Program

Thursday, October 25, 2012, at 8:00Friday, October 26, 2012, at 8:00Saturday, October 27, 2012, at 8:00

Bernard Haitink ConductorErin Wall SopranoBernarda Fink Mezzo-sopranoanthony Dean griffey TenorHanno müller-Brachmann Bass-baritoneChicago Symphony Chorus

Duain Wolfe Director

BeethovenMissa solemnis in D Major, Op. 123Kyrie: Assai sostenuto. With devotionGloria: Allegro vivaceCredo: Allegro ma non troppoSanctus: Adagio. With devotion

Robert Chen violinAgnus Dei: Adagio—Allegretto vivace

ERin WAllBERnARDA FinKAnThOny DEAn GRiFFEyhAnnO MüllER-BRAChMAnnChiCAGO SyMphOny ChORuS

There will be no intermission.

OnE hunDRED TWEnTy-SECOnD SEASOn

Chicago Symphony orchestrariccardo muti Music DirectorPierre Boulez helen Regenstein Conductor EmeritusYo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

These concerts are generously sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. Dietrich M. Gross.This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Comments by PhilliP huscher

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Missa solemnis in D major, op. 123

Ludwig van BeethovenBorn December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany.Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.

The face we recognize as Beethoven’s stems from a por-

trait painted by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1819 which shows the forty-eight-year-old composer clutching the score of his Missa solemnis (see page 36C). With increasingly unruly hair and a deepening scowl, this is the image that has lived on to decorate concert halls, book jack-ets, recordings, and—particularly since the Beethoven bicentennial in 1970—posters, T-shirts, cof-fee mugs, and a wide variety of household items Beethoven can’t have imagined using. Beethoven

himself thought Stieler’s painting a good likeness, though others questioned the premature graying of the hair and the slump of his shoulders—uncharacteristic, they said, of a man who carried himself proudly at all times.

Stieler introduced himself to Beethoven in the autumn of 1819 with an offer to paint the composer’s portrait. Despite Beethoven’s blatant disregard for image and appearance, he appar-ently was taken with the idea that his face would be preserved for posterity. Even though he was

ComPoSED1819–1823

FirSt PErFormanCEApril 18, 1824; Saint petersburg, Russia

FirSt CSo PErFormanCEnovember 3, 1960, Orchestra hall. Adele Addison, Regina Sarfaty, Richard lewis, and Eberhard Wächter as soloists; the Chicago Symphony Chorus; Robert Shaw conducting

moSt rECEnt CSo PErFormanCEJanuary 25, 2005, Orchestra hall. Angela Denoke, Michelle Deyoung, Stephen Gould, and Alexander Vinogradov as soloists; the Chicago Symphony Chorus; helmuth Rilling conducting

inStrumEntationsoprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists; four-part chorus; two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabas-soon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, organ, strings

aPProximatE PErFormanCE timE81 minutes

CSo rECorDingS1977. lucia popp, yvonne Minton, Mallory Walker, and Gwynne howell as soloists; the Chicago Symphony Chorus; Sir Georg Solti conducting. london

1993. Tina Kiberg, Waltraud Meier, John Aler, and Robert holl as soloists; the Chicago Symphony Chorus; Daniel Barenboim conducting. Erato

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immersed in writing the D major mass that would prove to be the greatest undertaking of his career, he managed to find the time—and even the patience—to pose for Stieler, who, according to Anton Schindler, “had the knack of making the temperamental master conform to his wishes. Sitting after sitting was granted, with-out a single complaint about loss of time.”

When he sat for Stieler, Beethoven was nearly stone deaf; he had long before begun to use conversation books in which his visitors wrote their greetings, ques-tions, and comments. The entries for the first weeks of April 1820, when Stieler returned to apply the finishing touches to his oil, include the painter’s question, “In what key is your mass? I just want to write on the page Mass in . . . .” “D,” Beethoven replied, “Missa solemnis in D.” (The manuscript in Stieler’s portrait is inscribed Missa solemnis in D#, following the German practice of using sharps to denote major keys.)

Stieler’s portrait shows Beethoven with his pencil poised over his manuscript of the Missa solemnis. That may well have been the case; for more than four years, from early in 1819 until midsummer 1823, this was the music that preoccupied Beethoven almost daily, the work with which he most struggled, the one he couldn’t quite bring to a satisfying conclusion. It wasn’t the only project of these prime years—the final three piano sonatas, opp. 109-111, were completed dur-ing this span, along with much of

the work on the Ninth Symphony and the Diabelli Variations—but it was the composition that demanded more of Beethoven’s time and thought than any other at any time in his career.

The first hint of the project can be found in a note the composer wrote to himself in his private diary sometime in 1818: “In order to write true church music, go through all the ecclesiastical chants of the monks, etc. Also look there for the stanzas in the most correct transla-tions along with the most perfect prosody of all Christian-Catholic psalms and hymns in general.” Shortly after, Beethoven secured access to important music col-lections, including that of the archduke Rudolph, where he studied sacred music from Gregorian chant through Palestrina, Handel, and Bach; consulted a number of friends; and began work to improve his command of the Latin text, even though he had set it to music once before, in 1807.

The first musical sketches for the Kyrie of a new mass were made in 1819, on a page following designs for variations on the little waltz tune by Anton Diabelli that he

Beethoven’s friend and patron, the archduke Rudolph von Habsburg

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would later make famous. Around the same time it was announced that the archduke Rudolph—long one of Beethoven’s dearest friends and supporters, and the only composition student he would ever accept—was to be elevated to the position of archbishop of Olmütz (now Olomouc in the Czech Republic) in March 1820. Beethoven decided that he would honor his friend by preparing the music for that important occa-sion. On June 4, Beethoven wrote to Rudolph: “The day on which a High Mass composed by me is performed during the ceremonies solemnized for Your Imperial Highness will be the most glori-ous day of my life, and God will enlighten me so that my poor tal-ents may contribute to the glorifica-tion of that solemn day.” And thus, unsolicited and uncommissioned, that is how the first performance of the Missa solemnis came to be scheduled for March 20, 1820. It was a deadline Beethoven would miss by some forty months.

The most famous of the progress reports delivered by friends and visitors is that of Anton Schindler, whose devotion to the master was matched only by his flair for creative writing. His account dates from August 1819, a matter of weeks before Stieler’s portrait ses-sions began:

It was 4 o’clock in the after-noon. In the living room, behind a locked door, we heard the master singing parts of the fugue in the Credo—singing, howling, stamping. After we

had been listening a long time to the almost awful scene, and were about to go away, the door opened and Beethoven stood before us with distorted features, calculated to excite fear. He looked as if he had been in mortal combat with the whole host of contrapuntists, his everlasting enemies.

It’s likely, given the date, that the fugue in question was the great one that concludes the Gloria, “in gloria Dei Patris,” but the image of poor Beethoven, possessed by music in ways that most of us can scarcely imagine, probably isn’t far from the mark. Schindler would later recall: “When I think of the events of the year 1819, . . . I remember his mental excitement, and I must admit that never before and never since that time have I seen him in a similar state of removal from the world.”

In December, after Stieler had taken his canvas home to add body and background to the face he had painted from life, Beethoven finished the Gloria. The rest of the winter leading up to Archduke Rudolph’s installation was spent drafting the Credo and Sanctus, with occasional dips into one or more of the Diabelli Variations. In February, Beethoven actually offered the mass to the publisher Simrock, even though he knew it wouldn’t be ready any time soon. Actually, at the ceremony in Olmütz on March 20, the music was by Haydn and Hummel.

The full mass wasn’t complete in outline until the spring of 1822.

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Work had been slow, difficult, and sporadic, interrupted by the three late piano sonatas that also enter the same spiritual world. By August 1822, the autograph manuscript of the Missa solemnis was finished, and Beethoven could turn his full attention at last to the Diabelli Variations and Ninth Symphony. But, as the com-poser’s first biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, reported, the Missa solemnis was “several times completed, but never complete so long as it was within reach.”

In January 1823, Beethoven began to offer copies of the work, at fifty ducats, to several courts—a marketing idea intended to stir up interest and make money, although in the end it did neither, even after the intervention, at the composer’s insistence, of both Goethe and Cherubini. (Beethoven’s subse-quent dealings with a number of publishers were no better man-aged, although eventually Schott recognized the importance of this work and added it to its catalog.) Beethoven, who had little use for empty slogans, had already begun to refer to the Missa solemnis as the greatest work he had written.

Finally, in March, he sent a nicely bound copy off to the archduke Rudolph, who by now surely recognized that the work had never been conceived—or even written—with him in mind. That can’t have diminished his pride in placing this large, new volume on the shelf alongside the other works Beethoven had dedicated to him: the fourth and fifth piano concer-tos; the Farewell, Hammerklavier,

and op. 111 piano sonatas; the vio-lin sonata, op. 96; and the Archduke Trio named for him—one of the greatest series of gifts in the history of Western art, to which Beethoven would soon add the Grosse Fuge. The dedication, as direct and unexpectedly personal as the music of the mass it accompanies, reads: “From the heart—may it go to the heart.”

Beethoven was never a regular churchgoer. He had no use

for organized religion. What he learned of Catholicism he picked up attending Catholic schools. As a boy, he knew the insides of several area churches solely from the organ loft, where he took lessons. Haydn once called him an atheist—no doubt out of sheer exasperation at his most difficult student, the

Joseph Karl Stieler’s portrait of Beethoven. The manuscript is that of the Missa solemnis. Oil painting, 1819–20

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one with the shaggy hair, dis-sident views, and antiestablish-ment tactics.

But the man who later left us this extraordinary account of faith—the Missa solemnis, a solemn mass—could only have been, in the truest sense, a profoundly religious man. And perhaps only a man who had sometimes doubted, and regularly questioned, would ultimately come to a statement of personal belief as powerful as this.

Beethoven’s search for faith was part of a daily struggle to find order in the confusion of life. From an early age he worshiped nature easily, and, eventually, through nature, God. (He once scribbled on a page of sketches: “Almighty in the forest! I am happy, blissful in the forest: every tree speaks through you, O God! . . . .”) Beethoven’s diaries and sketches are filled with prayers and comments addressed to God. On the same page of his diary with the first suggestion of the Missa solemnis, Beethoven writes: “Therefore, calmly will I submit myself to all inconstancy and will place all my trust in your unchangeable goodness, O God! My soul shall rejoice in you, immutable Being. Be my rock, my light, my trust for ever!” It’s a quote from Christoph Christian Sturm, a Lutheran clergyman whose views Beethoven found highly persuasive. Late in his life, Beethoven began to explore Eastern thought and ritual, still searching for meaning. Framed quotations from ancient Egyptian writings sat on the desk where he worked, in characteristic disarray, on the Missa solemnis.

The music Beethoven wrote is no more conventional or any easier

to classify than his beliefs. For one thing, it’s not literally church music—written to be performed as part of a religious ceremony; instead, as Romain Rolland wrote, it “overflows the church by its spirit and its dimensions.” In fact, it was designed not for the church at Olmütz nor for any other space, but for posterity. The Missa solemnis is a work of sometimes bewilder-ing complexity, in which sacred and secular, faith and skepticism, the traditional and the personal, and the private as well as the public all abide. It is, in essence, Beethoven himself.

As Beethoven told Stieler early in 1820, the key is D major—a key Beethoven associated with Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus and with the Gloria and Sanctus of Bach’s B minor mass, scores he deeply admired and restudied before he set to work. Beethoven’s opening chord is the same brilliant D major that Bach and Handel knew, and yet the sound is entirely his own. Beethoven sees to that, not just in the particular voicing of the chord—the way the three notes of the D major triad are distributed over five octaves and among the instruments of the full orchestra—but in the way that it arrives midmeasure rather than on the downbeat, like a premature shout of faith. As we enter this grand and holy space, it takes our ears a few moments to adjust, to find Beethoven’s pulse, and to begin to move with it as clarinets and then oboes intone “Kyrie” long

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before the chorus sings. That’s one of the hallmarks of this music: the instruments of the orchestra often speak the words of the mass, anticipating and answering—but never, in the conventional sense, accompanying—the singers.

The Kyrie unfolds simply and majestically, with only a slight quickening of the pulse for the central Christe. The Gloria, on the other hand, is vast and immensely varied. It begins with a loud and joyful noise and then drops suddenly, like a worshiper falling to his knees, at “Et in terra pax” (And on earth peace) and again at “Adoramus te” (We adore you). There are a number of exceptional touches, like the trombones’ first appearance at “omnipotens.” The fugue at “in gloria Dei Patris” is the one Schindler no doubt heard behind closed doors, and it’s certainly a howling, stomping sort of music, only increasing in density and excitement as it passes through a quicker “Amen” and on into a hair-raising presto that leaves the singers almost breathless, shout-ing their final “Gloria” after the orchestra has already finished.

The text of the Credo led Beethoven to write a kind of sacred musical drama, with each chapter brilliantly set off and often com-pressing a significant incident and emotion into a single, telling ges-ture. In the “Et incarnatus est”—a reverent adagio set in ancient modal harmony—a solo flute flutters high above the voices, like the Holy Spirit descending to earth in the form of a dove. The dramatic shift from the depths of the “Crucifixus”

to the “Et resurrexit” is accom-plished by the chorus alone, which fairly shouts the news. At the reference to the Last Judgment, which has led other composers to elaborate special effects, Beethoven simply interjects one prominent and discordant note from the trombone. The final passage beginning “Et vitam venturi”—a double fugue, with separate, compatible sub-jects for “Et vitam venturi” and “Amen”—includes some of the toughest music ever written for chorus—longer, higher, and more florid even than the “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony. It’s also a fine depiction of the “life of the world to come” spinning mysteri-ously into eternity.

Beethoven’s Sanctus, unlike those of Bach before or Verdi to come, is very still and dark. There are ecstatic outbursts at “Pleni sunt coeli” and “Osanna,” but those only lead to the orchestral prelude, music of a spiritual calmness unknown before Beethoven. The orchestra begins with low, rumina-tive music—suggesting the organ improvisation that, in a traditional mass, leads to the “Benedictus.” Suddenly a bright beam of light—a high chord, scored for two flutes and solo violin—breaks through. The chorus basses introduce the “Benedictus,” and then the solo violin begins a great, soaring rhapsody—unexpected in a mass and unlike anything else in all music. It’s a surprisingly personal touch that only a great master could pull off, and it may well be, as Theodore Adorno has sug-gested, Beethoven’s response to

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“late medieval artists placing their own likenesses somewhere on their tabernacles so that they might not be forgotten.” Soon the solo quartet and the chorus add their lines of benediction, but it’s Beethoven’s own voice, searching for under-standing and immortality, that soars the highest.

The Agnus Dei begins solemnly, with bassoons, horns, and low strings, to which voices add their measured comments. When the music shifts into a 6/8 meter at “Dona nobis pacem,” Beethoven writes above the staff: “Prayer for inner and outer peace.” Soon this lovely, lilting music is disturbed by distant drums and far-away trumpet calls. We next hear the sound of the human voice filled with terror—a sound that we today, like Beethoven in his own turbulent times, know as the only possible response to the threat of war. The chorus begins an insistent fugue on “Dona nobis pacem,” its notes echoing those of the famous phrase “And he shall reign for ever and ever” from the “Hallelujah” Chorus. (We know that Beethoven greatly loved the Messiah, that he hung Handel’s portrait on his wall, and that he once cried out, “I would uncover my head and kneel down at his tomb!”)

There’s a brief orchestral passage that carries with it renewed sounds of war. Again it’s safely countered with pleas of “Grant us peace.” Finally, even when the timpani still rumbles ominously from a for-eign land, the chorus says simply, “pacem, pacem,” and the music warmly embraces D major, briefly

and gently. The answer has come, and knowing that it’s as good as any we are likely to find, Beethoven quickly lays down his pen.

Beethoven wasn’t present at the first performance of this mass.

That took place in Saint Petersburg, in April of 1824, under the spon-sorship of Prince Galitzin, who had already commissioned several of the composer’s last string quartets. In Vienna a month later, Beethoven agreed to conduct the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei—sung to German words and announced as “Three Grand Hymns with Solo and Chorus Voices” to avoid a prohibition on sacred music in the theater—at the same concert with the premiere of his Ninth Symphony. That evening, May 7, 1824, is now famous, not for the important music it introduced to Vienna, but for the sight of poor Beethoven, so totally deaf that, with his back to the audience, he was unaware of the thunderous applause greeting his new sym-phony until the contralto soloist tapped him on the shoulder and turned him around. No other performances of the mass were scheduled during Beethoven’s life.

After Beethoven’s death, the autograph manuscript of the Missa solemnis sold for a mere seven florins (the cheerful Septet for winds brought eighteen). Later, as listeners began to realize the universal power of Beethoven’s oddly personal statement, the Missa solemnis was still more admired than loved. Even today, the work Beethoven thought his greatest

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Phillip Huscher is the program annota-tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

single achievement is little known compared to the music of fate knocking at the door, the story of a great musician going deaf in the prime of his life, or the picture of

a scowling genius clasping a sheet of music.

miSSa SoLEmniS

KYriE

Kyrie eleison.Christe eleison.Kyrie eleison.

gLoria

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te. Benedicimus te. Adoramus te. Glorificamus te.

Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.

Domine Deus, Rex coelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens. Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe. Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris.

Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram.

Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, o miserere nobis.

Quoniam tu solus sanctus. Tu solus Dominus. Tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe. Cum Sancto Spiritu,

in gloria Dei Patris.

Amen.

Lord, have mercy.Christ, have mercy.Lord, have mercy.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you.

We give you thanks for your great glory.

Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father. Lord Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son. Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,

you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. You take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.

You are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One. You alone are the Lord. You alone, are the most high, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

(Please turn the page quietly.)

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CrEDo

Credo in unum Deum. Patrem Omnipotentem, factorem coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Credo in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum. Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis.

Et Incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine:

Et homo factus est.

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio Pilato passus, et sepultus est.

Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas.

Et ascendit in coelum: sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturas est cum gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos; cujus regni non erit finis.

Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum, et vivificantem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur, et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Credo in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.

Et vitam venturi saeculi.Amen.

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven;

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary;

and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried,

and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified; who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come.Amen.

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SanCtuS

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.

Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua.Osanna in excelsis.

Orchestral prelude

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.

Osanna in excelsis.

agnuS DEi

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.

Dona nobis pacem.Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi:

miserere nobis.Dona nobis pacem.Agnus Dei, dona pacem.Dona nobis pacem.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Grant us peace.Lamb of God, who takes away the sins

of the world, have mercy on us.Grant us peace.Lamb of God, grant us peace.Grant us peace.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.Hosanna in the highest.

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