Music Research Forum Professor Scott Burnham

Late Style in Exile: Beethoven and the Missa Solemnis

 Massive, difficult, and ever imposing, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis has often been exiled to its own problematic space, apart from the rest of his later music.  This talk will engage some of the contradictions and paradoxes perceived in the Missa Solemnis, listening out for late-style musical traits as well as for features that have made the work problematic throughout its reception history.

Scott Burnham is Distinguished Professor of Music at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as Scheide Professor of Music History Emeritus at Princeton University.  He is the author of Beethoven Hero (Princeton, 1995), a study of the values and reception of Beethoven’s heroic-style music, and Mozart’s Grace (Princeton, 2013), an exploration of beauty in the music of Mozart. His recent co-edited volume Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces (Princeton, 2021) features thoughts about music by a wide range of creative spirits.​