A mass by the Romantic composer Robert Schumann is worthy of attention in several respects. In Lutheran Zwickau in Saxony – the composer’s birthplace – one could hardly encounter the Catholic liturgy. Moreover, Robert Schumann was not a churchgoer in the true sense of the word. At best, he developed religious ideas in general terms from the perspective of a Romantic artist. It is therefore not surprising that sacred vocal music is almost absent from the composer’s oeuvre.
We know Robert Schumann as a composer of songs, piano and chamber music, as a late symphonist and profound musical poet.
It was only when he moved to Düsseldorf in 1850 that, for practical reasons, his focus broadened to include a genre of works that had not previously aroused much interest in him as a composer. Now the new municipal music director also had to deal with concerts in large churches.
Performances of Bach’s sacred works soon became a particular challenge; in 1851 Schumann conducted the St John Passion, soon followed by a concert of the Mass in B minor in Düsseldorf. It was only logical that he conceived and realised his own Mass in C minor in 1852. This sacred work is ultimately a distinctly concert hall mass. The unpractised use of liturgical Latin cannot be concealed, and the very free treatment of the text modules demonstrates a purely artistic approach to the content. The reflections on contrapuntal studies with the polyphonic structures of Bach’s works also reveal a musician who thinks and feels more symphonically.
Only excerpts of the Mass in C minor were performed under the composer’s direction in 1853. Schumann himself did not live to see the premiere of the entire mass. It remains a musical legacy in a hidden corner of his wide-ranging oeuvre – a seemingly strange and exotic excursion by the Romantic tone poet, whose surprises make you sit up and take notice. At no point, however, does the mass sound like a tribute to the concert tradition of the Düsseldorf music scene. On the contrary, the composer himself confirmed that his Missa was ‘crafted with great love’.
Georg Bizet’s Te Deum is similarly ambivalent in the context of its creation and yet different in terms of its significance in the composer’s oeuvre as a whole. written in 1858 as a competition entry, it was intended to pave the way for the Prix de Rome scholarship holder and great French opera composer to pursue a musical sidetrack. Only two musicians responded to the call for entries for the “best sacred composition”, so the conditions seemed promising.
Nevertheless, Bizet was unable to win the prize and let the work disappear into the back of a drawer in disgrace. Flanked by large operatic choral movements and arias reminiscent of Mozart, the work demonstrates a masterly skill and command of the technique of traditional vocal polyphony. Parts of the work were later reused in operatic scenes. The Te Deum itself remained unknown and unpublished. It was not discovered, published and premiered by the Singakademie zu Berlin until 1971.
Beethoven’s choral fantasy has become known as the ‘Little Ninth’. The characteristics of the composition contradict the uniform character of a work genre; the Choral Fantasy is a piano sonata, piano concerto and cantata with virtuoso solo piano accompaniment at the same time. There has never been anything like it before, and there have never really been any imitators.
One could assume that Beethoven began with a sonata, only to turn to a concerto before it culminates in a rousing choral anthem. However, the seemingly arbitrary form in terms of the development of structural ideas corresponds to the plan of the composition. Beethoven had chosen exactly this structure because he needed a glamorous, glittering conclusion to a concert planned under the title “Vienna Academy”, the premiere of which took place on 22 December 1808.
The work was composed in a very short time and had to be prepared in a hurry. Beethoven had not yet put the introduction on paper for the premiere, but had to improvise. As there was also no time for the necessary rehearsals, the performance ultimately had to be interrupted in the chaos.
In the Choral Fantasy, a composer and performer are both on the wrong track and searching for new forms of expression that neither recognise models nor inspire epigones. The development of the idea is in the foreground, the path is the goal, and the aberration is intentional. This is why the idea of choral fantasy is actually unmistakable and hits the nerve of our everyday lives today: those who want to be surprised will find new options, while those who wait for the familiar will be taken by surprise and ultimately have to remain in helpless amazement. Only those who are prepared to go off the beaten track will find something new.
