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Ludwig van Beethoven. (Music Reviews).(Missa solemnis)(Book Review)-

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Ludwig van Beethoven. Missa solemnis. Herausgegeben von Norbert Gertsch. (Werke, ser. 8, vol. 3.) (Veroffentlichungen des Beethoven-Hauses Bonn.) Munich: G. Henle, c2000. [Vorwort, p. vii-viii; Zum vorliegenden Band, p. ix-xii; score, p. 1-263; Krit. Bericht, p. 265-346. HN 4324 (paper), [euro]152; HN 4325 (cloth), [euro]160.]

In a "Zwischenbericht zur Gesamtausgabe Beethoven Werke," Ernst Herttrich (Bonner Beethoven-Studien 1 [1999]:133-40) recapitulates the much lamented history of an edition that, in the forty-some years since its inception in 1961 under the auspices of the Beethoven-Archiv in Bonn, has produced a mere thirty volumes, of which twelve still lack the critical reports that would justify any claim to authority in the first place. Alan Tyson pointedly noted the vulnerability to such a claim in his review of two early volumes (Musical Times 109 [1968]: 950-51): "textual justice must not merely be done but must be seen to be done." Herttrich's story has its bright side, for the Richtlinien--those editorial guidelines at the basis of the edition--were altered around 1990, under the guidance of a newly appointed Editionsleiter (editor-in-chief), together with renewed assurances that no volume would appear without its mandatory critical report. And the pace has quickened. Two recent volumes, both rich in new evidence and generous in the printing of drafts and earlier versions, have been worth the wait: Helga Luhning's exemplary edition of the Lieder und Gesange mit Klavierbegleitung (ser. 12, vol. 1 [1990]) and Petra Weber-Bockholdt's most welcome Schottische und walisische Lieder (ser. 11, vol. 1 [1999]).

The virtues of the latest volume of the Beethoven Werke are in some ways more subtle of apprehension. The Missa solemnis, Adorno's "verfremdtes Hauptwerk" ("alienated magnum opus," as translated in Theodor W. Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music: Fragments and Texts, ed. Rolf Tiedemann [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998], 141), is one of those works that seems ever in need of renewed scrutiny, both in its substance and in the text through which it is conveyed. An urgency to understand it seemed even to precede its composition: "Frau von Weissenthurn wishes to hear something of the ideas that underlay the composition of your Mass," wrote a visitor in Beethoven's conversation book in December of 1819, years before any of the work was ready to be heard (Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, ed. Karl-Heinz Kohler and Grita Herre [Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag fur Musik, 1972], 172, my...

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