Beethoven by George Alexander Fischer (reading in the dark .TXT) 📕

In the composition of the mass, Beethoven was on familiar ground; the work was congenial to him. The emotions called up by the subject swayed him to such an extent that he had difficulty in keeping it within bounds. The mass was a form of music with which he had been associated from childhood. It will be remembered that he played the organ at the age of twelve years at church services, a practice which was kept up for some years. His earliest impressions on the subject of music were in this style. He was, in addition, inclined to it by temperament.

The beautiful text appealed to him strongly. It is related that when the German version of his first Mass (in C) was brought him, he quickly opened the manuscript and ran over a few pages. When he came to the Qui tollis, the tears trickled from his eyes and he was obliged to desist, saying with the deepest emotion, "Yes, that was precisely my feeling when I composed it."

His journal entries at the time of beginning work on the Mass in D show how completely the subject had taken possession of him. "To compose true religious music, consult the old chorals in use in monasteries," he wrote, which gives the clew to his frequent lapses into the ancient ecclesiastical modes, the Lydian and Dorian, in this mass, a practice for which Bach furnished a precedent. "Drop operas and everything else, write only in your own style," is another entry of this time, showing his predilection for church music.

The summer of 1818 was spent at Mödling. He was in the best of health and spirits as stated, and began the work with great energy and enthusiasm. His whole nature seemed to change, Schindler states, when he began the great work. His interest and absorption in it was extraordinary, as is shown by the sketch-books from the beginning. Enthusiasm carried him on to the consummation of a greater work than any he had yet accomplished. Hitherto, every achievement was merely a resting-place up the mountainside, the prospect acting as a spur to him to go yet higher, well knowing what Emerson finely stated, and was putting into practice at this very time, that new gifts will be supplied in proportion as we make use of those we have. Dem Muthigen hilft Gott! said Schiller. Beethoven seemed to have some prevision that only a few more years would be allotted him for work; when he began on the mass his inspiration was like a river that had broken its bounds. Every nerve and fibre of his being called him to his work. He was like a war-horse that scents the battle. He now abandoned himself more than ever to the impulse for creating. For the next few years he lived the abstracted life of the enthusiast to whom every-day concerns are but incidental and unimportant things, and his art the one great matter. The gigantic tone-pictures which were constantly forming themselves in his inner consciousness were of so much greater importance than the events of his external life, that the latter were dwarfed by comparison and lost their significance. He now made a greater surrender of the ties connecting him with every-day life than ever before. His industry was phenomenal, but it soon became apparent that the work would not be ready for the Installation, the date of which was set for March 20, 1820. It was in reality not completed until nearly two years after this event.

We have a good description of the master at this time by the artist Klober, who had been commissioned by a wealthy relative who was forming a gallery of famous Vienna artists, to paint a portrait of Beethoven.

"Beethoven had a very earnest look; his vivacious eyes were for the most part turned upwards, with a thoughtful and rather a gloomy expression, which I have tried to represent. His lips were closed, but the mouth was not an unkindly one. He was ready enough to expatiate on the arrogant vanity and depraved taste of the Viennese aristocracy, by whom he feels himself neglected, or at least underrated."

"Beethoven sat to me for nearly an hour every morning. When he saw my picture, he observed that the style of hair pleased him very much; other painters had always dressed it up as if he were going to court, not at all as he generally wore it."

"His house at Mödling was extremely simple; so, indeed, was his whole manner of life. His dress consisted of a light-blue coat with yellow buttons, white waistcoat and neckcloth, such as were then worn, but everything about him was very negligee. His complexion was florid, the skin rather pock-marked, his hair the color of blue steel, for the black was already changing to grey. His eyes were a bluish-grey and exceedingly vivacious. When his hair streamed in the breeze there was a sort of Ossian-like dæmonism about him. But, when talking in a friendly way, he would assume a good-natured, gentle expression, particularly if the conversation was agreeable to him."

As we have seen, it had been a favorite project of Beethoven for years to write a mass. When he started to carry out his ideas, one course only seems to have been possible to him. This was, to project it on the principle of his Symphonies, in which the orchestra should take the commanding part in interpreting the emotional and dramatic possibilities of the text. His experience with his first mass had confirmed him in the belief that he could give the best expression to his ideas by the use of the orchestra, on account of its greater range, its mobility, the variety of its tones. The idea of making it of more importance than the voice, upset all preconceived theories on the subject. The orchestra was emphatically the tool best adapted to Beethoven's powers; he developed it into something wholly different from what it was when he found it. He put it to exquisite uses. His effects are the happiest imaginable and they are introduced with a prodigality and lavishness suggesting a reserve as of oceans from which to draw. Much of his vocal music is dominated by the orchestra.

It took a long while to make people understand that music instead of being the handmaid of poetry, whose function is merely to reflect the ideas of our spoken language, has a language of its own, which can convey ideas in itself, and that there are subtilties that can be expressed in this manner, which evade one when we come to use our coarser mode of expression. This is specially in evidence in Beethoven's later work, particularly in the mass we are now considering. Wagner frequently compares it to a symphony. In Zukunftsmusik, he says: "In his Great Mass Beethoven has employed the choir and orchestra almost exactly as in the symphony;" and elsewhere he cites it as being a "strictly symphonic work of the truest Beethovenian spirit."

In this work, however, he reaches out toward the infinite to a degree not attempted in the symphonies; his spirit takes a bolder flight; more of the inner nature of the artist is revealed; for the limits which bound him in the symphony were not operative in the mass. The very mode of projecting the first movement, the Kyrie, shows the splendor of the conception as it took form in his consciousness. The scheme of the movement can be summed up by the antithesis being presented of humanity, weak and sinful on the one side, and the overwhelming majesty of a just God on the other. It is a prayer for mercy, the cry of the soul in its extremity; the underlying thought being repentance. Here we have the embodiment of prayer, of supplication. A devotional feeling of the most exalted kind pervades it. The first of the three parts comprising the movement is storm and stress, a knocking on the gates, a De Profundus, an accusing conscience arraigning humanity. He works out of this vein to some extent in the second part, the Christe eleison, in which the appeal is made directly to the human element of the Godhead. In the third part, the themes of the first are again taken up, but by modulation they are made to take on a new significance, and bring peace in the end. Although the movement is cast for double chorus as regards the vocal part, the voices are given a subordinate place, the portrayal being carried on by the orchestra in true symphonic style. Notable in this movement is the rhythm. In all the storm and stress, a rhythmic motion, a systole and diastole, a surging to and fro, as of vast masses of beings in the last extremity of peril, is apparent.

To read meanings and design into the work of such a composer as Beethoven is the inevitable result of the transcendent nature of it. It was seldom that he vouchsafed any explanation of his musical intent in his compositions. Schindler, who thoroughly appreciated his genius, and who was eager for enlightenment on this phase of his art, was in the habit of drawing Beethoven out, as occasion offered, but it was always a difficult process. Simple and childlike in most matters, the master was wary and suspicious to an incredible degree when the conversation touched on the subject of his compositions. At times, however, this reserve gave way to Schindler's persistency. When he asked him about the opening bars of the C minor Symphony (the Fifth) it brought out the well-known remark, "thus fate knocks at the door." At another time, he asked him for an elucidation of the Sonatas in F minor (opus 57) and D minor (opus 29), and received the answer "read Shakespeare's Tempest," which was only half an answer. More definite is his meaning in the two Sonatas (opus 14), which represents the entreating and resisting principle in the conversation of a pair of lovers.