ND Expert: Liturgical manuscript from Beethoven raises questions | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › ND Expert: Liturgical manuscript from Beethoven raises questions ND Expert: Liturgical manuscript from Beethoven raises questions Published: October 25, 2012 Author: Michael O. Garvey Peter Jeffrey The recent discovery of a previously unknown musical manuscript by Ludwig van Beethoven provides a glimpse of the composer at work on a medieval hymn he would already have known quite well, according to Peter Jeffrey, Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Beethoven’s manuscript was an arrangement of the Gregorian chant “Pange Lingua,” a hymn often sung in Catholic liturgies during Holy Week. “Beethoven had a Catholic upbringing and certainly knew the liturgical music of his time,” Jeffrey said, “though as an adult he was not an active churchgoer and he composed little music for liturgical use. But as a young man he did work as a church organist in his native Bonn, before he moved to Vienna in 1792 at the age of 22. “From that early period we have some keyboard harmonizations he wrote for the ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah,’ a Gregorian chant that was sung during Holy Week. The study of harmony and counterpoint in those days focused on how to harmonize hymn tunes and chant melodies, so any well-trained musician of that time would have been very familiar with this practice. “Why, in 1821, would Beethoven have written out a harmonization of ‘Pange Lingua,’ a medieval hymn about the Holy Eucharist for the feast of Corpus Christi? The hymn was certainly familiar to him from his childhood, and it’s relatively well-known even today. Beethoven might have been musing about the harmonic potential of the melody, in which case it is basically a counterpoint exercise. Or someone might have asked Beethoven to supply a harmonized version for liturgical use, as Professor Barry Cooper has suggested. In that case we do not have the finished version, if there ever was one. I would not be so quick to agree with Professor Cooper that Beethoven ‘made slight changes to the tune.’ There were multiple versions of the tune in circulation, and to support this claim we need to compare Beethoven’s sketch with the versions of the tune published in the hymnals Beethoven is likely to have known.” A scholar of Gregorian chant, Jeffrey earned a doctoral degree in music history from Princeton, where he studied the Beethoven sketchbooks. Contact: Peter Jeffrey, 203-988-5057, pjeffery@nd.edu Posted In: Faith Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 03, 2022 dCEC to Award 2023 ND Evangelium Vitae Medal to Robert P. George September 22, 2022 In memoriam: Rev. Richard Warner, C.S.C., longtime leader for Notre Dame, Congregation of Holy Cross September 15, 2022 In new book on global Catholicism, Provost John McGreevy explores modern history, current challenges of the Church September 15, 2022 Death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean to speak at Notre Dame September 14, 2022 Apostolic nuncio to Great Britain to deliver the 2022 Keeley Vatican Lecture For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn