Missa solemnis (review)

In a "Zwischenbericht zur Gesamtausgabe Beethoven Werke," Ernst Herttrich (Bonner Beethoven-Studien 1 [1999]: 133-40) recapitulates the much lamented history of an edition that, in the forty-some years since its inception in 1961 under the auspices of the Beethoven-Archiv in Bonn, has produced a mere thirty volumes, of which twelve still lack the critical reports that would justify any claim to authority in the first place. Alan Tyson pointedly noted the vulnerability to such a claim in his review of two early volumes (Musical Times 109 [1968]: 950-51): "textual justice must not merely be done but must be seen to be done." Herttrich's story has its bright side, for the Richtlinien—those editorial guidelines at the basis of the edition—were altered around 1990, under the guidance of a newly appointed Editionsleiter (editor-in-chief), together with renewed assurances that no volume would appear without its mandatory critical report. And the pace has quickened. Two recent volumes, both rich in new evidence and generous in the printing of drafts and earlier versions, have been worth the wait: Helga Lühning's exemplary edition of the Lieder und Gesänge mit Klavierbegleitung (ser. 12, vol. 1 [1990]) and Petra Weber-Bockholdt's most welcome Schottische und walisische Lieder (ser. 11, vol. 1 [1999]).

The virtues of the latest volume of the Beethoven Werke are in some ways more subtle of apprehension. The Missa solemnis, Adorno's "verfremdtes Hauptwerk" ("alienated magnum opus," as translated in Theodor W. Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music: Fragments and Texts, ed. Rolf Tiedemann [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998], 141), is one of those works that seems ever in need of renewed scrutiny, both in its substance and in the text through which it is conveyed. An urgency to understand it seemed even to precede its composition: "Frau von Weissenthurn wishes to hear something of the ideas that underlay the composition of your Mass," wrote a visitor in Beethoven's conversation book in December of 1819, years before any of the work was ready to be heard (Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Grita Herre [Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1972], 172, my trans.). If Beethoven's reply vanished with the spoken word, the text of the Missa has survived in a dizzying array of written sources. "If there is one work ... that justifies the inordinate expense of a new Gesamtausgabe, it is surely the Missa solemnis," wrote Robert Winter ("Reconstructing Riddles: The Sources for Beethoven's Missa solemnis," in Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Phyllis Benjamin [Cambridge: Harvard University Dept. of Music, distrb. by Harvard Univerity Press, 1984], 221), an appraisal that editor Norbert Gertsch solemnly recalls in the preface to the volume at hand. Winter was right, even if the notated text conveyed in Gertsch's meticulous edition will not differ appreciably from that of the Missa as found in the old Gesamtausgabe (Ludwig van Beethoven's Werke, ser. 19, no. 203 [Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1864; reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich.: J. W. Edwards, 1949, etc.]). In its painstaking evaluation of the textual evidence that illuminates all those things that might matter to the musician or the scholar— reconstructing the missing autograph material for the organ part (and its figured bass) and the trombone parts are notable contributions—Gertsch's edition sets a very high standard. (Curiously, the Artaria employee Anton Gräffer is everywhere misnamed Gäffer. But this error is exceptional.)

The venerable notion of a Fassung letzter Hand—the author's final touch, so to say—is axiomatic for Gertsch, who orders the extant and hypothetical sources in a stemma at once complex and lucid. After the writing of the...