The great Mass in D is a totally different proposition. It was the slow and gradual outgrowth of one of the periods of Beethoven’s life where soul-shaking problems crowded ceaselessly upon him. He began to work upon it with the idea of producing it at the enthronement of his friend and pupil, the Archduke Rudolph, as Archbishop of Olmütz. But as it slowly expanded the composer forgot more and more why he had originally conceived it. It became in the grandest and deepest sense an expression of its creator’s profoundest philosophies. Barring three movements of the work, none of the _Missa Solemnis_ was ever performed during the composer’s lifetime. And, singularly enough, those three movements were presented at the concert on May 7, 1824, at which the Ninth Symphony was heard for the first time. They had one other performance before Beethoven died—in St. Petersburg at the instigation of the Prince Galitzin.
The Mass in D, stupendous creation that it is, is far from a practical church work. It lacks all pretense of ritualistic use. For one thing, its vast proportions, the length of the individual sections, and the duration of the score as a whole would completely unfit it for ecclesiastical ceremony. The Mass is “unchurchly” in the highest degree. According to Bekker, Beethoven “breaks through the walls which divide the church from the world; his church extends to the limits of his vision; his altar is the heart of the universe, and he will suffer no dogmatic limitations.” Above the Kyrie the composer inscribed the words: “From the heart—may it go to the heart.” He intended the work “for the democratic concert hall rather than for polite social circles.”
The peak of the _Missa Solemnis_ is undoubtedly the great fugue “Et vitam venturi” of the Credo. And here, incidentally, the demands on the singing voices are perhaps more cruel than anywhere in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony or in the most arduous pages of _Fidelio_. Only now and then is there a wholly satisfying performance of the Mass in D. Be this as it may, there are two pages so extraordinary that no listener can ever fail to be stirred to the depths by them. One is the “Benedictus,” with its transfigured violin solo and a prefatory orchestral movement so spiritualized that it takes rank by the side of the loftiest slow movements the composer ever wrote; the other is the “Agnus Dei” and its “Prayer for inner and outer peace,” in which Beethoven causes the drums and trumpet calls of war to alternate with agonized supplications for peace.