When he received the commission to write a Mass, Beethoven feared comparison with Haydn. But his Mass in C, a new Urtext edition of which is published by Bärenreiter, established itself as a masterpiece which remains in the standard repertoire today.

In 1807 Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, Haydn’s final patron, commissioned Beethoven to write a mass to celebrate the nameday of the prince’s wife Maria. This was Beethoven’s first composition for church use, but he happily accepted the task, despite apprehensions about comparison with Haydn, and he completed his Mass in C that summer. The work was announced as an extraordinarily fine mass, and was duly performed on 13 September that year. Esterházy was unimpressed, but Beethoven seems to have been particularly pleased with it, noting that the text had been handled as it had rarely been handled in the past, and stating that the work lay particularly close to his heart. He was even prepared to give it to Breitkopf & Härtel for publication without the usual fee, and they eventually published it in 1812. It has since become a staple work for choral societies, though it is rarely performed in its liturgical context.

Several modern editions of the work have been published, most notably the one by Jeremiah McGrann for the new complete Beethoven edition (Beethoven Werke Gesamtausgabe, VIII, 2, Munich, 2003). This describes each of the sources in minute detail and attempts to list every variant, no matter now insignificant, in every source. The present edition, however, differs from this and other editions in several ways, of which the most important are as follows:

1. The relationship between the original edition by Breitkopf & Härtel and the manuscript sources used for the first performance has been reassessed, leading to far more weight being given to the manuscript sources where they conflict with or supplement the original edition. In such places these sources often have a preferable version, which has been reproduced here – in some cases for the first time.

2. Where variants occur between different sources, the reasons for choosing one variant rather than another are given far more frequently in the Commentary, especially where the choice differs from that in previous editions.

3. Extensive advice has been given about performance issues, especially where these relate to notational ambiguities.

4. A realisation of the figured-bass organ part is included in the score, for the assistance of those unfamiliar with figured bass and for conductors who wish to see what has been provided for the organist. The precise chords were never fully written out in the sources, and the two sources containing the figured bass sometimes conflict or are plainly inaccurate.

5. The original sources make clear that the solo voices were expected to sing in the tutti sections in most movements. Thus the present edition incorporates them on the same staves as the other voices in these passages, as in the original sources, instead of presenting them on separate staves with spurious rests during tutti passages, as in other modern editions.

Although the edition has all the scholarly apparatus of an urtext edition, therefore, it is also aimed at those who seek a combination of a reliable text and sound editorial advice on how that text might best be interpreted in performance.

Barry Cooper
(from [t]akte 1/2016)