A Big Sing of the Massachusetts American Choral Directors Association and Harvard Choruses will feature the world premiere of composer Michael Ostryzga’s arrangement of the Beethoven Mass in C, op. 86 for four-hand piano and harmonium on February 21^st at Sanders Theater. Bärenreiter will be publishing the arrangement this summer in anticipation of the 200^th anniversary of the death of Beethoven in 2027. Harvard’s Associate Director of Choral Activities Hana J. Cai will conduct the performance with pianists Justin Blackwell of Marsh Chapel, Brandon Straub, Director of Music at St. Paul’s Choir School, and Julliard-faculty Peter Sykes playing Lee Eiseman’s 1934 Mustel harmonium. The performance will feature 225 collegiate singers from Endicott College, Harvard, New England Conservatory, UMass-Boston, UMass-Lowell, and Wheaton College. Free tickets available at the door or HERE.          Michael Ostrzyga, guest author

When Andrew Clark asked me, out of the left field, to arrange Beethoven’s Mass in C for four-hand piano, I accepted in a blink. Immediately, I suggested adding a harmonium. I still do not know where that thought came from exactly, but I sensed a historical resonance. Clara Schumann owned a Physharmonika — an early form of harmonium.

Of course, there is the Petite Messe solenelle by Rossini, Beethoven’s contemporary famed for his operas. At the other end of the spectrum, repertoire involving the harmonium [IMSLP has a growing list][i] is largely forgotten today, particularly arrangements of works for chorus and orchestra. Many of these were conceived for performance at home with the instrument(s) alone and the choir and solo parts integrated into the instrumental music. For instance, I encountered sections of Mozart’s Requiem, reimagined for piano and harmonium by a composer named Franz Bouffier around 1870. There is also a personal connection to the instrument: as a young teenager, I played the harmonium in children’s church services.

There are, of course, countless contemporary reductions of large-scale works for four-hand piano (senza harmonium). In fact, Carl Czerny arranged numerous compositions by his teacher Beethoven in this way — including the C major Mass. (If he were still alive, my first question would probably be why he so often added a seventh to the dominant where Beethoven’s original has none.) Famously, Brahms himself arranged his German Requiem for four-hand piano. [ii]

These reductions were not originally intended for performances with soloists and choir “added back in,” and they do not work properly in that way throughout, especially not in a choral-symphonic setup. There are several reasons for this. For instance: In the original orchestrations, the solo and choral parts are not always doubled; the instruments sometimes only contribute independent material. In such cases, that instrumental material was not always fully or adequately incorporated in the piano arrangements, as arrangers prioritized the solo and choral parts.

These four-hand versions differ fundamentally from the two-hand piano reductions found in vocal scores, though they, of course, often correspond to them. Designed to convey the full work with all forces, they bring the vocal parts to the forefront, even where this is not the case in the original instrumental parts. Thus, recombining such arrangements with the original solo and choral parts can result in missing material and imbalances.

What I personally often miss in 19^th-century four-hand arrangements of orchestral music is the idiosyncratic rhythmic force and timbre of the trumpets and timpani.

I adore Beethoven’s “smaller” Mass. In 2024, Andrew Clark and I had coincidentally the thrilling experience of viewing the original manuscripts in the vaults of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, the museum built around his birthplace.

In my arrangement, I sought to bring Beethoven’s brilliant orchestration to life while remaining faithful to his style. At first, I approached the arrangement from the perspective of a conductor’s mind, realizing, so to speak, the full orchestral texture across two keyboards with six hands. However, when we test-played it, this approach did not work: the dynamic is entirely different when three minds perform together — not only spiritually, but also physically and ergonomically, particularly on a single keyboard. I therefore adjusted the arrangement for three performers, allowing for interaction as well as appropriate space and freedom for each individual — a consideration I had not accounted for when writing for a single mind. I aimed to craft a faithful realization of Beethoven’s orchestral accompaniment, tailor-made for four-hand piano and harmonium and played by three individual performers.

I did not add any parts to the accompaniment — particularly vocal ones — that are not present in the original instrumentation. On the contrary, in a very few delicate passages of the Agnus Dei, I even took the liberty of omitting the strings, where in the original score they play colla parte alone. This allows the choir to be heard a cappella in those passages, adding a new color and creating more vivid contrasts in the Agnus Dei.

The harmonium sometimes assumes the role of the winds, at other times that of the strings. Trumpets and timpani are represented in the piano; I tried to bring out their rhythmic energy and driving force. In some passages, however, the division of parts between the instruments is less clear. Occasionally, I realized accents by having the attack in the piano and the “sustained part” of the note in the harmonium.

I did not change a single pitch or rhythm. Yet, as a discreet nod to a composer who more than once (convincingly) challenged established conventions, I “hid” just one or two small rhythmic gestures in the foreground where I felt the music invited and needed them. Here and there I also included a rather inventive and somewhat unusual texture within the four-hand-setting.

Early on, I knew I wanted to give a particular tip of the hat to the great composer-inventor who, among many other novelties, had the revolutionary idea of reimagining the symphony by adding a chorus to its final movement. At one point in my arrangement, one player would change instruments. Initially, I considered dedicating an entire movement or section to four-hand harmonium and two-hand piano, and I browsed through Beethoven’s score to find a suitable passage — but none seemed long and appropriate enough to justify it without the effect appearing as a mere “stunt.”

From the outset, I also intended to borrow a certain effect from Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle (in its original version for two pianos and harmonium). In that work, Rossini inventively set a long instrumental “Preludio Religioso” before the Sanctus as music played “durante l’Offertorio.” Its centerpiece, a fully developed fugue, is to be played on either piano or harmonium alone. If played on the piano, the listener is exposed to the sound of the piano for several minutes, drawn deeper into a sonic sphere in which truly sustained tones are absent. Eventually, the harmonium’s first re-entry after the “Preludio” feels as if it comes from another world — a contrasting sound cosmos that is then further explored by the chorus a cappella. (If the long fugue is played on the harmonium, the situation is somewhat reversed, for Rossini specified that the appendix to the fugue — four bars with cadential chords in pianissimo in the lowest register — is to be played on the piano.) I, of course, could not insert a “Preludio” into Beethoven’s Mass, yet I intended to employ that effect of heightening the harmonium’s re-entry through its very absence. [the harmonium plays the fugue HERE][iii] 

It occurred to me that I could combine both nods by having the harmonium player join the pianists for the Sanctus and Benedictus in a six-hand piano setting. Not only is the D major of this Sanctus — the “trumpet key” — well suited to six hands on one keyboard, but the text Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua (“Heaven and earth are full of your glory”) also justified music for a keyboard full of hands playing simultaneously in the lowest, highest, and middle registers. The six-hand approach works equally well in the Benedictus, though for entirely different reasons. Three performers — even when playing with only five, four, or three hands — allow the delicate lines to remain, in the truest sense, more individual and personal. And when the harmonium finally re-enters in the Agnus Dei, its sonority appears all the more delicate, a dramaturgical effect borrowed from Rossini’s famous model.

This arrangement celebrates Beethoven’s genius — his orchestral brilliance, clarity of line, and bold inventiveness. I sincerely hope I was capable of doing him justice. It also acknowledges the rich 19^th-century tradition of reductions, particularly those involving the harmonium, as well as the spirited imagination of Rossini. I hope it enables performers and listeners alike to encounter this masterpiece with fresh ears, in new colors and light.

See related review HERE.

Composer and conductor Michael Ostrzyga is the Music Director of the University of Cologne, Germany

[i] The list does not include the many Schoenberg, Berg, and Mahler transcriptions because of copyright restrictions

[ii] And Rossini arranged his Petite Messe Solennelle for orchestra “so that no one else would.”

[iii] From a 1978 performance at Sanders Theater with James David Christie, harmonium and Leslie Amper, piano