The _Missa Solemnis_, already referred to as the ‘D major Mass,’ belongs to Beethoven’s third period and is, therefore, characterized by remarkable freedom of treatment and by depth and richness of musical content. Although it was begun in 1818 and planned for the installation of the Archduke Rudolph, his pupil (to whom he was very devoted), as Archbishop of Olmütz on March 20, 1820, it was not completed until 1823, three years after the event for which it was intended. It is a sort of spiritual relative of the ‘Ninth Symphony,’ sketches of which had been begun as early as 1815. The two works are in the same key and grew side by side in the composer’s thought. Three movements of the mass occupied a place on the program of the memorable concert (May 7, 1824, in Vienna) at which the ‘Ninth Symphony’ received its first performance, when the audience went into ecstasies of enthusiasm at the sublime grandeur of the music and the pathetic figure of the deaf creator of such moving sounds. The mass was not performed entire until 1824 in Petrograd. An illustration of his habit of making the form subservient to the thought-content is the introduction of warlike music into the _Agnus Dei_, in order to afford contrast to the thought of peace around which the other thoughts are centred. The _Credo_ is exceedingly difficult for the singers, because of the excessively high range of the voice-parts and the complicated interweaving of the themes. The _Benedictus_ is one of the most beautiful ever written and is made particularly effective by the use of the solo violin, descending from the highest register, in a melody of beautiful simplicity--a movement whose loveliness is still more enhanced by the subdued chorus and accompaniment. The difficulty of the work as a whole prevents its frequent performance. The least difficult parts are the _Kyrie_ and the _Sanctus_, and the former is given a unique effect through the accompaniment, which is for organ and brass instruments only. This work, like Bach’s ‘B minor Mass,’ requires strong adjectives for a just valuation and when W. H. Hadow[82] speaks of it as ‘gigantic, elemental, Mount Athos hewn into a monument, scored at the base with fissure and landslip, rising through cloud and tempest beyond the reach of human gaze,’ he merely sums up graphically the general critical estimate of this great work, which, like the great Bach Mass to which alone it can be compared, must be regarded, not as church-music or liturgical music merely, but as religious music in a universal sense.