This has to one of the oddest reviews I have ever seen. The Washington Times reviews Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”
This is what WT has to say about “Mass”
Subtitled “A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,” Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” – commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as a key part of the Kennedy Center’s 1971 grand opening – generated a considerable amount of advance buzz and excitement.
Yet critics and the attending glitterati generally gave it thumbs down after hearing it.
Mawkish and sentimental, the work oozed the kind of New Yorky armchair agitprop skewered by Tom Wolfe in his book “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” “Mass” was, in effect, Mr. Bernstein’s confused classical response to the radicalized 1960s, wrapping its garbled antiwar, anti-Nixon vibe in psychedelic, feel-good packaging reminiscent of the groovy Day-Glo brotherhood portrayed on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s” album cover.
The composer used the Roman Catholic Mass as a frame-tale around which to wrap his secular approach to religion. With an assist from “Godspell” composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, Mr. Bernstein’s book is a crazy quilt of liberation theology and situational ethics. Worse still, the climactic smashing of the Eucharist near its close is pure sacrilege for practicing Catholics.
So irritating were the politics of “Mass” that many classical fans, myself included, were happy to assign the work to the proverbial dustbin of history.
The review ends by saying that Mass “remains dated and embarrassingly awkward at times.”
So the Times conclusion, this anti-Catholic embarrassingly dated mawkish and sentimental sacrilege? Four Stars, a must see. You can’t make this stuff up.
October 28, 2008 at 11:40 am
Don’t hold back, Patrick; tell us how you REALLY feel!
As an adolescent in the 1960s I felt so out of place. As I look back I am so grateful to God that I was indeed out of place.
The Mass is an eternal truth given us by God; the 1960s are a curious and sometimes amusing artifact of no more significance than, say, a made-in-China plastic snow-dome labelled “Souvenir of the Beijing Olympics.”
— Mack
October 28, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I *think* I’ve seen this play.
I recall watching this with my Mom on PBS back in the early 80’s. All I can remember is that every time there was “controversy” the priest character would sing out “Let us pray!” Then the cast would fall to their knees and shut up. I think the point was the priest character was out of touch with the real world and would fall back on obedience for sense of control.
That’s what I got out of it, though, or what my Mom explained to me. That makes sense as my Mom, though never a radical, has always voiced the hierarchy is out of touch with reality. I promised my wife I wouldn’t talk about the Church anymore at family gatherings. I’m the only … orthodox member of my family – that is, Catholicism is more than just going to Mass on Sunday or reading Thomas Merton.
October 28, 2008 at 1:20 pm
LOLOLOLOLOL!
This brought me right back to music history class. My professor was not much of a believer, but he was respectful. Anyway, he was talking about how composers wrote using the Mass structure but not intended for liturgical use. He then remarked: “Although we see the Mass used in a secular setting, there is no such thing as a secular Mass….except perhaps the Leonard Bernstein atrocity.”
October 28, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Oh yeah, I used to be in the choir of the BSO when it was under David Zinman. I wonder if any Catholic musicians sat this one out in protest.
October 29, 2008 at 10:02 pm
The great Father Gilbert Hartke was at the premiere at the Kennedy Center. Barbara Walters (then in the days of live remote broadcasts) came up to him with a microphone and asked him what he thought. In no uncertain terms he expressed his disapproval.
Alas, when Hartke’s own CUA opened a new building a few years ago (the Pryzbyla Center) it did so with a performance of — you guessed it — Bernstein’s Mass. Not the best of moves on CUA’s part.
October 29, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Its actually not so bad. Much of the music is very beautiful. Bernstein’s Mass was actually performed a few years ago at Vatican City in front of an audience that included several bishops and cardinals. I’m not denying that much of it is silly 60 commentary, but there is a lot of great music (much in Latin) in it.