique and whittles the character of the work down to the level of
the scholastic. These motifs and themes resist being named. The lack of
dialectical contrasts, which are replaced by the mere opposition of closed
phrases, weakens at times the totality. That is particularly obvious in con-
clusions of movements. Because no direction is traversed, because no in-
dividual resistance has been overcome, the trace of the accidental is carried
over to the entire work itself, and the phrases, which no longer terminate
in a specific goal prescribed by the thrust of the particular, frequently end
11lic11t1tcd tvl11st11piccc: r/1c Missa Sole11111is I
i;7)
exhausted; they cease without achieving the security of a conclusion. De-
spite an external manifestation of powerfulness, all this nevertheless causes
a feeling of mediation to prevail, a feeling which is at an equal distance
both from a liturgical connection and from compositional fantasy. It rather
brings about that enigmatic quality which at times, as in the brief allegro
and presto sections of the "Agnus," borders on the absurd.
After all that has been written above, it might appear that the Missa,
characterized in all its uniqueness, could now be understood. But the dark
quality of the work, perceived as such, docs not brighten without further
analysis. To understand that one does not understand is the first step to-
ward understanding but is not understanding itself. The above-mentioned
characteristics of the work can be confirmed by listening to it, and the
attention which is concentrated on those characteristics may prevent a
disoriented listening, but by themselves they do not allow the ear spon-
taneously to perceive a musical purpose or meaning in the Missa. If it
exists at all, such a meaning lies precisely in the resistance to such spon-
taneity. This much at least is certain: the alienating aspects of the work do
not disappear in the presence of the comfortable formula which asserts
that the autonomous fantasy of the composer chose a heteronomous form
removed from his will and fantasy, and that the specific development of
his music had thereby been hindered. For it would seem apparent that
Beethoven did not try in the Missa to legitimize himself in a genre not
familiar to him as well as in his "actual" works. This kind of legitimation
has been attempted before in the history of music. But in Beethoven's case,
there was an attempt not to overburden that unfamiliar genre. Instead,
each measure of the work as well as the length of the process of compo-
sition-unusual for Beethoven-shows the most insistent effort on the
composer's part. But the effort is not, as in his other works, directed at the
accomplishment of the subjective intention, but rather at its exclusion. The
Missa Solemnis is a work of such exclusion, of permanent renunciation.
It is already to be counted among those efforts of the later bourgeois spirit
which no longer hope to conceive and form in any concrete manner the
universally human, but which strive instead to accomplish this end
through abstraction, through the process of exclusion of the accidental by
means of maintaining a firm grasp on a universal which had gone astray
in the reconciliation with the particular. The metaphysical truth in this
work becomes a residue, as in Kantian philosophy the contentless sim-
plicity of the pure "I think." This residual nature of truth, the rejection
I r111d Works
of the permeation of the particular, condemns the Missa Solemnis not
merely to being enigmatic, but stamps it in a principal sense with the mark
of impotence. It is the impotence not merely of the mightiest composer
but of an historical position of the intellect which, of whatever it dares
write here, can speak no longer or not yet.
But what compelled Beethoven, that immeasurably deep human being in
whom the power of subjective creation rose to the hubris of the human
being as the creator to the opposite of all this, to self-limitation? It was
certainly not the psychology of this man who could traverse at one and
the same time the composition of the Missa and the composition of works
entirely its opposite. It was rather a pressure in the thing itself, which
Beethoven, resisting to be sure to the last, obeyed and obeyed with all his
energy. Here we find something common to both the Missa and to the last
quartets in their intellectual structuring. They share a common avoidance.
The musical experience of the late Beethoven must have become mistrust-
ful of the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, the roundness of symphonic
successes, the totality emerging from the movement of all the parts; in
short, of everything that gave authenticity up to now to the works of his
middle period. He exposed the classical as classicizing. He rejected the
affirmative, that which uncritically endorsed Being in the idea of the clas-
sically symphonic. He rejected that trait which Georgiades in his article
on the finale of the Jupiter Symphony called ceremonial.
6
He must have
felt the untruth in the highest demand of classical music, that untruth
which asserts that the essence of the contradictory motion of all the parts
which disappears in that essence is itself the positive, the affirmative. At
this moment he transcended the bourgeois spirit whose highest musical
manifestation was his own work. Something in his own genius, the deepest
part of it, refused to reconcile in a single image what is not reconciled.
Musically this may have become concretized in a greater resistance to
filigreed structure and the principle of development. It is related to the
hostility which developed poetic sensibility had early seized upon in Ger-
many toward dramatic complexity and intrigue. It is a sublimely plebeian
hostility, inimical to all that is aristocratic and it was Beethoven who for
the first time imbued German music with this feeling. Intrigue in the
theater had always had something foolish about it. Its activity seemed to
emanate from above, from the author and his idea, and was never moti-
vated from below, from out of the characters themselves. The activity of
the thematic work may have sounded to Beethoven's inner car like the
/\/ic1wtcd M11::l1'rl'icn: 'f'h1 Missa Solc11111is
I
machinations of the courtiers in Schiller's plays, of costumed wives and
broken jewel cases, and stolen letters. There is something realistic, in a
true meaning of that word, in Beethoven which is not satisfied with con-
flicts so obviously contrived, with manipulated antitheses which all clas-
sicism creates and which are supposed to transcend all details but which
instead are thrust upon those details as if by decree. Marks of this arbi-
trariness can be found in the decisive phrases of the developments in even
the Ninth Symphony. The late Beethoven's demand for truth rejects the
illusory appearance of the unity of subjective and objective, a concept prac-
tically at one with the classicist idea. A polarization results. Unity tran-
scends into the fragmentary. In the last quartets this takes place by means
of the rough, unmediated juxtaposition of callow aphoristic motifs and
polyphonic complexes. The gap between both becomes obvious and makes
the impossibility of aesthetic harmony into the aesthetic content of the
work; makes failure in a highest sense a measure of success. In its way
even the Missa sacrifices the idea of synthesis. But in so far as it refuses
the subject, the listener, entry or access to the music and the subject or
listener is no longer secure in the objectivity of the form and cannot pro-
duce this form unbroken out of himself, it is prepared now to pay for its
human universality by having the individual soul be silent, perhaps al-
ready submissive. That, and not the concession to ecclesiastical tradition
or the will to please Archduke Rudolf, his pupil, may lead to an explanation
of the Missa Solemnis. The autonomous subject, that subject which oth-
erwise cannot know itself capable of objectivity, secedes from freedom to
heteronomy. Pseudo morphosis to an alienated form, at one with the ex-
pression of alienation itself, is supposed to accomplish what otherwise
would be incapable of accomplishment. The composer experiments with
strict style because formal bourgeois freedom is not sufficient as a styli-
zation principle. The composition unremittingly controls whatever is to be
filled out by the subject under such externally dictated stylization princi-
ples. Not only is each motion which opposes this principle subjected to
rigorous criticism, but each more concrete version of the objectivity itself,
which degrades it to romantic fiction, is also so criticized, and either as a
skeleton, real, tangible, or concrete it nonetheless disappears into that fic-
tion. This dual criticism, a kind of permanent selection process, imposes
upon the Missa its remote silhouette-like character. It brings the work
despite its full resonance into such a rigorous contradiction to sensuous
appearance as in the ascetic last quartets. The aesthetically fragile in the
Missa Solc11111is, the denial of conspicuous organization in favor of an
almost cuttingly strict question as to what is at all still possible, corre-
I
(0111po;;iti,JJ1, (0111po;;crs, 1111d lNorb
sponds in its deceptively closed surface to the open fractures which the last
quartets demonstrate. The tendency to an archaicization which here is still
tempered, is shared by the Missa with the late style of almost all great
composers from Bach to Schoenberg. They have all, as exponents of the
bourgeois spirit, reached the limits of that spirit without, however, in the
bourgeois world ever being able to climb beyond it on their own. All of
them had to dredge up the past in the anguish of the present as sacrifices
to the future. Whether this sacrifice was fruitful in Beethoven's case,
whether the essence of that which wns left out is really the cipher of a
realized cosmos, or whether as in the later attempts to reconstruct objec-
tivity, the Missa already failed, all this can be judged only if historical-
philosophical reflection on the structure of the work were to penetrate even
into the innermost compositional cells. The fact that today, after the de-
velopmental principle has been driven to its historical conclusion and has
lost its meaningfulness, composing sees itself obliged to segmentation of
parts, to articulations restricted by fields without any thought given to the
methodology of the Missa's composition, encourages us to take Beet-
hoven's plcn in the grentest of his works for more thnn merely a plen.
(1959; GS, vol. i7, pp. i45-61)
Translated by Duncan Smith; modified by Richard Leppert
NOTES BY RICHARD LEPPERT
1. Clemens Brentano (1778-1842), German poet, novelist, and dramatist,
helped initiate the Heidelberg Romantic school which promoted folklore and his-
tory. His sister, and friend of Goethe, was Bettina von Arnim. With Achim von
Arnim he edited Des Kttaben Wunderlwm (1805-08), a collection of German folk
poetry, which later served as the textual source for numerous lieder set by com-
posers from Schubert to Anton Webern, those by Mahler being the most famous.
Georg Buchner (1813-1837), proto-expressionist dramatist, wrote only three
plays, including Woyzeck (unfinished; first published only in 1879), the source for
Berg's opera. His other two plays were Dantons Tod (1835) and l..eonce und Lena
(1836).
2. The Cotta Firm was a prominent German publishing house first established
in the second half of the seventeenth century. The firm reached its apogee under
Johann Friedrich Cotta (1764-1832), who published Fichte, Goethe, Hegel, Herder,
Kleist, Jean Paul, A. W. Schlegel, Tieck, and Wieland. In 1798 Cotta established
the Allgemeine Zeitung, the leading German newspaper of the nineteenth century.
(In the course of the century the paper's offices moved from Tiibingen to Stuttgart,
Ulm, Augsburg, and, finally, Munich.)
3. Rudolf Stephan, Music, vol. 5 of Das Fischer Lexikon: Enzyklopiidie des
Wissens (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1957); available in English in an
expanded version: Music A to Z, ed. Jack Sacher, trans. Mieczyslaw Kolinski et al.
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1963); see p. 156: "The form of the Mass has
Alic1111tc,/ /v1u,;tcrpiccc: The Missa Solcmnis I
been greatly expanded, chiefly in the contrapuntal passages; the instrumental writ-
ing is considerably intensified, and the technical difficulties for both singers and
instrumentalists are very much more severe .... [The Missa is] outstanding for
[its] extremely ingenious thematic elaboration."
4. See Paul Bekker, Beetliovc11, trans. M. M. Bozman (London: J.M. Dent and
Sons, 1932), p. 274: "The finale of this 'Divine Heroic Symphony' reaches its
climax in the Et vitam Vl!11t11ri . ... It is perhaps the climax of the whole tremendous
Missa solcm11is."
5. Concerning Steuermann, seep. 159 n.3.
6. I have not located any essay concerning the finale of the Jupiter Symphony
by Thrnsyhulos