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Haydn's Conversion Masses

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411890902913107

1547-7304

Caryl Clark,

Historical and Archaeological Studies

Abstract Among the “multiple audiences” for Haydn's Masses were nonbelievers and catechumens: that is, congregants in the process of converting to Catholicism. The clue to this interpretation is Haydn's omission of a crucial article of faith in the Credo settings of four masses. In three settings, the textual omission relates to the conversionary experiences of the patron saint in whose name the mass is offered: St. John of God, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Martin of Tours. A detailed examination of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the Missa St. Joannis de Deo (ca. 1775), a missa brevis honoring the patron saint of the Barmherzige Brüder (Brothers Hospitalers), suggests that Haydn was sensitive to the needs of both the clergy and the congregants to whom they ministered. Haydn's use of brevior practices disguises the textual omission by declaiming different lines of text simultaneously. The resulting polytextuality produces the aural equivalent of Mauscheln, a term associated with the muddle or mixture of language, dialects and accent associated with Yiddish or Jew-speak. In accommodating the needs of transitioning believers, Haydn demonstrates his understanding of the important role played by conversionary ministry in the history of the church. To my “simpatico” mentor and friend, Neal Zaslaw. I am grateful to Tom Beghin of McGill University, who generously shared the results of his research into Haydn's Credos in his unpublished paper, “Credo ut intelligam: Haydn's Reading of the Credo-Text” (2002). As Beghin observes, “Schnerich not only blew the whistle but also hastened to offer solutions; the title of his presentation tellingly read: ‘Textual Mistakes in the masses of Joseph Haydn and Their Corrections’ [Beghin's emphasis]/‘Die textlichen Versehen in den Messen Josef Haydns und deren Korrektur,’ Haydn-Zentenarfeier. III. Kongress der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, Wien 1909.” I'd also like to thank Eva Branda and Jaclyn Cepler, students in Ph.D. and M.A. programs respectively at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, for their research assistance. This article is adapted from a book currently in production with Cambridge University Press, Haydn's Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage, whose research was funded in part by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Notes 1 Pope Pius's Inter plurimas pastoralis officio was issued motu proprio, or by the pope's own action, in November 1903. See Katherine Bergeron, Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 129. 2 The Nelsonmesse and the Theresienmesse also omit the clause “qui ex Patre Filoque procedit”/“who from Father and Son proceeds”—a line referring to the Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune God. This line is also missing from the Missa in tempore belli, also known as the Paukenmesse, and Missa Sancti Bernardi von Offida nicknamed the Heiligemesse, both of which date from 1796. See H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 172. 3 Paul Badura-Skoda, “On Schubert's Mass Texts,” American Choral Review 32 (1990), 6, citing Reinhard Van Hoorickx, “Textänderungen in Schuberts Messen,” in Kongressbericht des Wiener Schubert-Kongresses 1978, ed. Otto Brusatti (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1979), 249. 4 Walther Dürr, “Schubert's Treatment of the Liturgical Mass Text,” in Goethe and Schubert: Across the Divide, Proceedings of the Conference, “Goethe and Schubert in Perspective and Performance,” Trinity College Dublin 2003, ed. Lorraine Byrne and Dan Farrelly (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2003), 218, 219. 5 Dürr, “Schubert's Treatment of the Liturgical Mass Text,” 227, 230, 233. 6 Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4, 172. 7 Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4, 439. 8 Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4, 172. 9 As Landon observes, “in concert performances and altogether in non-Catholic countries, the missing words are nowadays omitted.” Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4, 532. 10 Because of their extensive work in so many different communities, the Barmherzige Brüder were unaffected by the reforms of Joseph II in the 1780s. See Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 192–3. In this study of the important role played by monasteries in European life, Beales notes that, “in Catholic Europe in 1750, there were at least 15,000 monasteries for men and 10,000 for women, containing in total roughly 200,000 monks and least 150,000 nuns, making the regular clergy more numerous than the secular, and the monks by themselves comparable in numbers to the secular” (291). In a later study, Beales observes that in 1780, “at least 20 per cent of all the land in Lower Austria was owned by monasteries, and more than 70 per cent of all clergy were monastic.” See Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 233. 11 See 200 Jahre Krankenhaus und Konvent der Barmherzigen Brüder Eisenstadt (n.p.: 1960), 23–25. 12 Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, 38; and David Wyn Jones, Oxford Composer Companion: Haydn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13. 13 Acta Musicalia no. 185h and no. 185i, reproduced in The Haydn Yearbook 17 (1992), 33–35 and 40–41. 14 See The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, s.v. “John of God, St.” 15 According to Jewish records, two hundred Jews were supposed to convene at their monastery each week to hear these sermons. Kurt Schubert, ed., The Austrian Jewish Museum (Eisenstadt: n.p., 1989), 13. In the entry on the “Barmherzigen Brüder” in the Historisches Lexikon Wien in 5 Bänden (Wien: Kremayr and Scheriau, 1992–97). Felix Czeike notes only that the Order was called to Vienna during the “Klosteroffensiv” in the early-seventeenth century to assist with the Counter-Reformation task of converting to Catholicism the large segment of the population that had become Protestant. 16 Marion A. Kaplan, ed., Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 90. “Christian participants in the conversion process saw each conversion as a victory, but only a small part of the larger picture. Once baptized, the convert was left largely to his or her own devices, and subsequent economic and spiritual success varied widely from case to case.” 17 In addition to the Barmherzige Brüder apothecary, another pharmacy opened in the “königliche Freistadt” in 1760. Since the early-eighteenth century, the Esterházy family had a Hofapotheker within the palace. The first mention of an apothecary shop in Eisenstadt is 1665. See Kurt Ryslavy, “Materialien zur Geschichte der Apotheken und Apotheker im Burgenland,” Burgenländische Forschungen 68 (1979), 8 and 92ff. 18 Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723–1939, trans. from the Hebrew by Leonard Oschry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 202. 19 Today the Brothers advertise on their Web site that “the combined symbols of the pomegranate and the cross represent ‘charity and sacrifice.’ The bursting fruit expresses the need for love to expand while the cross reminds us that there can be no charity without sacrifice… . The pomegranate is a fruit red inside and surmounted by a crown. Worldly writers make it a symbol of royalty, but in Holy Scripture it is the symbol of Charity.” Cited from A Hero of Charity: St. John of God, by Rev. Fr. Ignatius-Mary Magnin, on the Web site of The Brothers of St. John of God (1996), www.hospitallers.org/pomegranate.aspx (consulted January 19, 2008). 20 1 Kings 7:18 and 20. Pomegranates formed the border at the top of the capitals at the entryway to the Temple. The rind of the pomegranate contains tannic acid used in medicine for contracting the skin. 21 See “Barmherzige Brüder,” in Oxford Composer Companion: Haydn, 13; and Georg August Griesinger's biography (1810), as translated by Vernon Gotwals, Joseph Haydn: Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), 14. 22 Landon notes that 1768 saw the second known performance of Haydn's Stabat mater, speculating that perhaps the Brothers had something to do with the first performance the previous year. Joseph Martin Kraus records hearing the work performed at the convent church of the Brothers of Mercy in Vienna on April 18, 1783. See Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 2, 144, 474. 23 Carl Maria Brand speculates that Haydn wrote the mass on commission, or to thank the Brothers for having established a branch of the Order in Eisenstadt. Die Messen von Joseph Haydn (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1941), 133. Albert Dies records that, when Haydn died, he left the Brothers of Mercy in Eisenstadt 50 florins (and another 50 to the nearby Franciscans). See Gotwals, Joseph Haydn, 194. 24 See introduction to Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo (Hob. XXII:7), “Little Organ Mass,” with Michael Haydn's prolongation of the Gloria, ed. Denis McCaldin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), vii. 25 Jens Peter Larsen, “Haydn's Early Masses: Evolution of a Genre,” American Choral Review 24/2–3 (1982), 58. 26 Summary of information found in Bruce C. MacIntyre, The Viennese Concerted Mass of the early Classic Period (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Press, 1986), 3–6. 27 MacIntyre, The Viennese Concerted Mass, 23. 28 MacIntyre, The Viennese Concerted Mass, 41 and table 5.1 (115). 29 Distance between worshippers and celebrant is implied by the absence of any mention of congregational participation; only with the Enlightenment reforms of Joseph II was congregational singing enthusiastically promoted. The following summary is taken from MacIntyre, Viennese Concerted Mass (39ff) and is based on Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Missarum Sollemnia), 2 vols, trans. Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1950). 30 MacIntyre, Viennese Concerted Mass, 39. 31 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 1 (rpt. 1986), 234. 32 Jungmann notes that the instructional service was not for catechumens alone; “heretics as well as pagans were admitted as guests in the hope that many would in this way find the path to the true faith” (475). 33 MacIntyre, Viennese Concerted Mass, 43. 34 See Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo, with Michael Haydn's prolongation of the Gloria, ed. Denis McCaldin. See also MacIntyre, Viennese Concerted Mass, Table 5.1, which shows that Mozart's missae breves were between 356 and 569 measures long, as compared to Josef Haydn's, which were 91 to 312 measures long. 35 Mozart remarked that, in Mannheim, masses were very short, and organ playing replaced the Benedictus. See MacIntyre, Viennese Concerted Mass, 41. 36 James Dack, “Sacred Music,” Cambridge Companion to Haydn, ed. Caryl Clark (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 144. 37 In 1778, the latest year in which the Mass might have been composed, Easter fell on April 19, and March 8 fell on a Sunday. That year marked the 100th anniversary of the presentation of a relic of St. John of God to the Order in Vienna by Leopold I in 1678. See “Barmherzigen Brüder,” Historisches Lexikon Wien. If the Mass were limited to performances on the feast day of St. John of God, the Gloria would have been required on only two occasions, since during Lent, the Gloria was omitted, and during Haydn's lifetime, March 8 fell before the beginning of Lent in only two years: 1734 and 1791. (In those two years, Easter fell very late in the liturgical calendar—on April 25 and April 24, respectively.) A Gloria—albeit a short one—was provided to allow for performances of the Mass at other times in the liturgical year. For a list of Easter Sunday dates between 1732 and 1809, see Ecclesiastical Calendar, http://www.hf.rim.or.jp/∼kaji/cal/cal.cgi?1732, accessed April 4, 2008. 38 About the Little Organ Mass, Karl Gustav Fellerer writes that, “the reason of this polytextuality, which ignored comprehensibility or correct musical projection of the text, was the oft-stated demand for a short service.” See “The Liturgical Basis for Haydn's Masses,” Haydn Studies: Proceedings of the International Haydn Conference, Washington DC, 1975, eds. Jens Peter Larson, Howard Serwer, and James Webster (New York: Norton, 1981), 168. 39 Did anyone stop to ponder, however, that the practice of packaging the Church's theology in such a compressed form rendered much of the mass unintelligible to all—Christian and catechist? Or, did the masking of text by music encourage deeper personal reflection in one's heart and soul—the ineffable, beyond words? 40 Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815, introduction. To the end of her life, Empress Maria Theresia “considered it her sacred duty to promote the conversion of Protestants, Orthodox, Muslims and Jews to Roman Catholicism and to refuse them the right of public worship except in some cases where treaties guaranteed it” (181). 41 The term Mauschel, which derives from the proper name Moshe, meaning to act and behave like a Jew, first appeared in 1622, in reference to the secret language transacted during business. See John M. Efron, Medicine and the German Jews: A History (London and New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 54. Early nineteenth-century Germans used the term Mauscheln to characterize the manner in which they heard Jews speaking with a Yiddish accent. The German word Gemauschel, meaning muddle, can also refer to the jumbling of language, dialects, and accents associated with Yiddish, or “Jew-speak.” See ch. 4, “The Secret Tongue of the Jews,” in Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews, ed. Sander Gilman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 139ff. 42 With this observation, I am not suggesting that Christian composers in general, or Haydn in particular, were bigoted or possibly mocking of Jewish worship; rather, I am attempting to acknowledge that Haydn's environmental soundscape included the possibility of hearing Jewish recitation, and that, in the context of attempting to bridge the gap between different traditions of worship, he created what he might have thought to be a kind of sonic bridge to new members of the faith. I'm grateful to Kay Kaufman Shelemay for helping me refine this argument. 43 I'm very grateful to Ed Green for this observation. He further observes that the initial solo intonation “Credo in unum Deum”—we believe in one God—which would have been heard clearly, is precisely the Jewish point-of-view. 44 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 1, “The Credo,” 461ff (esp. 470). 45 Frances Margaret Young, The Making of the Creeds (London: SCM Press, 2002), 9. 46 Arius (250–336), who preached that Christ was not truly divine (i.e., not consubstantial [homoousios] with the Father, and therefore not like Him), was condemned as a heretic. The words “Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri” [God true from God true. Begotten, not made, of one substance with Father] were added to the Creed at the Council of Nicea to counter the heresy of Arius. See Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 1, 464; and “Arianism,” Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm, accessed August 6, 2008. 47 Kenneth R. Stow, “Conversion, Christian Hebraism, and Hebrew Prayer in the Sixteenth Century,” Hebrew Union College Annual 47 (1976), 217–8. The following discussion is based on pp. 220–2. As Stow notes, Christian Hebraism was strongly endorsed in central Italy at the turn of the seventeenth century, with Christian monks actively being encouraged to pray in Hebrew in some monasteries. 48 Stow, “Conversion, Christian Hebraism, and Hebrew Prayer in the Sixteenth Century,” 221. 49 Introduction to Missa Brevis in F major, ed. Denis McCaldin (London: Faber, 1997). McCaldin suggests that it was more likely that parts of the score were sketched at that time, but that the mass was not completed until around 1749. A later version from 1805 incorporates additional wind parts to the original Austrian church trio scoring. 50 Gotwals, Joseph Haydn: Eighteenth-Century Gentleman and Genius, 14. 51 Jeremiah W. McGrann, “Of Saints, Name Days, and Turks: Some Background on Haydn's Masses Written for Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy,” Journal of Musicological Research 17 (1998), 199. 52 McGrann, “Of Saints, Name Days, and Turks,” 201. The autograph indicates that Haydn wrote the mass between July 10 and August 31, 1798. It acquired the moniker “Nelson Mass” following the four-day visit to the Esterházy court in Eisenstadt by Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and Lady Hamilton in September 1800. Although actual evidence is lacking, this mass may well have been performed in the Bergkirche on Sunday, September 7, 1800, during Nelson's stay. Entry on “Nelson Mass” in Jones, Oxford Composer Companion: Haydn, 248–9. 53 McGrann, “Of Saints, Name Days and Turks,” 202. 54 Karl Semmelweis, Eisenstadt: Ein Führer durch die Landeshauptstadt des Burgenlandes (Eisenstadt: Burgenländisches Landesarchiv, 1960), 92. He records that upgrades to the south tower remained undone owing to the “Verbreitung des neuen Glaubens.” 55 Until this time, Christianity had largely been confined to urban centers. (The term pagani means “country-men.”) See “Martin of Tours,” The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, New Edition, ed. David Hugh Farmer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Oxford Reference Online, University of Toronto Libraries, www.netlibrary.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/Reader/, July 28, 2008. 56 Carl Maria Brand's recomposition of the offending passage, indicating how the missing words could be accommodated within the existing instrumental interlude (measures 26–31), is found in his Die Messen von Joseph Haydn, 340. 57 Beghin, “Credo ut intelligam: Haydn's Reading of the Credo-Text,” unpublished paper, 31. Here Beghin defines an ellipsis as “an omission of a word or words that the listener can easily supply in her mind,” tracing the meaning back to Quintillian, who observed that “it occurs when the words omitted may be clearly gathered from the context” (56, fn. 56). 58 Beghin, “Credo ut intelligam: Haydn's Reading of the Credo-Text,” 32. 59 McGrann, “Of Saints, Name Days and Turks,” 196. 60 The empress's activities as musical patron, collector, performer, and connoisseur are explored in detail in John A. Rice, Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Rice remarks that the autograph of the Theresienmesse entered the collection of the Austrian National Library only in 1826, coming from the private collection of one Michael Bartenschlag (241). 61 The following discussion is based on “Theresa of Avila,” The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, New Edition, ed. David Hugh Farmer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Oxford Reference Online, University of Toronto Libraries, www.netlibrary.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/Reader/, July 28, 2008; and www.karmel.at/eng/teresa.htm, accessed July 28, 2008. 62 James Van Horn Melton, “School, Stage, Salon: Musical Cultures in Haydn's Vienna,” The Journal of Modern History 76/2 (June 2004), 254. “Catholics in the Habsburg monarchy universally observed around eighty-six religious holidays, including Sundays; added to these were the locally celebrated full or partial feast days that could number as many as thirty, depending on the region” (255). In the 1750s and 1760s, however, “an alliance of state and ecclesiastical reformers succeeded in shattering the monopoly that the Jesuits had traditionally held in areas such as censorship and theological training” (263). 63 Maria Hörwarthner, “Joseph Haydn's Library: Attempt at a Literary-Historical Reconstruction,” trans. Kathrine Talbot, in Haydn and His World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 401, 448. 64 Herman A. J. Wegman, Christian Worship in East and West: A Study Guide to Liturgical History, trans. Gordon W. Lathrop (New York: Pueblo, 1985), 108. 65 My use of the phrase “multiple audience” expands the concept explored by Elaine Sisman in her article “Haydn's career and the idea of the multiple audience,” ch. 1 in The Cambridge Companion to Haydn, ed. Caryl Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3–16.