Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (173 page)

86. Monson, “Classic-Romantic Dichotomy,” 171.

87. Thayer/Forbes, 2:842–43.

88. Solomon,
Late Beethoven
, 36.

89. Wyn Jones,
Life of
Beethoven
, 165.

90. Thayer/Forbes, 2:844.

91. Gordon, “Franz Grillparzer,” 556.

92. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1175.

93. B. Cooper,
Beethoven Compendium
, 29.

94. Wyn Jones,
Symphony
, 207.

95. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 54.

96. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1180.

97. Kinderman,
Beethoven's Diabelli Variations
, 34. Kinderman notes that the plan for the variations was on a large scale from the beginning: in a conversation-book entry from 1820, Franz Oliva refers to them as “the big variations” and says, “Diabelli will pay a lot.”

98. Ibid., 85.

99. As Kinderman notes in ibid., several groupings have been proposed over the years, but he does not buy any of those theories and neither do I. My friend Andrew Rangell, who has made an outstanding recording of the
Diabellis
, treats each of them as a freestanding individual, except in the couple of cases where there is an
attacca
from one to the next. There is a quality of the mind, however, that likes to see patterns and groupings, so as listeners we tend to find questions and answers and groupings in the piece. Perhaps Beethoven understood that. But if he had wanted to group the variations, he would have done so clearly.

100. Variation I contains all twelve chromatic tones and touches briefly on G major, F major, A minor, and D minor. True, all but the D minor are already in Diabelli's theme, but Beethoven continually expands on the theme's collection of key allusions, and Diabelli's theme does not contain the keys or pitches E-flat or C-sharp/D-flat.

101. Kinderman,
Beethoven's
Diabelli Variations
, 34.

102. Ibid., 72–73.

103. Specifically, Kinderman (ibid., 118–19) compares the C-minor Variation XIV with the E-flat Minor Prelude of Bach's
WTC
—the origin of what I've called Beethoven's “E-flat-minor mood,” which is usually doleful.

104. The idea that much of late Beethoven is “music about music” is a point made expansively by Karl Dahlhaus in his writings on Beethoven, including
Ludwig van Beethoven
.

105. Kinderman (
Beethoven's Diabelli Variations
, 104): “Toward its close, the subject of the
Diabelli
Variations ceases to be merely the waltz, or even its possibilities . . . and becomes the entire musical universe as Beethoven knew it.”

106. I am echoing Kinderman in ibid., where he ends his study of the sketches citing an unused, abortive sketch of Beethoven's with this splendid phrase: “[H]ere on the brink of eternity, the study of the genesis of the Diabelli Variations draws to a close.” As Kinderman notes, a number of the late works, including the
Missa solemnis
and
Diabelli
Variations, conclude not with resolution but rather with “a pointed pregnancy of effect.” The word
pregnancy
is the operative one: the works leave us not with a sense of finality but as matters to contemplate further. Two of the last three sonatas and the
Diabellis
all end with the third on top of the final tonic chord—not the usual perfect authentic cadence—so they subtly subvert the usual effect of an ending. The
Diabellis
also end on the second beat of a 3/4 bar, the weakest possible beat.

107. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 306–7.

108. Ibid., 304.

109. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
Compendium
, 30.

110. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 326.

111. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 53.

112. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 327.

113. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1231 and n4.

114. Ibid., no. 1231.

115. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 310.

116. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1233.

117. Ibid., no. 1242.

118. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 309.

119. Thayer/Forbes, 2:861–62.

120. Ibid., 2:878.

121. Ibid., 2:882.

122. Ibid., 2:890.

123. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1248. These inspirational words to Rudolph may be the closest Beethoven wrote in his own hand to the rhapsodic phrases attributed to him by Bettina Brentano in her letters to Goethe.

124. Ibid., no. 1257.

125. Ibid., nos. 1256, 1259.

126. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 46.

127. Thayer/Forbes, 2:896–97.

128. Ibid., 2:897–99.

129. Ibid., 2:901.

130. Ibid., 2:902.

131. Sachs,
Ninth
, 33.

 

30.
Qui Venit in Nomine Domini

 

1. Marek,
Beethoven
, 594.

2. Levy,
Beethoven
, 124.

3. Ibid., 133.

4. Cook,
Beethoven
, 23.

5. Ibid., 22.

6. Some seventy years later, a singer from the chorus at the Ninth premiere told conductor Felix Weingartner, “Although Beethoven appeared to be reading along, he would continue to turn pages when the movement in question had already come to an end” (Sachs,
Ninth
, 22). If that was true of one or more of the movements, that means Beethoven was conducting through the music slower than the performance, much of which would also have been slower than his exaggeratedly fast metronome markings. Here is another piece of evidence that those markings are not reliable.

7. Landon,
Beethoven
, 182–83.

8. Ibid., 183–84.

9. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1288.

10. Levy,
Beethoven
, 133–34.

11. Ibid., 138.

12. Ibid., 135–36.

13. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 318.

14. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 118–19.

15. Solomon, “Ninth Symphony,” 28.

16. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 127.

17. Drabkin,
Beethoven
, 21. Lockwood (
Beethoven: Music
, 406) speculates that Beethoven may have known the Bach B Minor Mass, but if so I don't hear any echoes of that in the
Missa solemnis
—while in the
Diabelli
Variations there are audible echoes of the Bach
Goldbergs
. He did know Bach's mass existed, because at one point he queried a publisher about it, citing the bass line of the Crucifixus. Haydn owned a copy of it and would possibly have shown it to his student Beethoven. That Haydn looked over the Bach is shown in a quotation from the Kyrie, whether intentional or not, in the development of the earlier E-flat Major Piano Sonata.

18. Drabkin,
Beethoven
, 14–15.

19. Lockwood (
Beethoven: Music
, 407) speculates that the “from the heart” inscription may have been a private one directed to Archduke Rudolph. The phrase does not appear outside the autograph manuscript. I'm more inclined to give it a broader intention, even if it did not get into the printed score.

20. Kirkendale, “New Roads,” 667.

21. As I said in the text, if the expression of the text happens to be conventional, as in
ascendit
, etc., Beethoven does it anyway. Species counterpoint and the whole of composing teaches the composer that he or she often needs to give up one desirable quality—say, originality—for a more important quality. Everything in music is relative. Here, for Beethoven, embodying and picturing the text override the threat of cliché.

22. The “germinal motive” F-sharp–B–A–G–F-sharp (I use the form “motif” here) was discovered and described briefly by Walter Riezler in the 1930s. It has since been generally acknowledged by scholars, though I think more tentatively than it deserves. As Drabkin notes, “Riezler's idea of motivic unity has not been developed by any subsequent writings on the Mass” (
Beethoven
). I hope I've begun to remedy that here, though in this book I don't have space to examine how thoroughly the motif pervades the music—especially since it subsumes the submotifs of the rising fourth, the falling third, and the G–F-sharp. It is also used in a kind of setlike rearrangement, as in the G–F-sharp–B–A that forms the
eleison
figure in the first movement. In D major, the primal G–F-sharp motif can function and be resolved in three ways: as the seventh of an A7–D cadence, as part of a IV–I
Amen
cadence, and as a 4–3 suspension over a D in the bass. Beethoven uses all those flavors of the G–F-sharp motif.

23. In the chorus's third
Kyrie
the tenors and altos leap up in the middle of the chord: here and in other moments in the mass, Beethoven uses this novel and remarkable effect of intensifying a single chord from within.

24. The Kyrie, like the end of the whole mass in the choir, ends with the third of the chord in the soprano. Beethoven thereby avoids the effect of a final perfect authentic cadence, as he did in two of the last three piano sonatas. At the end of the Kyrie the basses trace the last part of the generating motif, falling from B down to F-sharp, then starting at C and tracing a long descent down to low D, with a lovely effect of homecoming after a harmonically searching movement that bypasses the dominant key of A. Still, when the basses reach the low D it is still not a perfect authentic cadence—there is a 4–3 suspension (G–F-sharp) above it.

25. Fiske,
Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
, 36.

26. Drabkin,
Beethoven
, 37.

27. In the brass writing of most of his orchestral music Beethoven stretched the capacities of French horns and largely wrote bland, ordinary trumpet parts—contributing more rhythm and volume than pitch, and usually conventionally allied with the timpani. Perhaps if he had encountered a trumpet virtuoso on the level of Punto with the horn and Dragonetti with the bass, he would have written more imaginatively for the instrument (as Haydn responded to his encounter with an experimental keyed trumpet by writing perhaps his finest concerto). The
Missa solemnis
, however, has some of the most elaborate and thrilling trumpet parts Beethoven wrote. The opening brass theme of the Gloria is in hemiola, its two-beat superimposed over the 3/4 creating tremendous energy. At the same time it has a dynamic harmonic and rhythmic shape, starting on the D tonic as an extended upbeat, racing up to the dominant, where the climax of the figure is on the hard
d
of
Deo
, which falls a third, from A to F-sharp, as it is inflected when spoken.

28. Kirkendale, “New Roads,” 668.

29. The rising scale traversing a fifth that I call the
Gloria
figure is the leading thematic idea of the Gloria movement, in various guises more and less obvious. For example, the
Laudamus te
recycles and varies it, the
Domine fili unigenite
theme is a quiet version of it. While in the Gloria one can find echoes of the generating motif if one wishes, the falling-third motif is everywhere—as it is in the whole mass. Now the falling third begins to be extended into themes built on chains of falling thirds, such as the
glorificamus
theme, built on the scaffolding of C-sharp–A–C-sharp–A–F-sharp–D (on the downbeats).

30. The trombones do not appear in the manuscript scores and were added later by Beethoven by way of instructions to his copyists. Nonetheless, they are hardly an afterthought. They are the most elaborate trombone parts Beethoven ever wrote, and in their
soli
appearances they are indispensable. At other times they are used to double the vocal lines in figures of what must have been, to trombonists of the time, forbiddingly athletic. The same happens in the Ninth Symphony.

31. If one boils down the theme of the
in gloria dei Patris
fugue to its framework, mostly on the strong beats, one gets D–G–E–A–F-sharp–B–A–G–F-sharp. So it is built on the generating motif. At the same time, that framework is precisely the theme—transposed—of the finale fugue of the op. 110 Piano Sonata. That thematic connection, I assume, for a change, was unconscious on Beethoven's part.

32. Fortunately, since the tempos in the mass are already hard enough to deal with, Beethoven did not add metronome markings.

33. From m. 86 in the Credo, what I call the “long ascent” is established as a musical and symbolic motif. There are a few answering descents, the main one being the long descent of the solo violin in the Sanctus.

34. See Kinderman, “Symbol for the Deity.”

35. Kirkendale, “New Roads,” 677.

36. Ibid., 676.

37. Ibid., 679.

38. Much of the effect of what I call the “wailing” line that accompanies the Crucifixus (from m. 167) comes from the piercing cross-relations of the theme's C-natural against C-sharp in the basses.

39. The
et resurrexit
proclamation is usually described as Mixolydian, but if so that amounts to C Mixolydian for three chords and G Mixolydian by the end—the final G-major chord sounds like an arrival, not a dominant. I'm calling the general effect “modal” mainly because of root-position chords moving by step—an archaic harmonic effect that Beethoven uses often in the mass and in the
Seid umschlungen
section of the Ninth Symphony finale.

40. As Kinderman points out (“Symbol for the Deity”), the
et vitam venturi
fugue theme in itself has seven descending thirds. However, the wind introduction and then the fugal entries are interlocked in a way that sustains a much longer descending chain. From m. 306, the oboe outlines G–E-flat–C–A (leaping up for the last). Then the sopranos enter a third down on F, their theme descending in thirds (some of them inverted to a sixth) down to F. At that point the fugal line always leaps up a sixth, here to D, so the next entry of the fugue theme enters a third down on B-flat and begins its descent of seven thirds. Beethoven would have laid out this pattern first and then composed the music around it—these things don't happen by accident, in the thickets of writing counterpoint. However, for harmonic reasons the entries on B-flat do not descend in thirds from that note, but from A—from which point the chain of thirds again connects the next two entries. What I am proposing here, with a necessary harmonic adjustment, is a quasi-endless chain of thirds. For Beethoven to use descending thirds as a metaphor for “life ever after” has a clear symbolism: that chain has no innate stopping point, can cycle endlessly as long one wants, in contrast to music built on a tonic–dominant axis. Descending thirds in themselves are also, of course, a primal motif in the mass.