to Bettina von Arnim, he
writes: "If I am spared for some years to come, I will thank the
Omniscient, the Omnipotent, for the boon, as I do for all other weal and
woe." In Spohr's album his inscription is a musical setting of the words,
"Short is the pain, eternal is the joy." In a letter to the Archduke
Rudolph, written in 1817, he gives no uncertain expression to his divine
trust. He says: "My confidence is placed in Providence, who will
vouchsafe to hear my prayer, and one day set me free from all my
troubles; for I have served him faithfully from my childhood, and done
good whenever it was in my power. So my trust is in him alone, and I feel
that the Almighty will not allow me to be utterly crushed by all my
manifold trials." Even in a business letter he says: "I assure you on my
honor--which, next to God, is what I prize most--that I authorized no one
to accept commissions from me." His letters indeed abound in references
to his constant reliance upon a higher Power. The oratorio, "Christ on
the Mount of Olives," six sacred songs set to poems of Gellert, the Mass
in C written for Prince Esterhazy, and the Grand Mass in D written for
the Archduke Rudolph, one of the grandest and most impressive works in
the entire realm of sacred music, attest the depth and fervency of his
religious nature.

The Mount of Olives.

Beethoven wrote but one oratorio, "Christus am Oelberg" ("Christ on the
Mount of Olives"). That he had others in contemplation, however, at
different periods of his life is shown by his letters. In 1809 he wrote
to Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, a famous Oriental scholar, appointing
an interview for the discussion of the latter's poem on the subject of
the deluge, with reference to its fitness for treatment as an oratorio.
Again, in 1824, he writes to Vincenz Hauschka, of Vienna, that he has
decided to write an oratorio on the text furnished by Bernard, the
subject being "The Victory of the Cross." This work, however, owing to
his extreme physical sufferings at that period, was never begun, and the
world thereby has suffered a great musical loss; for, judging from his
great Mass in D, no one can doubt how majestic and impressive the
"Victory of the Cross" would have been, as compared with the "Mount of
Olives," written in his earlier period, and before any of his
masterpieces had appeared.

The "Mount of Olives" was begun in 1800, and finished during the
following year.