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Bernstein's Mass (original program detail)
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Our Lenny: A 13-day Exploration and Celebration of Leonard Bernstein
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"I've not written a Mass, I've written a theater piece about a Mass." That's what Leonard Bernstein had to say about his abstract and colorful "Mass," commissioned in 1971 by Jacqueline Kennedy to open the Kennedy Center. Composer Daniel Felsenfeld joins us to provide insight into one of Bernstein's most controversial — and misunderstood — works for the stage.
Comments [4]
As someone who sang in a Catholic boys choir for many years, your program brought back such fond memories of the young nuns playing this strange piece of music about the most sacred event in our daily lives. I remember how we all sat rapt and mystified...
It mean a lot to me! What a wonderful program of re-discovering this composition
thanks so much, Terrance & Daneil
Much appreciated
Nice un-complacent keeping close.
Maybe bear in mind that the note C is a homophone for the verb to SEE (mystic nepsis, in the place of faith, the opponent of wander).
Fine work, to trace jigsaw under the time-dynamic magnifying glass, so the seams show and the post-structuralist irruptions pull and pull at attention to deeper inquiry. For an evolving culture, why is the celebrant so devoted to rewards rather than to altruist kenosis? Of course this compels the vector to stay defensive and to need its mendacity. Can there be honesty by the unexamining human masses (to say nothing of a service of amassed prayer-liturgy)? The point-of-crisis examination must open the four hermeneutic arenas: 1) the arcana of core historic desire, 2) the arcana of the grail-wound, 3) the arcana of a mass-shaking into tikkum olam, and 4) the arcana of anagogic "face the music" that is dynamic peace, the ultra-metanoia, what is called in Japanese, toku: to do small good so invisibly as to have no one know it.
Thank you both, greatly.
Ciao, T
I hate to be picky, but you said the Kyrie was a Latin hymn. It is actually the only part of the Mass that preserves the ancient Greek. The Mass also has a bit of Hebrew in the word "Sabaoth" in the Sanctus. "Deus Sabaoth" translates Latin and Hebrew names for God.
Caught some of the show on the road. I'll listen to the rest later.
Dear Terrance & Daniel - What a terrific introduction to Bernstein's Mass! Another smashing Evening Music success.
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