Benedictus

When Mara Dobreco asked me to write a piece for her recording project Le fruit du silence – which includes the sonata op. 110 – I was reminded of Romain Rolland’s fascinating writings on Beethoven’s last works. Thanks to him, I had discovered Beethoven’s sketchbooks, which reveal so much about his creative process. In them, we can see that during the summer of 1821, the composer was working on several works at the same time: the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonatas op. 110 and op. 111. Thus, the sketches for the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis and those for op. 110 are intimately intertwined, clearly showing the links that unite these two pages in Beethoven’s mind.
It was on the basis of a few motifs found in these sketches that I wrote this short piece for piano. I dedicated it to Mara Dobresco