Leonard Bernstein and his Mass

June 2, 2020

“Where is God my Maker who gives songs in the night?”

Job:35:10, NKJV

By the middle of May, the rhythm of our life in quarantine had settled down a bit. So when Pastor Gane asked if I could resume my duties as Director of Music at NCUC and provide anthems for the weekly Home Worship Services that the church was posting every Sunday online, it was easy to say “yes” to him. All kinds of systems were by now in place for almost any kind of exchange. And propitiously, our Music Ministry had a list of church people willing to sing solos and play instruments, and church families and groups we could count on to sing an anthem two or three times a year. We simply switched to online mode and invited them to record themselves at home and send the voice tapes to our tech savvy youth pastor, Pastor Pau,[1] for incorporation into each service.

I usually give at least two weeks for anthem preparation. When Pastor Gane pointed out to me on May 16 that one particular Sunday, May 24, remained unfilled, I felt a slight case of panic, as that was just a week away. So I fell back on the familiar (and familial) – I strong-armed my brother, Mike, to pick a suitable song, any song, and record it before Thursday, the 21st, just 6 days away.

A Simple Song

Mike surprised me with his choice of song. It wasn’t the simple hymn that I asked him to choose. Leonard Bernstein’s “Simple Song,” is a work that is, ironically, incredibly complex. Melodious but slightly dissonant, generally lyrical with an undercurrent of drama, requiring large vocal leaps in uncharacteristic directions; it requires emotional quietness but personal intensity on the part of the singer. At the mention of the song, something in me clicked. Of course, I knew how much Mike loved the opening song from “Mass.” As a young student in college, taking his pre-med course, he had witnessed the rehearsals and performances of the U.P. Concert Chorus production that had its Philippine premiere 48 years ago and the experience had so moved him that he joined the group and devoted a considerable part of his time afterwards to choral singing despite the demands of his studies.

“Simple Song,” is based on Psalm 121, with additional text by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz. It was originally intended for, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” a 1972 motion picture by Franco Zefirelli on the life of Francis of Assisi. It would have been a perfect fit except that the composer pulled out of the project due to artistic differences with the director. The medieval St. Francis was a vigorous advocate for a life of simplicity. He chose to live close to and in harmony with nature and devoid of the trappings of society. The song reflects this ideal state:

Sing God a simple song: Lauda, Laude ...
Make it up as you go along: Lauda, Laude ...
Sing like you like to sing.
God loves all simple things, for God is the simplest of all.

It took on a new life when it was  integrated into, “Mass,” a theaterpiece framed by the traditional structure of the Roman Catholic Mass and set in the 1970’s, a tumultuous period of change and unrest in the world.  It introduced the main protagonist of the piece, the Celebrant, to the audience. In the vestry of the church, he prepares to say mass for his parishioners. His innocence and joy at the prospect of the coming together of God’s people in His praise are projected clearly with the verses:

I will sing the Lord a new song
to praise Him, to bless Him, to bless the Lord.
I will sing His praises while I live, all of my days.
Blessed is the man who loves the Lord,
blessed is the man who praises Him.
Lauda, Lauda, Laude,
and walks in His ways.

His confidence in the Lord as Savior is reiterated in the passage pulled in from the Psalm:

I will lift up my eyes
to the hills from whence comes my help.

I will lift up my voice to the Lord,
singing Lauda, Laude.

For the Lord is my shade,
is the shade upon my right hand,
and the sun shall not smite me by day nor the moon by night.

Blessed is the man who loves the Lord,

Lauda, Lauda, Laude,
and walks in His ways.

The Celebrant hums to himself, quietly, as he puts the final touches on his preparations for worship and then steps out into a world that will, by the climax of the work, break him and tear him to pieces.

Mike is nearly five decades older now, a married man, father of adult children, a medical practitioner with decades of experience working with crippled children. He also still enjoys public singing, as a solo singer and with choirs. As I listened to his audiotaped recording, my very first reaction was that his voice was no longer the supple voice of a young man that I remembered from almost five decades ago. There was a slight straining at the high tones and they did not float as lightly as they used to. Yet the years had provided his voice with a richness, depth and force that befitted his age and stature. And the song as he sang it, had gained an added dimension. Sung by a young celebrant, it is, indeed, a simple song - an expression of “original innocence,”[2] and a naïve vision of the world. Sung by a mature person, who stepped out into the world decades ago, it takes on a different coloration – darker, wiser, acquainted with the pain of living. And with that, it takes on the complexity that age and wisdom bestows. To be able to say, “Laudate, Dominum,” through the years of one’s life is a blessing. In choosing to sing:

Lauda, Lauda, Laude,
Lauda, Lauda di da di day…

My brother was saying something simple yet profound:

I have kept the faith… “all of my days.”

Confiteor

Ten days ago, as Mike was preparing to record his song, an old family friend shared with the three of us siblings the news of  the release of the brand new PBS production of “Mass” from the 2019 Ravinia Festival.[3]  I was able to download the stunning performance and watch it in rapt attention once again. The work had suddenly regained its relevance as the confusion and chaos of the Covid 19 epidemic took its toll on a terrorized world.                

The banality of evil in the world of the everyday man comes to the fore when, after the long joyful “Kyrie” that opens the work, the composer shifts into the “Confession” section. Here we begin to detect many dissonant voices that will increasingly intrude into the consciousness of all the participants of the piece. Guilt, doubt, hypocrisy, numbness and disillusionment all rear their heads and expose themselves in the voices and bodies of individual narratives brought to the front and center and made known to the Celebrant. As they come to his attention, his spirit begins to darken and falter. Passages such as the following abound:

What I say I don’t feel,
what I feel I don’t show,
what I show isn’t real,
what is real, Lord, I don’t know.

…

It’s easy to shake the blame for any crime
by trotting out that mea culpa pantomime
“Yes, yes, I’m sad.
I sinned, I’m bad.”
Then go out and do it one more time.

…

If you ask me to sing you verse that’s versatile,
I’ll be glad to beguile 
You for a while.
But don’t look for content beneath the style,
sit back and smile.
It’s easy for you to dig my jim jam jive, 
And, baby, please observe how neatly I survive.
And what could give
more positive
plain proof that living is easy when you’re

half alive.

Whispered in confidence and confession, these revelations lurking just beneath the surface of his parishioner’s lives shake his cheerful conviction. I too, reflect on my own mother-lode - my pride and quickness to judge, the temper that flares up despite my efforts to tame it, my impatience with people and things, my self-centeredness and impulses towards self-justification, my inability to sustain the acts of kindness and thankfulness that I try to cultivate, my shaky courage and fear of retaliation and all the love I withhold and the hurt I cause in the process. I murmur a prayer asking the Lord to forgive me for these sins, committed again and again in the course of the day.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, et vobis, fratres:
Quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opera et omissione:
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Word of the Lord

When “Mass” had first been performed in the Philippines at the Meralco Theater on September 21 and 23, 1972, I was back stage as the Assistant Director of the U.P. Cherubim and Seraphim, our university’s children’s choir, that performed with the U.P. Concert Chorus. It had been a high point in our young lives.

Those were truly troubled times. Transportation strikes and street protests had roiled the capital since January of 1971, when students and activists had protested in front of Congress at the annual State of the Nation address. Radicals and progressives refer to the period as the “First Quarter Storm,” a period of social unrest when unheeded calls for political reform turned into acts of defiance and rebellion against the state.  By 1972, riots and incidences of violence such as the bombing of the Miting de Avance of the political opposition on the eve of the national elections that killed one bystander and maimed a few of the candidates for life, had become commonplace.  

“Mass” truly reflected the spirit of that period, addressing issues of faith and hope, doubt and despair, community and disunity, injustice and oppression, all woven into the framework of the traditional Roman Catholic mass. 

I remember the atmosphere of tension in which we staged those two performances. The Meralco management had warned us of a bomb threat the first night, as we waited in the wings, with the audience coming in. Little did we know that the declaration of Martial Law had been signed that day, and that mass arrests of the political opposition were to be carried on deep into the night until the next day. But we went on that night, the young and dynamic Ramon “Chinggoy” Alonzo as the Celebrant ringing through the theater as he sang Bernstein and Schwartz’s most radical pronouncements:

You can lock up the bold men,
Go and lock up your bold men and hold men in tow,
You can stifle all adventure for a century or so.
Smother hope before it’s risen, watch it wizen[4] like a gourd,

But you cannot imprison the Word of the Lord.

…

All you big men of merit who ferret out flaws,

you rely on our compliance with your science and your laws.

Find a freedom to demolish while you polish some award,

But you cannot abolish the Word of the Lord.

Remembering his voice, I could hear the echoes of the prophets and apostles – Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter and Paul – articulating their vision to the audience assembled there:

O you people of power, your hour is now.
You may plan to rule forever, but you never do somehow!
So we wait in silent treason until reason is restored,
and we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord.[5] 

We sang again that Sunday, fully expecting to be arrested, tense and often weeping backstage, in front of an audience that included powerful cabinet secretaries and their retinues. We lived through that period. Life went on, more restricted and diminished than before, and we fended for ourselves as best we could. We worked, we prayed, we got married and had children and tended to our families. Some of our friends died, some were incarcerated and broken, some disappeared forever. Some assumed positions of power and some became wealthy. Some became dark and cynical, others retained their youthful optimism. And we did wait, burying our faith deep within us, along with our doubt, fear, anger and even our despair, hoping that one day, things would change for the better and indeed, we could, once again hear the liberating Word of the Lord Jesus Christ in an atmosphere of freedom.

Credo
How Easily Things get Broken

The dissonant voices from the people become louder in the Credo section. The themes become even more belligerent – resentment, anger, rejection and unbelief directed against God arise from the voices in the congregation:

And you become a man.
You, God, chose to become a man.
To pay the earth a small social call.
I tell you, sir, you never were a man at all.
Why?
You had the choice when to live, when to die,
and then become a god again.
And then a plaster god like you ...
Has the gall to tell me what to do
to become a man,
to show my respect on my knees…

…
I believe in one God, but does God believe in me?
I’ll believe in any god if any god there be.
That’s a pact, shake on that, no taking back.

Who created my life? Made me come to be?
Who accepts this awful responsibility?
Do you believe in anything that has to do with me? 

Exhausted by these encounters with outright rebellion, the Celebrant weakens but he clings to his faith:

when my courage crumbles, when I feel confused and frail,
when my spirit falters, on decaying altars, and my illusions fail,
I go on right then, I go on again, I go on to say
I will celebrate another day ...

Finally, at the Communion, as the voices intensify, he breaks down completely, flinging the wine-filled chalice to the ground where it shatters to pieces:

Oh, I suddenly feel ev’ry step I’ve ever taken, and my legs are lead.
And I suddenly see ev’ry hand I’ve ever shaken,and my arms are dead.
I feel ev’ry psalm that I’ve ever sung turn to wormwood, wormwood on my tongue.
And I wonder, oh, I wonder, was I ever really young?

Like the Celebrant, we find ourselves today at an apocalyptic moment, finding that the elaborate and complex illusion of a world we have been building for the past 50 years is falling apart, exposing the evil that has been lurking just beneath the surface in the process. I echo the observation of the Celebrant about, “How easily things get broken.” And I return to the days of my youth, examining myself, “what were we thinking then, that led us to this?” “Why, despite all our hopes and dreams for ourselves, our nation and our world, did we arrive at this point?” “Did we contribute, and in what way, to the monstrosities that now parade before us as we sit in our cages at home?” And I wonder, like the biblical prophet, Habbakuk, “Lord, where are you in all of this?”

Laudate Eum

In the final section of “Mass,” the devastated congregation and its broken Celebrant fall to the ground frozen in total silence, unable to proceed. It is only when a little altar boy picks himself up, comes to the center and begins to sing a quiet “Laude,” that the community of faith rises slowly up. Led by the children, they revive the Celebrant, who is then able to bring the mass to its conclusion in a state of peace and love, as the entire cast sings the prayer that began the Mass and which now serves as the Prayer of Benediction:

Almighty Father, incline thine ear:
Bless us and all those who have gathered here.
Thine angel send us, who shall defend us all; 
and fill with grace all who dwell in this place. Amen.

I remember how, in 1986, fourteen years after the imposition of Martial Law, we emerged as young adults from its ruins, ordinary people picking up the broken shards of hope we had fashioned during the time of waiting, piecing them slowly back together to serve as receptacles for the little seeds of faith we had kept in our hearts, wherever life had led us in the interim. It has been 36 years since that time and once again, we are plunged in uncertainty and fear, our subsequent efforts to construct a better world revealed as both feeble and frail. But I look to my grandchildren, ages 2-8, playing innocently by themselves and together, separated in space but united through the internet, sharing their stories, laughing at their jokes and scary stories to each other. I see Andrew, 8,  joining his Great-aunt, Mimi, in their nightly praying of the rosary. I watch Sophie, 5, on Viber, reciting the prayer for posting in our weekly online Sunday School class at NCUC. I remember that my own children were their age when we picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off in 1986 and began to build on our dreams in ways that may have failed but are nevertheless, dreams  that remain good to this day – peace, freedom, righteousness, justice, equity – the Kingdom of God on earth. So I pray for my children as they navigate their way through our current situation and lead us to a future out of the ruins of these times. I pray for the little ones, knowing that they, too, will have to learn to do battle in their own time. And in my mind, I say the prayer of Habbakuk: 

Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habbakuk 3: 17-18)

I resolve to go on, to continue to work for the future, to celebrate, not only another day, but every day.

The mass is ended, go in peace.

[1] Pauline Capacete

[2] From the remark of Pope Innocent III in Zefirelli’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” “In our obsession with original sin, we have forgotten original innocence.”

[3] “Mass” Great Performances pbs.org/gperf from the Ravinia Festival 2019, featuring Paulo Szot, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Martin Alsop and others. May 15, 2020

[4] Shrivel.

[5] “The Word of the Lord,” Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz, 1971. 

Link to the performance:

“Mass” Great Performances pbs.org/gperf from the Ravinia Festival 2019, featuring Paulo Szot, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Martin Alsop and others. May 15, 2020.