Beethovens Missa solemnis: Das ‘gröste Werk, welches ich bisher geschrieben’ Cologne, 4–6 November 2021

Abstract

The year 2020 will enter the history books for many things – but probably not for Beethoven’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday in December. Around the world, concerts, projects and conferences had to be either cancelled or postponed. On the other hand, some day one will probably remember the years 2021 and 2022 as the longest Beethoven year ever, with all postponed events now slowly being caught up on. One of these was a conference organized by Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (Universität Zürich) at the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung in Cologne. The conference focused on the Missa solemnis, a notoriously contentious composition, the pièce de résistance of Beethoven’s late style, a work whose reception vacillates between the highest superlatives on the one hand and frank rejection on the other. The first superlative was spread by Beethoven himself, who famously referred to the Missa as his ‘greatest’ work. It is a moot point (and so it was at this conference) whether this should be considered a reference to the spiritual qualities of the work, or rather a reference to its mere outer dimensions – or just as sales talk altogether. And this is where the stakes still seem to be in discussions of the Missa, returning periodically to the question of whether Beethoven composed this piece for specific (liturgical) circumstances and necessities or, rather, against them. If that is a question to be answered, it can certainly only be answered from a multidimensional perspective, combining documentary studies, reception history, and aesthetic, liturgical and methodological issues, and that was the aim of Hinrichsen’s conference, which brought together scholars from these different fields. The event opened with Jürgen Stolzenberg (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), who drew a picture of the philosophy of religion ‘between reason and sentiment’ in Beethoven’s time. Stolzenberg avoided positioning Beethoven within this field, as reliable documents are missing, but made a strong point that one should not hastily identify Beethoven’s position with Kant’s rational religion (Vernunftreligion), notwithstanding his acquaintance with some of Kant’s ideas. Stolzenberg suggested including Johann Michael Sailer and Ignaz Aurelius Feßler in the picture, as writings of both authors were present in Beethoven’s library. While Feßler did follow Kant’s philosophy of religion, all in all he stands for a more eclectic version of it, and Sailer, though in some senses an ‘enlightened’ Catholic, was an anti-Kantian: he argued that a pure Vernunftreligion is deprived of two substantial components, Gefühl and Liebe (feeling and love). Was Beethoven maybe more Catholic than we would like him to have been? That was the question behind the presentation on Beethoven and church music by Julia Ronge (Beethoven-Haus Bonn). She presented a wealth of documents that shed light on Beethoven’s lifelong contact with Catholic institutions. It was late nineteenth-century German musicology, with its anti-Catholic agenda, that had tried to wipe out the Catholic traces in Beethoven’s life and works. Since Beethoven could not be turned into a Protestant, he was at least turned into a non-involved Catholic, who preferred private or rational religion over institutional faith. As Ronge demonstrated, however, there are no documents from Beethoven’s own hand that prove this to be true, and the