The image on the cover of this period recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis is a striking one: against a simple ecru background, a red cross pierces a red heart beneath it. It is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an ancient design evoking a Catholic devotional tradition that honours Christ's suffering on behalf of humankind. In Beethoven's day, this design took on a more militant connotation, becoming the insignia of the Catholic and Royal Army during the so-called War of the Vendée in 1793–96. The result of a counterrevolutionary uprising in the fervently Catholic coastal region of the Vendée (south of Nantes), this civil war was an especially bloody affair with a death toll in the tens of thousands. To my knowledge, Beethoven never made reference to this war, nor is this context mentioned in the recording's accompanying materials. But the design stands as a provocative symbol for this most monumental of Catholic mass settings, with its vivid depictions of militarism, its prayers for what Beethoven called ‘inner and outer peace’, and its complex and seemingly intractable relationship with Beethoven's own identity as a Catholic.Footnote ¹

The Sacred Heart also calls to mind the remark that Beethoven inscribed on the score he presented to his friend and pupil, Archduke Rudolph: ‘Vom Herzen – Möge es wieder – zu Herzen gehn!’ (‘From the heart – may it go back – to the heart!’).Footnote ² Originally intended for Rudolph's installation as Archbishop of Olmütz on 9 March 1820, the mass turned into a colossal undertaking, as documented by the extensive surviving sketches. By the time of the ceremony, Beethoven had only gotten as far as the Credo, and it would not be until 19 March 1823 that he would present a fair copy to Rudolph. Beethoven considered the mass his greatest achievement and elicited subscriptions from the movers and shakers of European high society, including the monarchs of Russia, Prussia, France and Denmark. Through these subscriptions, he broadcast his message of peace directly to the leaders of a continent that had only recently emerged from over a decade of incessant war.

The Sacred Heart's association with Catholic devotion brings up longstanding questions about Beethoven's own views toward organized religion. Bas van Putten, in the well-written liner notes to this recording (translated by Alayne Leslie), articulates more or less the dominant perspective when he calls the Missa Solemnis a ‘post-ecumenical composition that deals with our relation to the transcendental’ and suggests that it ‘unwillingly wrested itself from its Catholic chains’ (p. 13). Recently, Nicholas Chong has made a compelling case that scholars’ attempts to claim the Missa Solemnis as a ‘universalist’ work undervalue Beethoven's engagement with a specifically Catholic theology.Footnote ³ These issues are difficult to unpack since Beethoven, despite being baptized and buried as a Catholic, espoused an essentially humanist philosophy and became fascinated with Eastern religions and mysticism in his later life. But as Chong argues, the elements of these other faiths that most appealed to Beethoven are congruent with a Christian worldview, and Beethoven continued to cultivate an interest in the writings of Catholic thinkers such as the Bavarian theologian Johann Michael Sailer (to whom he also attempted, unsuccessfully, to entrust his nephew Karl as a pupil in 1819). In the later nineteenth century and in the postmodern age, the idea that Beethoven wanted to distance himself from Catholic dogma has appealed to many critics and listeners. However, the Catholicism with which Beethoven was familiar was more nuanced than many scholars have implied, and Chong's work challenges us to strive for a more complex understanding of Beethoven's musical theology.

Whatever his religious outlook, one thing is certain: Beethoven personalized the Missa Solemnis in ways that make it a unique contribution to the genre. Beyond the many imaginative instances of word painting, Beethoven's setting includes subtle changes to the text of the Ordinary. These include elements such as the poignant use of ‘ah’ and ‘o!’ before ‘miserere nobis’ (‘have mercy on us’) in the Gloria and the repetition of emotionally important words. Even the unassuming word ‘et’ (‘and’) takes on special significance: as Barry Cooper has noted, ‘Out of thousands of settings of the Mass text, this is perhaps the only one to make something significant and motivic out of the numerous repetitions of this word, thereby emphasizing the many facets of Christian belief’.Footnote ⁴ By treating ‘et’ as the connective tissue of the Credo, Beethoven transforms its doctrinaire text into something more like a Klopstockian ode – a sublime accumulation of poetic images and musical ideas.

Realizing these subtle details is one of the many interpretive challenges to which the Dutch conductor Daniel Reuss rises admirably in this recording. Directing the Capella Amsterdam (which he has led since 1990) and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century (which he has frequently guest conducted since the death of Frans Brüggen in 2014), Reuss marries the refinement of an accomplished period conductor with an earnestness that befits the music of the early Romantic era. Indeed, this recording is both ‘warmer’ and ‘wetter’ than the landmark period recording by the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, led by John Eliot Gardiner (1990). This is partly the result of different approaches to mixing and different acoustics, and partly the result of Reuss's more restrained tempi (or one should say, Gardiner's unusually unrestrained tempi).

The Kyrie stands as a particularly beautiful example of Reuss's approach. Though capacious, this movement nowhere strives for the rhetorical excess of later movements. The form is a clear tripartite one (plus coda), and the vocal ranges remain well within reason. It is the details that stand out here: the terse but poignant woodwind commentaries, the gorgeous counterpoint of the ‘Christe eleison’ section, the interplay of soloists and choir, even the use of silence. All of this is captured magnificently in this recording, and indeed, Beethoven's sensitivity to the text and to his musical forces are fully displayed here. This is apparent from the initial entrances of the choir and soloists, in which the solo parts emerge imperceptibly out of the texture and gradually crescendo into view – a masterful spatial effect that the score implies but does not make explicit.

The ‘Christe eleison’ section is one of many glimmering moments of introspective beauty in this recording. In these moments – the ravishing central episode of the Credo, the breathtaking Benedictus with its glowing violin solo, the deeply moving Agnus Dei, and more – one wishes sincerely that Beethoven had found his way back to opera late in life. The four soloists (Carolyn Sampson, soprano; Marianne Beate Kielland, alto; Thomas Walker, tenor; and David Wilson-Johnson, bass) deserve the highest praise for their exquisite blend, judicious use of vibrato, and attentiveness to the text.

A different challenge is presented by the mass's protracted moments of sheer ecstasy, especially in the Gloria and the Credo. The audacity of the choral writing in these movements is mind-boggling: within a few pages of the Gloria, for instance, the choir segues from an uncomfortably low-lying stretto (bars 440ff., on ‘in gloria Dei patris’) to an imitative passage in which it is pushed to its uppermost limits, with the sopranos climbing up to a high B♮ (bars 527ff., on ‘in excelsis Deo’). These passages feel slightly less demonstrative here than in Gardiner's recording, and one somewhat misses the vertiginous quality of Gardiner's interpretation, in which the ensemble seems to careen giddily from one climax to the next. Nevertheless, Reuss delivers a remarkable energy in his own right and projects a marvellous sense of flow that never lacks propulsion.

The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century is also in top form, and it is worth emphasizing just how much is gained by performing this work on period instruments. Whether it be the strident tenor trombone solo representing the last trumpet in the Credo, the solemn introduction of the Sanctus, the mysterious murkiness of the ‘Praeludium’ (an imitation of organ music in the gebundener Styl to accompany the Elevation of the Host), or the terrifying outbursts of violence in the Agnus Dei, the use of period instruments creates a vivid sonic tableau that enhances meaning throughout. Revealing the full splendour of Beethoven's late, great mass, this superb recording is a welcome addition to the catalogue.