Firstly, the Mass was more spiritual than the Viennese audience and the Prince would have been accustomed. Beethoven experimented with the types of accompaniments to the choral selections for example, a vocal portion of the Sanctus is accompanied merely by timpani , and he placed a premium on chromaticism, harmonic development, and text painting, especially to convey great suffering or great joy at appropriate junctures. Ever the intrepid businessman, Beethoven instead shopped the work around to his publishers to be sold as a package with some of his more popular symphonies.
Whether the debacle of his Mass in C was to blame, or merely compositional circumstances were not ideal, Beethoven did not again try his hand at a Mass for many years when he finally began composition on his powerhouse Missa solemnis in While the Mass in C is often overshadowed by the much larger and grandiose Missa solemnis , it has not been completely discounted or overlooked by critics and audiences alike.
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This monster concert was a benefit for Beethoven called an Akademie , performed in the unheated Theater an der Wien on December 22, Beethoven wanted to bring together all of the forces who played the symphonies and concerto and performed the Gloria and Sanctus of the C Major Mass in a grand finale featuring himself as piano soloist.
Witnesses confirm that the hastily composed and under-rehearsed finale was a disaster. Ignaz von Seyfried, Kapellmeister of the theater, writes:. When the master brought out his orchestral Fantasia with choruses, he arranged with me at the somewhat hurried rehearsal, with wet [ ink ] voice-parts as usual, that the second variation should be played without the repeat. In the evening, however, absorbed in his creation, he forgot all about the instructions which he had given, repeated the first part while the orchestra accompanied the second ….
This work, completely original in concept, has been devalued both by its unfortunate debut and by unfair comparisons with the Ninth Symphony, composed some sixteen years later. Thoroughly rehearsed and passionately performed, however, the Choral Fantasy can evoke much of the spirit of the later work, a sort of Ode to Joy Lite.
First, it gives us a rare glimpse of Beethoven freely improvising at the piano; though we have no record of what he might have actually played in the premiere, he wrote down the introductory fantasia some years later. The opening Adagio tests the limits of the performer and the instrument; the score blackens, first with 32nd notes, then 64th, and even th notes! Like the second movement of the Fourth Piano Concerto, which premiered before intermission in the concert, the Finale begins with a dialogue between ominous martial strings and a conciliatory piano response.
Like the Ode to Joy, the heart of the work is a series of variations on a simple stepwise theme. A three-note fanfare precedes the introduction of the theme, played in the simplest Classic style. Beethoven had used the same melody in for his lied entitled Gegenliebe. Delicate variations follow for flute, two oboes in parallel thirds, a trio of clarinets and bassoon, and string quartet before the full orchestra takes up the theme.
Some of the celestial modulations Beethoven will use in the Ninth Symphony are also tested here. The chorus enters in the final quarter with an exuberant paean to the harmony of life, the power of music, and the gift of art.
His fight against his hearing difficulties which began when he was a comparatively young man and which he knew were incurable combined with his failure to find a loving wife. Though he fell in love frequently - notably with Bettina Brentano whom he met in - he never married.
His increasing isolation from the world because of his deafness led him to be bad tempered and difficult though it inspired rather than hindered his musical genius.
By he was completely deaf, but some of his greatest works were composed from this world of silence - his piano sonatas and, in , his ninth symphony for example. The following year, in , he completed his string quartet opus , among other works.
But in December in Vienna he developed pneumonia and underwent the first of four operations to try to save his life. On March 26 he died aged 56 in Vienna. An autopsy showed he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
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