In September of 1971, the nation was cracking in half.
The front pages of The Washington Post were aflame with violence and conflict: the ongoing catastrophe of the Vietnam War, political upheaval in Latin America and, here at home, racial unrest as busing foes boycotted schools. The bad news was unrelenting.
That is until the edition of Thursday, Sept. 9, when The Post’s lead story took a markedly different tone: “Bernstein’s Mass,” read the headline, “A Reaffirmation of Faith.”
This good news topping A1 was the previous evening’s official premiere of “Mass,” composer Leonard Bernstein’s genre-hopping magnum opus. “Mass” was Bernstein’s response to a request from Jacqueline Onassis for a piece to honor her first husband and inaugurate the soon-to-open John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a $66.5 million colossus overlooking the Potomac River and declaring the arts as central to American life — if not to D.C. pedestrians.
(Onassis herself wouldn’t see the show until its second opening at the Kennedy Center in the spring of 1972 — four years to the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot by an assassin. Her reception of “Mass” remained something of a mystery, not least of all to Bernstein, with whom she shared the presidential box. “She never said one word,” Bernstein told the New York Times. “I think she was speechless. She still hasn’t said anything.”)
Half a century and one pandemic year later on this Sept. 15, the Kennedy Center will belatedly celebrate its 50th anniversary with a new production of “Mass” that stars baritone Will Liverman in the spotlight role of the Celebrant. This rejuvenated “Mass” is helmed by director Alison Moritz and choreographer Hope Boykin, with conductor James Gaffigan leading the National Symphony Orchestra, the Heritage Signature Chorale and the Children’s Chorus of Washington.
Billed as “A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,” Bernstein’s “Mass” arrived as an assertive smear of genres, composed — largely in a six-month blur before its premiere — to encapsulate the vast range of artistic and performance programming to be housed at the Kennedy Center. Like the artistic center it was created to anoint, “Mass” was under construction right up until the final moments.
The original production assembled more than 200 performers on the Opera House stage, christening the lavish red theater with a “melange of music, dance and drama,” as The Post’s theater and cinema critic Richard L. Coe described it in 1971, as well a controversial blend of ancient texts and contemporary speech.
“It’s bigger than a major Broadway musical,” director Gordon Davidson told the New York Times that year of the “unprecedented” challenge of staging “Mass.” “And there’s less rehearsal time for it.”
Bigger than Broadway, too, was Bernstein’s vision for (and anxiety over) “Mass,” which seemed to distill the most potent parts of his best-known works — tonal and thematic shades of “Candide” and “West Side Story” drift through — into a provocative concentrate of American music and theater.
Davidson was joined by conductor (and Bernstein protege) Maurice Peress and choreographer Alvin Ailey, who was himself leading a company of dance legends-in-waiting, including Judith Jamison (a 1999 Kennedy Center honoree), Dudley Williams and Lee Harper.
At first glance, it might be easy to mistake “Mass” for other hippie-adjacent blurs of music, theater and spirituality from the period — “Hair,” “Jesus Christ Superstar” and the like. Stephen Schwartz, whom Bernstein enlisted six months before the premiere to help freshen the liturgical libretto (which mixes Latin, Hebrew and English) with contemporary lines, had only months earlier staged the off-Broadway premiere of his own breakthrough blend of the sacred and the secular, “Godspell.” (“The speed of the work on the project was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying,” Schwartz writes in the program notes to the new production of “Mass.”)
But, groovy vibes aside, “Mass” endures as a rich and complex work in Bernstein’s oeuvre, and a vessel for some of his most personal revelations. In the more charitable of two reviews of “Mass” run by the New York Times, the critic Howard Klein drew this distinction: “ ‘Hair’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ are manifestations of antiwar feelings and the new quest for transcendental faith. Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ is a cry for peace and brotherhood among men and as such is a humanistic document.”
The music here and there may veer into dated tropes, the lyrics may at times skew too clever by half, but at 50, “Mass” still somehow feels both intimate and transgressive — the sound of an artist trying to bridge a spiritual divide. And at 53 (his birthday was a couple of weeks before opening night) Bernstein fully believed that music — maybe even his — could repair the cracks in the world around him.
The true power of “Mass” comes from the clash of contradictions at its core: Bernstein’s location of the universal through an investigation of individual faith. Or the way the composer’s pluralistic yearning to be everything at once results in a work that is quintessentially, well … Lenny.
Speaking to those who took part in the premiere — the oral history below draws from conversations with nearly a dozen musicians, singers, dancers, critics and others who brought its spirit and spectacle to the Opera House stage — it becomes clear that “Mass” was far more than a show. It was a spiritual experience.
“It’s not a Mass of death, not a Requiem, there is no ‘Dies Irae,’ ” Bernstein told The Post in July 1971. It would still be weeks before he would finish composing it, but the end was in sight. “It is a celebration of life.”
“What happens if I don’t write anything?”
— Bernstein to Kennedy Center artistic director Julius Rudel, as reported in The Post, July 27, 1971Beginnings
Humanity, to Bernstein, was a work in progress. So, too, was “Mass” and the venue that would present it. Rehearsals got underway in the summer of 1971, though the work itself was far from finished.
Ted Chapin, son of associate producer and Metropolitan Opera general manager Schuyler Chapin, and assistant director of subsequent productions of “Mass”: My father, who was associate producer on “Mass,” knew it was way late and that Bernstein was having a very hard time composing it. And Dad also knew there was a date that the Kennedy Center was going to open, and it needed to have this piece performed in whatever form it was going to be in. That summer was tricky because Lenny was still trying to finish the “Mass” while all sorts of other things were grabbing at him.
Alan Titus, baritone, creator of the role of the Celebrant: I went down to Steinway Hall down on 57th Street [in New York], and maestro Bernstein was there with Maurice Peress and a few others. I walked in wearing my jeans-suit and holding my guitar, and I sat on the rim of the little stage in the audition room. I think that was the moment that I got the part, because that’s how the “Mass” starts.
Ronald Bardach, member of the Berkshire Boys Choir: [A fellow choir member] recalls seeing Stephen [Schwartz] walking around on his own backstage, mouthing lyrics and trying to come up with more as we got toward that 11th hour. As boys, we had kind of free rein, so we wandered all over the place, into the bowels of the Kennedy Center, places I’m sure nobody would go.
Judith Jamison, Alvin Ailey dancer and 1999 Kennedy Center honoree: We didn’t realize how not open it was. So, the big bust of JFK hadn’t been put in place, some of the carpet wasn’t down, the flags weren’t up. I mean, it was unfinished. I had a good time having the freedom of walking anywhere in the building.
Alan Titus: [Bernstein] was still writing the piece during rehearsals, which were mid-July. And the opening was September! When I look back now, I shudder because it was hardly any rehearsal time.
Michael Hume, choir member and Celebrant beginning in 1972: Lenny was feverishly finishing music even as the premiere was approaching. I remember hearing that Alvin Ailey would be waiting for the next piece of music that would involve dance so that they could rush to put it together.
Ronald Bardach: There was so much pressure to get things done, you could see the strain on Bernstein’s face when he didn’t have a cigarette in his mouth, which was almost always the case. But he still really embraced everybody in the cast. You just felt his warmth when he walked in. But make no mistake, he was a creative ball of energy — you could see it right up until the last few hours.
The Celebrant
The central role of “Mass” — the Celebrant — was created by young baritone Alan Titus. The role is seen by many as a pair of open brackets, a proxy for individual faith in a world fractured by violence and divided by fear.
Alan Titus: At the very first rehearsal, we all sat in a room together and Lenny said, “There are no leading singers in this production.” And I thought to myself, “What? Well what do you call the Celebrant?”
Ted Chapin: Who is the Celebrant? Is he an archetype? Does he stand for something larger? There are a lot of unanswered questions in the piece.
Advertisement
Frank Getlein, the New York Times, Sept. 12, 1971: Interpretations began at once and divided easily into four main groups: The protagonist, or Celebrant, is: John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ, [antiwar activist] Daniel Berrigan or all three.
Paul Hume, The Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1971: One person dominates the entire work: Alan Titus is the young man who with unerring feeling for nuance of meaning, blessed with an expressive lyric baritone, and able to wear blue jeans and faded shirt or rich Ecclesiastical robes with equal ease, carried the role of The Celebrant.
Controversies: Church and state
With its direct lift of liturgical structures culminating in a scathing 18-minute mad scene representing the Celebrant’s crisis of faith — “Mass” proved to be a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church, which made its displeasure known in the press (and occasionally, the theater).
Alan Titus: The throwing down of the monstrance and the chalice [in the work’s climactic 16th section, “Fraction: Things Get Broken”], that was a big thing. When we came under fire from the Archbishop of Cincinnati, I thought, “Look, they’re not consecrated, I’m not a priest, it’s just a theatrical effect!”
The Rev. Paul F. Leibold, Archbishop of Cincinnati, in the May 19, 1972, New York Times: The main issue of our concern is, is this production a blatant sacrilege against all we hold sacred (whether it is done in Latin or English)? Does any artist have a right to use elements of our central act of worship as a vehicle to present his theme and, further, may they be vandalized in the expression of his theme?
Tim Smith, former music critic for the Baltimore Sun, who attended the first performance: I went to a Catholic high school and was getting a little too sassy, questioning too many things. I thought this was terrific stuff. It wasn’t really attacking faith at all, it was just making people challenge their beliefs. So I was in heaven.
“Mass” also irked government officials. The libretto, assembled by Bernstein through consultation with various priests and Catholic scholars — including the incarcerated Jesuit priest and antiwar activist Daniel “Father Dan” Berrigan — raised hackles across the Nixon administration, which was convinced that the Latin texts included coded messages intended to humiliate the president. The FBI had been keeping tabs on Bernstein, his leftist politics and his alleged ties to Communist organizations since his graduation from Harvard in 1939. Internal memos reveal a flurry of “Mass” hysteria.
Robert Mardian, then head of the U.S. Justice Department’s internal security division, in a memo to the White House, summer 1971: The fact that two such controversial figures as Bernstein and Father Berrigan are collaborating on the dedication program would appear to offer sufficient reason for inquiries as to just what mischief they are up to.
G. Gordon Liddy memo to Egil “Bud” Krogh, White House Special Investigations Unit, a.k.a. the Watergate “Plumbers,” Aug. 6, 1971: To avoid embarrassing the President or the Administration, neither the President nor any high Administration official will be present for the opening of the Center. In view of the foregoing, we can consider the matter as handled.
FBI memo, Sept. 8, 1971: “It was also noted that the performers were dressed in diverse garments such as hot pants and sweat shirts.”
“Half of the people are stoned, and the other half are waiting for the next election / Half of the people are drowned, and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction”
— Lines contributed to the "Mass" libretto by Paul Simon as a “Christmas present" to Bernstein.The show
The boldness of Bernstein’s direct recruiting of the liturgical form of the Catholic Mass, equal parts homage and infiltration, is outdone only by his oft-chaotic collision of musical vernaculars: classical (including a sprinkle of 12-tone serialism), jazz, blues, gospel, folk and his let’s-just-say particular idea of “rock,” which he wove into a wild tapestry of many colors.
Meanwhile, echoes of Bernstein’s scores for “Candide,” “Fancy Free” and “West Side Story” filtered through “Mass” with an intensified austerity. His familiar fervor and bombast seemed tempered and tinted as if passed through stained glass. That is, until a climactic mad scene — the “Fraction: Things Get Broken” — shattered everything.
Jamie Bernstein, Leonard’s daughter and author of “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein”: It’s almost a manifesto about tonality. He wrote his Norton Lectures [which he delivered at Harvard in 1973] around the same time, and he was really starting to concentrate and cohere his thoughts about defending tonality. In the mid-20th century, if you wanted to be considered a so-called serious composer, you absolutely, positively had to write 12-tone music; tunes and chords and keys and all that stuff were out. You had to write in this very cerebral, rigorous, intellectual manner. My dad totally understood 12-tone music — he even used a little in “Mass” — but he was not going to do it to the exclusion of everything else. It was going to be one color on his compositional palette. He knew that by making that decision, he was consciously removing himself from the pantheon of serious composers.
Lee Harper, Alvin Ailey dancer, who went on to choreograph several productions of “Mass”: Dancers love [Bernstein’s] music, its rhythms — it just makes you want to dance. He put everything he could into this piece. They criticized it for being cheap and common, and I just thought, “No way! It’s something I can hum.” But it was joyous and melodic and beautiful. There’s a lot of contemporary music I like, but not all of it is beautiful.
Michael Hume: Only Lenny could have written this. This music emerged from Lenny at that time and reveals a tremendous display of his compositional skill, a score that from moment to moment can change drastically in terms of the sound of the music, the effect of the music, how it was written, why it was written. It all serves a dramatic purpose.
Advertisement
Ted Chapin: After the opening performance, we left the [Opera House] boxes to take the stairs down to the stage, and Bernstein stopped and turned to his associate Harry Crowd to complain about something that was wrong in the performance. And Harry was like, “Lenny, Lenny! It’s the curtain call! We’ve got to get down there!” But that’s how he was — dramatic. So he went down onstage, burst into tears, kissed everybody and had a wonderful time.
Ronald Bardach: At the cast party, [actor] Gregory Peck came up to us and said “Gosh, that was fantastic,” and we were all asking, “Mr. Peck, can I get your autograph?” He looks down at us and goes, “Well, no, boys, I should be asking you for your autograph.”
Critical reception
Predictably, though devastatingly to Bernstein, “Mass” divided critics. Harold C. Schonberg, the New York Times critic and Bernstein’s nemesis in print, pulled no punches, lashing out at “Mass” in several swipes:
New York Times, Sept. 9, 1971: “When Bernstein struggles with the infinite, he has generally been thrown for a loss, as in his “Jeremiah” or “Kaddish” symphonies. And so it is in the Mass. … It is a pseudo-serious attempt at re-thinking the Mass that basically is, I think, cheap and vulgar. It is a show-biz Mass, the work of a musician who desperately wants to be with it.”
New York Times, Sept. 19, 1971: “The Bernstein was a combination of superficiality and pretentiousness, and the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and Marshmallow sauce.”
Washington Post critic Paul Hume, meanwhile, was far more moved:
“The entire Mass is a shattering experience that signally honors its creator, the Center and the memory of the man for whom the Center is named.”
“While ‘Mass’ is theater and dance, it is above all music. Certainly from the ‘Agnus dei’ to the end, it is the greatest music Bernstein has ever written.”
Jamie Bernstein: He was devastated. He had really exposed himself in this piece in so many ways. I think it’s a self-portrait more than any other work of his. It has more of him in it than anything else he ever wrote. And because of that, because he rendered himself so vulnerable, it hurt doubly to have the work be so criticized. I don’t know what he thought “Mass” would do, but I think he was half hoping that, you know, the scales would fall from everyone’s eyes and they would realize we all have to get along, war is terrible, and let’s change our ways. I really think that there was a part of my dad that felt like if he could just write that good enough piece, he could change the world. That was the impulse that drove him forward as an artist.
Aftermath and legacy
“Mass” wasn’t Bernstein’s final large work. In 1977 his “Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra” would premiere at the Kennedy Center with the composer conducting the National Symphony Orchestra. And Bernstein would continue writing and conducting until his death in 1990, at age 72. But “Mass” may be the height from which he attained his clearest view and made his loudest statement.
Ted Chapin: Stephen Sondheim once said that Lenny had “a bad case of important-itis,” and that may have gotten in his way. I think in “Mass,” Lenny tried to tap into every aspect of what he had done before and try to make it as good and as humanistic as possible, to be as universal as he could.
Judith Jamison: There was this general feeling of everybody getting along, because you had to get along to get this thing up — there were so many people. God, it was amazing.
Michael Hume: [Bernstein] couldn’t solve the problems of the world with a performance of “Mass,” and he knew that. But what he could do was question. “Mass,” in its own small way, deals with the need to look for answers in a troubled world.
Alan Titus: I would say that it’s the apotheosis of American musical theater.
Tim Smith: I don’t think there will ever be a time, unfortunately, when “Mass” won’t be relevant. This piece is so important, so tied to the age-old struggles we all have. Do we belong? Should we have faith in this institution or that institution? It’s really something.”
Jamie Bernstein: I only wish my dad had lived long enough to see “Mass” being invited to be performed in the Vatican by Pope John Paul II [in 2000]. He would have felt so vindicated!
Lee Harper: This world needs the “Mass” now more than ever. We are nothing if we are not connected, and we are nothing if we are not forgiving and understanding of each other.”
Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” will be performed Sept. 15, 17 and 18 at the Kennedy Center. kennedy-center.org.
Editing by Janice Page and Amy Hitt. Photo research by Moira Haney and Sophia Solano. Copy editing by Susan Doyle. Design by Alla Dreyvitser.
Top image: Washington Post illustration/Fletcher Drake/Leonard Bernstein Office
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLq2v8icZmtoYmd8cYWOaW9oqpWowrO%2BxJyroqaXYq%2Bmvs2sq56hnqh6przInGSknZ6jsqXFjJycp6yVp3qwvMSnnKtn