So says the Wikipedia article on Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Bassoons? Does the writer of this realise what the chorus sopranos are asked to do?! This is a work where you can’t tell by looking at a vocal line whether it is for soloists or for chorus. Where when you get an F on the top line of the stave, you think ‘Ah, a nice low bit’.
So why am I letting myself in for it? Particularly when it involves yet more trips to Gloucester? The thing is that for some years I’ve realised that this is a huge gap in the works I’ve sung, and yet one that is hard to fill because the Missa Solemnis is not often performed, although at the moment it seems to be relatively popular. So when I found out Gloucester Choral Society were about to do it, I signed up. Not really knowing quite how I’d get on with the work, since I don’t particularly enjoy singing the Ninth Symphony, which is the closest thing to it, or even listening to the last movement of the Ninth.
So far so good. I’ve learnt that the high tessitura is only part of the difficulty – add in everchanging rhythms, tricky interaction with the soloists, large intervals and the huge fugues which end two of the movements. Furthermore, as with the Mahler 8 at 3 Choirs, we are using German pronunciation and I’m aware that Italian Latin is still passing my lips. For some reason it was easier to do this in the Mahler, perhaps because of the less familiar text or the proximity of actual German in the second movement.
This is a hard piece to get into and I know Beethovenians who really don’t understand it. At times we are back with straightforward choral writing that could come out of Haydn, and then other parts are (as with the Grande Messe des Morts) so advanced that one feels the musical world has yet to catch up with them. I can only really compare it to works like Gurrelieder in this respect. But it definitely beats the last movement of the Ninth.