Everett Davis

Leonard Bernsteins Mass

Presentation Notes and Outline
OVERVIEW
Voice of Man (The Common Man)
OPENING HYMN
Sing God a simple song.
Make it up as you go along.
Sing like you like to sing
God loves all simple things.
For God is the simplest of all.
IRONY
PULL OF MODERN LIFE

MASS is an enormous piece. It calls for a large pit orchestra,

two choruses plus a boy's choir, a Broadway-sized cast (with ballet
company),
marching band and a rock band. It may seem ironic that such multitudes
are marshaled for a work that celebrates a man's "Simple Song":
his love and faith in God. But in the end, that simplicity is shown
to be all the more powerful because of it.
-Crisis of faith
Parallels to Kaddish, MASS's exploration of a crisis of faith, along with the
connection to President Kennedy,echoes Bernstein's Third Symphony, Kaddish.
In 1963, Bernstein was orchestrating the final movement of Kaddish, when news
came of Kennedy's assassination. The dedication: "To the beloved memory of
John F. Kennedy." Bernstein wrote this symphony using the Hebrew prayer often
associated with mourning ("Kaddish"), but the Kaddish prayer never once
mentions the word "death." On the contrary, it celebrates "life." Like MASS,
Kaddish evokes a universal sense of anguish over hope and faith, as well as the
particularly Jewish practice of occasionally addressing God in confrontational
terms, through its narrator who speaks the text written in English by Bernstein.
-Gave youth a voice
By the late 1960s, the country had become polarized over U.S. involvement in
the Vietnam War. A powerful anti-war movement swept the nation, fueled by
outrage at the draft, the massive casualties, atrocities such as the Mai Lai
Massacre, incursions into Laos and Cambodia, the imprisonment of
conscientious objectors and activists, and in 1970, the Kent State shootings.
These turbulent times produced a restless youth culture that hungered for a
trustworthy government and for spiritual authority that reflected their values.
Mass gave them a voice.
-Inspired by other's work

The 1970s saw a number of religious rock musicals, notably Jesus Christ
Superstar and Godspell, and Bernstein was so impressed by the latter that he
invited 23-year-old writer Stephen Schwartz to provide lyrics for Massonce
again, Bernstein reached beyond his own world of classical music for a
collaborator to help him create a large-scale musical theater piece, as he had
with West Side Story.
-Arguably the most ambitious Bernstein work
-Broke the mold
Despite its adaptation of the Latin text interspersed with songs, "numbers,"
choreographic sequences, and symphonic interludes, Mass is ecumenical in
nature and cannot be categorized. Perhaps the most accurate description of the
piece is "pageant." With approximately 200 performers, including dancers,
singers, a boy chorus, rock and blues singers, actors, and two orchestras, as well
as a marching band (who play through the audience) Mass is a musical and
theatrical experience.

OPENING PERFORMANCE
-JFK Center, 1971
MASS was created for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1971.
It was directed by Gordon Davidson with additional
texts by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz,
sets by Oliver Smith, costumes by Frank Thompson,
and choreography by Alvin Ailey.

Written at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the work's cultural

importance became intertwined with its political significance in Richard Nixon's
Washington.

The President did not attend the opening, but did send staff to
rehearsals, who reported back that there were possibly "coded
messages"
in the Latin text! While the work is certainly anti-war and calls on
"you people of power" to do what is right, it is not overtly political.
It is unquestionably religious.
-Audience Received it Favorably

The audience at the premiere reportedly sat in silence for three minutes
before beginning a half-hour ovation. Bernstein himself was so moved
that he hugged and kissed everyone in sight, including a gracious but
shell-shocked Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the patron family. Many left in
cathartic tears.
-Critics Were Harsh

Critics, though, were less transported. Although Paul Hume in the

Washington Post declared Mass to be "the greatest music Bernstein has
ever written," the New York gang sharpened their fangs for a feeding
frenzy, reviling it as "derivative and attitudinizing drivel," "subliterate
rubbish," "pretentious and thin," "cheap and vulgar," "overblown" and a
"preposterous exercise in self-gratification." Even the shimmering ending
was attacked as "Love Love Love Love Love as a solution that may not
be questioned."
DIFFERENCE AND TRADITION
-Built on Past Tradition
Nor was Mass a departure from musical tradition, but rather a logical successor to
generations of increasingly liberal treatments of the Mass.
-Set Up like a Catholic Mass

In MASS, Bernstein looks at the issue dramatically; it is subtitled "A Theatre

Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers." Bernstein had always been intrigued
and awed by the Roman Catholic Mass,finding it (in Latin) moving, mysterious,
and eminently theatrical. The piece follows the liturgy exactly, but it is juxtaposed
against frequent interruptions and commentaries by the Celebrant and the
congregation,
-American Work
-Featuring Multitude of Cultures and Lifestyles
The cacophony is silenced by a guitar chord, which begins a disarmingly sweet and
naive song of praise by a blue-jeaned folk singer. Donning vestments, he becomes a
Celebrant. Throughout the next 80 minutes he joins segments of the ensemble to careen
through a phenomenal profusion of musics and moods marches, meditations, opera
arias, Broadway songs, blues, hymns, narration, scat, Hebrew prayers, gospel, folk,
rounds, electronic dissonance, improvisation and even a kazoo chorus a highly
catholic, if not a Catholic, work, and one whose unflinching colliding and blending of
such wildly diverse cultural influences emerges as quintessentially American.
-Like a debate about religion

much like a running debate. There is stylistic juxtaposition as well, with the Latin
text heard electronically through speakers or sung by the chorus, and the
interruptions sung in various popular styles including blues and rock-and-roll. On
the narrative level, the hour-and-a-half-long piece relates the drama of a
Celebrant whose faith is simple and pure at first, but gradually becomes
unsustainable under the weight of human misery, corruption, and the trappings of
his own power.

PURPOSE

-Main Theme and Hymn

Voice of common man, yet the complexity of thought, belief, worship, life
-Rejection of Doctrine
Others found Mass fundamentally flawed by simply ending in a suspension between
rebellion and reconciliation and an arbitrary stop of conflict rather than a resolution in lieu
of a "central pivot in which the central character will experience necessary insight into his
own spiritual malaise that will make the ending seem genuine and inevitable rather than
forced" (Merle Secrest). Yet, despite their insistence upon such a standard and expected
element of routine dramaturgy, that had never been Bernstein's intention. Rather,
Bernstein seized upon Mass as a vehicle for expressing his deepest personal feelings
within the context of the time. As Traber aptly noted, Mass is a reflection of an era both
of promise and illusions, "in which opposing models of human power and lifestyle came
into violent collision."
-Direct Relationship with God
Millennia of philosophers, theologians and religious leaders undoubtedly would disagree,
but the lasting impression of Mass is to urge rejection of rigid doctrine, formal expression
and complex theology for a direct, instinctive, personal relationship to the Almighty.
-Simple, ironic to pulls of Modern Life

Works Cited
"Classical Notes - Classical Classics - Leonard Bernstein's Mass,
By Peter Gutmann." Classical Notes - Classical Classics Leonard Bernstein's Mass, By Peter Gutmann. N.p., n.d. Web. 18
Apr. 2016.
"Leonard Bernstein -- MASS." Leonard Bernstein -- MASS. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
"Leonard Bernstein's Mass." Musica Kaleidoskopea. N.p., 05 May
2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
"THE MASS PROJECT:A LISTENING TOUR." BERNSTEIN:
THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr.
2016.
"Revisiting Bernstein's Immodest 'Mass'" NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 18
Apr. 2016.

LINKS
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94965140
http://www.leonardbernstein.com/mass.htm
https://www.carnegiehall.org/bernstein/mass/mass_listening_tour.html
http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics4/bernsteinmass.html
https://musicakaleidoscope.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/leonardbernsteins-mass/