Yet it is hard to put aside Beethoven’s conviction that it was his greatest work. That it was his greatest challenge for himself and for everybody else was, for him, part of its significance: What is difficult is good. In many ways its essence is a phrase he wrote on the manuscript at the beginning of the Kyrie: “From the heart—may it return to the heart.”
Beethoven thought Missa Solemnis was his greatest.work; but it's been orphaned
