Missa solemnis in D Major

God’s mercy and mankind’s redemption are central to the Latin Mass, the ritual remembering of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. Beethoven first set the ancient sacred text in 1807 and crowned its final movement with music that suggests the prayer for mercy has been answered. His Missa solemnis, a work of monumental proportions created between 1819-24, ends by undermining any consoling certainty of peace on earth with a blast of martial trumpets and casting doubt over the very possibility of eternal salvation. The composition’s sheer weight of sound, sudden dynamic contrasts and rapid-fire fugues make extreme physical demands on its performers, especially on the choir, as if Beethoven wished to advertise his own infirmities and the creative struggle required to bring the piece to life. The sense of struggle is at its most intense in those parts of the Mass conventionally associated with expressions of joy, magnified by choir and orchestra in the “Gloria” and the overwhelming “Et vitam venturi” fugue from the “Credo”. Missa solemnis, for all its scale, at times feels like a private communion with God, a condition reflected in the note Beethoven inscribed on the first page of the work’s autograph score: "Von Herzen—Möge es wieder—zu Herzen gehen!" (“From the heart—may it again—go to the heart!”). The opening “Kyrie” concludes with what sounds like an indignant demand for mercy, while the “Credo”, the fundamental assertion of belief in the Holy Trinity, could equally stand as a hymn to humanity. And yet there are moments, such as the “Et incarnatus” and luminous setting of “Et homos factus est”, that convey profound reverence for the living God.