Faith in Beethoven

Why did Beethoven, the hero of humanism, write music for a mass? Musicologist Daniel Chua explores the maestro’s faith.

Daniel KL Chua

Daniel KL Chua is a musicologist and Professor and Chair of music at the University of Hong Kong. He writes on music, particularly Beethoven, and the intersection between music, philosophy and theology.

Agrand statue of Beethoven as a classical hero seats him on a throne on a dias.

Max Klinger’s Beethoven monument.

Bach’s theological credentials are impeccable, as Jeremy Begbie wrote about previously for Seen & Unseen. But Beethoven’s? Not really. In fact, not at all. Most scholars on Beethoven see him as a secularizing force. If Bach represent the summit of theological expression in western music history, then Beethoven is the poster boy of the Enlightenment progress. He spells the end of sacred music. In the narrative of music history, Beethoven is the catalyst for a new secular epoch. After Beethoven, music is no longer about God but humanity; sacred music drops out from the historical narrative as something irrelevant or even regressive to the progress of modernity.

But it is not just any Beethoven who wields this secularising power. It is a very particular Beethoven, more myth than man. This is Beethoven as Promethean hero. He overcomes his deafness by defiance, grabbing fate by the throat as it knocks loudly in the opening bars of the Fifth symphony - da-da-da-daaaa! - and triumphing over its C-minor threat in a glorious blaze of C major in the finale. The symphony is a musical model of human self-determination. It projects Beethoven as a revolutionary artist living in revolutionary times, channelling the anticlerical and antimonarchist fervour of the French Revolution in musical form. His story is one of freedom and autonomy; and his music is made in his image, free from servitude to church and court, and free to be itself.

This Promethean image precludes Beethoven from being a sacred composer. It is not that he isn’t a sacred composer; rather, he can’t be one in this historical narrative. In fact, Beethoven stands as a rival to the sacred, because by the beginning of the 20th Century, artists such as Max Klinger were building shrines to the composer: Beethoven is the high priest of an art religion.

The Beethoven monument

A statue of a seat hero, Beethoven, sits on a raised dais in a purpsoe built rom

Max Klinger’s Beethoven monument.

The Vienna Secession’s fourteenth exhibition in 1902 was a shrine dedicated to Beethoven with Max Klinger ‘s monument as the altar.

But there is a problem. Beethoven wrote sacred music. Not much, admittedly, but enough, including what he declared to be his ‘greatest work’ – the Missa Solemnis. So in order to uphold a more secular Beethoven, scholars have had to explain away his sacred music as inconsequential and his religious beliefs as unorthodox or non-existent. They tie themselves up in knots trying to solve the problem, especially with regard to Beethoven’s magnum opus. Although there is nothing theologically unorthodox in the Missa Solemnis, somehow the mass has to be theologically unorthodox for these commentators: at best it is a mass for deist, but it is mostly a mass about humanity. The liturgical bits can be dismissed, they claim, as something that stifles what is truly Beethovenian; instead, to grasp its meaning, you have to listen to the mass as if it where a symphony resonant with tones of human freedom and autonomy. It is almost as if Beethoven wrote the mass against his will. In one recent biography, the chapter on the Missa Solemnis opens with the incredulous question: “Why did Beethoven write a mass?”

Why not? The problem is not Beethoven’s (obviously) but the biographer’s belief in a history that sits uncomfortably with the composer. Yes, Beethoven was a revolutionary in the times of revolution. Yes, he was born in the Age of Enlightenment, and even declared ‘freedom and progress’ as the main purpose of art. But that does not make him French; he did not step foot in France, and despite the Napoleonic aftermath of the French Revolution, what Enlightenment meant in Bonn where Beethoven was born and in Vienna where he died, could not be anticlerical or antimonarchist because these cities were under the rule of Enlightened despots who by definition had both kingly and ecclesiastic functions. In other words, Beethoven was a child of a religious Enlightenment. This means that his innovative and radical works were not composed against the sacred but were inspired by it. This is not to say that there is no truth in a Promethean view of Beethoven or that there is no conflict in his music during this tumultuous period in Europe, but it does imply that Beethoven upheld sacred music. In fact, he leads it in a new direction. And, if we have ears to hear, then the Missa Solemnis can open up a new sound world full of theological resonance.

While working on the Missa, Beethoven wrote out the Latin text of the mass on a piece of paper and added a German translation next to each line. As a teenager, Beethoven regularly played the organ for mass in the court at Bonn; he knew the Catholic liturgy from memory. So why would he write out the text and its translation? Because he wanted to explore the meaning of each word more fully, looking up a German dictionary for definitions and synonyms that would enlarge his understanding of the text. And if the expression mark in the score of the Missa (‘with devotion’) and his collection of devotional literature in his library is anything to go by, this process was an act of meditation for the composer. This was no routine setting of the mass. In fact, if you listen carefully, not only did Beethoven look up individual words to amplify their meaning, it seems that he also looked up the biblical reference to set their meaning in context.

Listen to the Sanctus: you will hear echoes of the biblical book of Isaiah, chapter six. Beethoven conjures up a temple trembling at its foundations as the angels sing ‘Holy, holy, holy’. Similarly, in the Benedictus, you will hear echoes of the Palm Sunday procession from the gospels. The music is a match in the form of a pastoral; it depicts Jesus arriving as a king but in the form a humble shepherd riding a donkey, as the crowds chant “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” There is no sense of Promethean triumph here, but the sound of meekness and majesty.

We don’t need to tie ourselves up in knots to understand Beethoven or the Missa solemnis as secular. May be, to use the composer’s own words, Beethoven was just an ordinary Catholic writing extraordinary music to ‘instil religious affections’ in the congregants. This view would be a more faithful account of the composer’s life, but it would also radically change the way we understand Beethoven and the subsequent ‘progress’ of music history in our textbooks. And this, perhaps, points to the most critical function of sacred music: to reveal the hearts of its hearers. The Missa solemnis, as Beethoven's greatest work, is a capstone which many have rejected as the cornerstone of his oeuvre. Try not to trip up on it.

Listen to Beethoven's mass

Review

Art

Culture

26 July 2024

5 min read

Paradise cottage: Milton reimagin’d

Artist Richard Kenton Webb converses with the blind poet in his former home.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A black and white illustration shows a man holding a walk stick standing among tomb-like structures.

The blind poet. Charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Richard Kenton Webb.

‘Waiting to Speak to Milton’ shows the artist Richard Kenton Webb on a rain-swept night waiting in a valley for a car whose headlights can just be seen at the crest of the hill. For this image he has imagined himself waiting for a lift from John Milton to discuss the poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. As the opening image to Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles it is appropriately positioned in the porch by which visitors enter the cottage.

This image of light appearing in the dark night of the soul symbolises the beginning of Webb’s journey with Milton and his late poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. This has been a 10-year journey that Webb began following a conversation with his son in front of John Martin’s mezzotints for Paradise Lost at the Tate. Following on from his son’s encouragement to begin work, over that period, Webb says Milton has been a companion like Virgil to Dante guiding him through the narrative of his own life including the dark nights of redundancy and lockdown. The result has been 128 drawings, 40 paintings and 12 relief prints forming A Conversation with Milton’s Paradise Lost, a commission of 12 drawings in response to Milton’s pastoral elegy, Lycidas, for the Milton Society of America, and the 13 drawings forming this exhibition, A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes.

Milton proved an effective companion because he, too, had passed through his own dark night of the soul. He arrived in Chalfont St Giles to escape the Great Plague of 1665 after the Republican cause to which he had dedicated more than a decade of his life - being Oliver Cromwell’s unofficial spin doctor - had collapsed around him with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. He had been lucky to escape with his life following imprisonment and the banning of his books. In addition, he had lost his sight, his beloved second wife, much of his money and all of his influence.

Despite these traumas, Milton was able to express his love for his Creator wonderfully in Paradise Lost, which was completed at the cottage in Chalfont St Giles, and Paradise Regain’d, which was inspired whilst there. In both Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton deploys his rich verses and visions of spirituality and the forces of good and evil to reflect on the Restoration of the Monarchy and the loss of the English republic, doing so by means of Biblical stories concerning Jesus and Samson.

Browse Webb's exhibition

A black and white illustration show a person crouching in the corner and lifting as it was a stage drape.

Modes of Apprehension by Richard Kenton Webb – charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Inside a history cottage, black and white illustrations hang on the wall.

Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles.

A black and white illustration shows a two people close together on a pinnacle.

The Pinnacle by Richard Kenton Webb - charcoal and white chalk on paper, 2022.

Webb’s exhibition at Milton’s Cottage in Chalfont St Giles.

In Webb’s view, “Paradise Regain’d is about overcoming impossible situations” while, in Samson Agonistes, Milton’s Redeemer shows “Samson, the blind and foolish man”, “that we can always find hope in our living God even when society does not”. These poems moved Webb out of despair to discover hope because he knew they were heading towards redemption. As a result, he sees Milton as “a great English poet who gives hope, which in itself is a creative act for these difficult times”.

Although the story of Samson pre-dates that of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, Webb’s painting series begins with images inspired by Paradise Regain’d, just as Samson Agonistes followed Paradise Regain’d when both were jointly published in 1671, because Jesus’ resistance of temptation ultimately redeems those, like Samson and Adam and Eve, who were unable to resist.

These are images set against a dark background with the exception of the final Paradise Regain’d image with its white sky depicting a paradise within as Jesus has overcome temptation, is in full communion with God and is about to begin his ministry by calling his first disciples. The images move from the trauma and test of temptation – whether involving hunger, greed, lust, threat, pride or ambition – to a calmness of mind that is equipoise and liberation and which also enables the destruction of false temples.

They are images in which movement is arrested in still moments which form theatrical tableaux. These, like medieval and early Tudor morality plays, involve the viewer in an epic struggle between good and evil, involving temptation, fall and redemption. Webb’s use of charcoal and white chalk on paper emphasises the binary nature of this struggle. Being formed of charcoal and chalk, despite his use of contemporary equivalents for the temptations, the look and feel of Webb’s images also accords well with their exhibition setting, in rooms of low ceilings, uneven white walls, dark beams and furniture.

Webb’s works and exhibition also universalise Milton’s own experience of the dark night of the soul by merging that story with Webb’s own.

As Paradise Lost was the first illustrated poem in the English language, Milton’s poetry has, as Kelly O’Reilly, Director of Milton’s Cottage, has noted “inspired many of our greatest artists, from Blake to Turner, Dore to Dali”. Webb, who consciously works in the continuing tradition of Blake’s visionary art, is extending the tradition of illustrating Milton’s poems. It is appropriate, then, that, by exhibiting these drawings in Milton’s Cottage, they are placed alongside examples of illustrated editions of the poems, plus other paintings and prints relating to Milton.

Milton’s works are not only a repository of rich verse, which also gifted over 600 new words to the English language, but are also a conversation with scripture, its stories and their interpretation, plus the social and political ramifications of the Reformation in the British Isles. Webb’s works and exhibition also universalise Milton’s own experience of the dark night of the soul by merging that story with Webb’s own and linking those powerfully to the themes of Milton’s poems.

The key image, in this regard, is the first in the Paradise Regain’d series (‘Modes of Apprehension’), which sees Jesus in the wilderness turning up the corner of the wilderness backdrop, as in a theatre, to reveal another dimension or reality to existence and experience behind it. Hope is discovered in the midst of desolation, resilience found in the face of temptation. In these ways, Webb achieves his own hope for these works, that, “by responding to Milton’s universal themes of creation, destruction, temptation, love and loss”, he “can help new audiences find fresh ways to engage in Milton’s legacy”.

A Conversation with Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes, Milton’s Cottage, 3 July – 8 September 2024.

Visit the exhibition web site.