i

Confronting the Celebrant of Bernstein’s Mass:

A Study of Musical Borrowing

A document submitted to

The Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

in the Performance Studies Division of the College-Conservatory of Music

Voice

2014

by

John W. Wright

B.M., Maryville College, 1987 M.M., University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 1990

Committee Chair: David Adams

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ABSTRACT

This document studies musical borrowing in the five principal solos of the

Celebrant, the central character of Bernstein’s Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players

and Dancers (1971), with words by co-lyricist Stephen Schwartz. The solos treated are

“A Simple Song,” “The Word of the Lord,” “Our Father . . .,” “I Go On,” and “Fraction:

Things Get Broken.” Drawing on reports of borrowing found in published secondary

literature by Jack Gottlieb, Paul Laird, and Helen Smith, and also in unpublished research

by Copland scholar Daniel Mathers, this study documents Bernstein’s sources, analyzes

their compositional uses for Mass, and explores them critically in light of the work’s

eclectic musical conception and aims. Critical findings treat how Bernstein chose and

manipulated his sources in view of several objectives crucial to this work’s composition,

its function of dedicating the opening of Kennedy Center (on September 8, 1971), and its

long, controversial reception. These objectives include the widely discussed

“reaffirmation of faith” which Bernstein strove to express in Mass; defiance of political

and religious dogma; use of his own personalized faith symbolism; and continued

synthesis of vernacular and classical influences for which he remains most celebrated. In

all, the music of the Celebrant emerges as a linchpin for understanding Bernstein’s

eclecticism as indeed something carefully and strategically managed.

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© Copyright by

John W. Wright

2014

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables and Figures v List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapters

1. Simply Coplandesque: “A Simple Song” 18

2. Gracias a Violeta Parra: “The Word of the Lord” 27

3. Born of Faith Symbolism: “Our Father . . .” 38

4. Keeping it “Reel”? “I Go On” 43

5. Into Madness: “Fraction: Things Get Broken” 49

6. Conclusion: Celebrating the Celebrant 78

Selected Bibliography 96

Appendix: Vocal Solos from Mass Published Separately 110

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables

1. New material in “Fraction: Things Get Broken” 64 2. Thematic recall in “Fraction: Things Get Broken” 65

Figures

1. Various formal aspects of “Fraction: Things Get Broken”: hybrid,

episodic form (A B C D – E A’) 71

2. Tonal aspects of musical form in “Fraction: Things Get Broken” 72

3. Textual wordplay in cadenza of “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 245–78 75

4. Formal diagram of “Our Father . . .”: song form 92

5. Formal diagram of “A Simple Song”: song form (A B A) with introduction 92

6. Formal diagram of “The Word of the Lord”: repeated song form 93

7. Formal diagram of “I Go On”: strophic form 93

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Examples

1. Bernstein’s “lauda” motive and its source variants in Copland’s

Our Town (film score 1940; suite rev. 1944) 21

2. Accompaniment of Bernstein’s “A Simple Song” as patterned after the opening of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (1948) 24

3. Transcription by Luis Gaston Soublette of “De Génesis prencipiaron,” in Violeta Parra, Cantos folklóricos chilenos 33

4. Melody borrowed from Parra in Bernstein’s “The Word of the

Lord,” first statement of A theme, mm. 6–18, transposed to Parra’s key of C major 36

5. Faith motives in Bernstein’s music, as identified by Jack Gottlieb,

given set-class analysis 40 6. “Our Father . . .” (complete), with set analysis 41 7. Shared motives of “I Go On” and “I Remember You” (1942) 45 8. Bernstein’s “row,” via Beethoven, as used in Mass 57

9. Order positions of row as unfold in “Fraction: Things Get

Broken,” mm. 7–18 59

10. Refrain based on “Agnus Dei” of Mass 61

11. Dirge music in Mass 63

12. Dance theme in “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 129–64 68

13. Use of patchwork in cadenza of “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 245–78 70

14. Accented A opening“Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 1–5 74

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This document marks the culmination of a twenty-four year journey. Its

completion and that of the D.M.A. are certainly milestones. Each one would have been

impossible without the support of steadfast friends, family, colleagues, teachers and

students.

I thank the following: the CCM voice faculty, particularly my former voice

teacher David Adams, advisor and chair of my committees; the remaining members of

my committees, Mary Henderson-Stucky, Kenneth Griffiths, and Richard Hess—all

made the transition back into the program after so many years as seamless as possible;

my colleagues at Salisbury University for their patience and push, particularly Dr. Linda

Cockey (Former Chair) and readers/editors during the process, Dr. William Folger

(Chair), Dr. Jerry Tabor, Dr. Danielle Cumming, Dr. Kathleen Shannon, and Dr. Jackie

Chooi-Theng Lew; Dr. Corinne Pubill and Dr. Louise Detwiler for their language

expertise and Spanish translations; the Salisbury University Blackwell Library staff,

particularly Kathryn Kalmanson and Amy Jones; and Salisbury University for its support

with travel and travel expenses.

For permissions to reproduce copyrighted material within musical examples, I

acknowledge the kind cooperation of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.; The Leonard Bernstein

Office, Inc.; the Hal Leonard Corporation; and Milena Rojas Cereceda, Coordinator of

the Violeta Parra Foundation.

viii

I am forever grateful to Neal Gittleman, conductor of the Dayton Philharmonic

Orchestra. His forty-year dream of producing Bernstein’s Mass included me and provided

the spirit and inspiration for this project.

Sincere gratitude goes to Dr. Catherine Roma for decades of performance

opportunities, for instilling belief in me, and for the donation of a hardbound copy of the

published Mass—the latter used for Ohio’s first performance of the work; to Dr. Richard

Benedum (Former Chair, University of Dayton) for his ongoing encouragement to finish;

to Dr. Robert Bonham (Professor Emeritus of Maryville College) for his lifelong

mentorship and friendship; and to the late tenor Richard Wright and family for the

donation of his vocal music library to Salisbury University, which included another first

edition of the score of Mass. Jeffrey Alexander Bernstein kindly forwarded me a copy of

his dissertation on Bernstein.

The completion of this project could not have happened were it not for a chance

reuniting one year ago with my friend now mentor, Daniel E. Mathers, whose guidance

and assistance these past few months have shown me the meaning, method, and

sometimes joy of research. It is to him—Copland scholar, soul mate, collaborative

pianist, and improviser extraordinaire—that I am forever indebted.

Lastly, I express my deepest gratitude to my family for their continuous love and

support; to my partner in life, Bruce Glover, who endured the research “tornado” to hit

our family room last summer, and who always had lunch and/or dinner waiting when

Danny and I came up for air; and to my parents, James G. Wright and the late Fannie H.

Wright, for finding ways to afford me career opportunities they didn’t even understand.

For that I am eternally gratefully.

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INTRODUCTION

Commissioned to open the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in

Washington, D.C., Leonard Bernstein delivered with Mass (1971) a work at once

extremely suited, yet paradoxically strange, to his task. Written with an ecumenical flair

surpassing anything else from his pen, the work itself displays a broad, representative

palette of the performing arts in America. The degree of controversy it has provoked,

however, reflects the zeal with which Bernstein took seriously his task and his courage in

commenting on political and spiritual struggles confronting the nation. Yet, in doing so,

the work arguably attains a level of universality many have come to regard as Bernstein’s

best bid, along with the musical West Side Story (1957), for entry into the pantheon of

most distinguished American composers of the past century.

In confronting such a major, sizable work—requiring over two hundred

performers originally—and one with such a distinguished yet mixed reception, scholars

and other commentators have understandably had to cast a very wide net. The role of

vernacular styles within the work, the mixture with styles of art music, the nature of the

religious symbolism and philosophic nuances, and at times, the seemingly sheer excess of

theatricality (including, e.g., actions of destroying sacramental vessels at one point),

certainly all compete for attention in one of the richest works by probably one of the most

eclectic and outspoken composers to have lived. In the case of a work as curious and

diversified as Bernstein’s Mass, therefore, no little wonder can surround the fact that the

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role of the Celebrant, by all accounts the most important character of Mass, still stands

very much in the shadow of the achievement amassed by this unique work as a whole.

To begin redressing this imbalance, the document at hand offers an extended

study of the musical borrowing undertaken by Bernstein in composing the role of Mass’s

Celebrant. It identifies and introduces the sources used in composing the Celebrant’s five

principal solos, and offers extensive analysis of the borrowings themselves explaining

their uses.1 In addition to this analytical dimension, the investigation strives to be critical

in nature by examining these same borrowings in light of the composer’s own views

about Mass, his stated compositional intentions, and the hopes he expressed for this

capstone work.

The thesis developed argues that Bernstein’s compositional choices concerning

his borrowed sources and their compositional manipulation do closely and revealingly

align with his professed aims in composing the work. Particularly, knowledge of these

borrowings—of their construction and of their implications—illuminates how carefully

Bernstein worked in view of several specific goals surrounding Mass. These goals

include christening a new hall uniquely situated within the cultivation of American

cultural life; paying homage to the Kennedy family and its legacy of liberalism;

reaffirming a “faith” free of religious dogma; embracing an extraordinary range of

influences and source material, including for the sake of making contact with a diverse

audience; and restoring to new music the traditional values of tonality, accessibility, and

1These solos for the Celebrant are as follows: “A Simple Song,” “The Word of the

Lord,” “Our Father . . .,” “I Go On,” and “Fraction: Things Get Broken.”

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cathartic emotional expression—values long besieged by the musical avant-garde of the

time.

By focusing anew on the Celebrant of Mass and the musical borrowings used to

create this role, the character becomes a linchpin for dealing with the work’s unusually

rich array of influences and resources. Studying this complex role provides entry into the

crux of a composer’s eclecticism perhaps unprecedented in scope. Knowledge about the

construction of the Celebrant affords insight into how and why Mass arose at the tense

crossroads of national public ritual and Bernstein’s own private reaffirmation of faith and

the core musical value he associated with it, tonality. In brief, the construction of the

Celebrant emerges as key to unlocking the very mystery of a work in some ways quasi-

religious, over-the-top theater in others, and all with proven potential for genuinely

moving audiences and participants alike.

Bernstein, His Mass, and Its Celebrant

As a leading American musician, and close friend of the Kennedys and the short-

lived “Camelot,” Bernstein commanded international fame and celebrity. In America, he

had since the 1950s been known to millions throughout the country for his hundreds of

recordings as conductor and especially for his televised concert and educational venues

with the New York Philharmonic. As composer, perhaps no single contemporary stage

(and eventually film) music rivaled the renown of his musical West Side Story, long

celebrated for its high level of “sophistication” on Broadway.2 As a leading American

2Regarding Bernstein’s “irregular presence on Broadway,” See bruce d. mcclung

and Paul R. Laird, “Musical Sophistication on Broadway: Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, ed. William A. Everett and

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musician of international repute, and one perhaps best-known to American households,

Bernstein’s stature thus made him a natural choice for composing for the opening of the

Kennedy Center.3

Bernstein chose to fulfill this highly prestigious commission for opening the

Kennedy Center with Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. It

premiered on September 8, 1971.4 He delivered anything but a ceremonial or

conventional work for the occasion. He had chosen as co-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who

that same year of Mass’s opening had begun his rise to fame with the musical Godspell.5

Embracing something of the same rock and flower-child aesthetic for his own “street

people” in Mass, Bernstein’s conception appalled many by combining sections of the

Paul R. Laird, 2nd ed., Cambridge Companions to Music (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 196–201.

3Bernstein scholarship has increased exponentially in recent years. The most

valuable biographies to date treat the many different aspects of his career as composer, conductor, lecturer, and the private aspects of his life as a troubled, divided, and insecure family man. The following studies are indispensable: Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (New York: Doubleday, 1994); Joan Peyser, Bernstein: A Biography, rev., updated ed. (New York: Billboard Books, 1998); Meryle Secrest, Leonard Bernstein: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994; Vintage Books, 1995).

4On the opening and history of the Kennedy Center, see Michael Dolan and

Michael Shohl, The Nation’s Stage: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 1971–2011, with a foreword by David M. Rubenstein and Michael M. Kaiser (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). An excellent source of background information on Mass’s genesis and premiere is Burton, 403–9.

5For an overview of Schwartz’s life and works, see Carol de Giere, Defying

Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from “Godspell” to “Wicked” (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2008). Pages 70–73 and 484–85 treat the Bernstein-Schwartz collaboration on Mass. For further details about the collaboration, see Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 263–70.

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traditional Roman liturgy in Latin with bold commentaries in English sung by the

Celebrant himself and a cast of others (including exaggeratedly “hip” youth). With an

abandon perhaps only Bernstein could muster, the composer called for an audacious story

line in which the Celebrant gradually collapses under the weight of ceremony, self-doubt,

and external resistance.

The restoration of faith at the end, symbolized through the collective singing of

material reprised from the Celebrant’s own “Simple Song” of the beginning, proved

profoundly moving to some, but only irritated those who saw in Bernstein’s work a

flimsy, unfocused piece loaded with impudence, lack of self-control, brazen questioning

of God, and painfully void of depth along with sobriety.6 That the work referenced

seemingly every musical style at will, including twelve-tone writing, only complicated

the question of what to make of this perplexing work.7 Even so, at least as a recorded

work, Mass long held sway as apparently the world’s most purchased multi-disc classical

recording.8

6The most exhaustive study of Mass’s reception remains Gary De Sesa, “A

Comparison between a Descriptive Analysis of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and the Musical Implications of the Critical Evaluations Thereof” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1984).

7See, for instance, Frank Segers, “Bernstein’s Mass: A Medley of Styles, and Its

Message Nearly Fog-bound,” Variety, June 5, 1972, 2, 54. 8The premiere recording reuses the original personnel from the Kennedy Center.

See Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers, Leonard Bernstein, conductor, Alan Titus (Celebrant), other soloists, Norman Scribner Choir, Berkshire Boy Choir, and orchestra; Columbia M2 31008 stereo, [1972]. This LP recording has been rereleased many times onto CD (see complete listing of recordings s.v. heading for sound and video recordings in the bibliography). By the turn of the millennium, Bernstein’s recording of Mass had earned an astonishing reputation, as summarized by Peter Gutmann: “It flew to the top of the classical charts and in

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Both during the premiere performances and subsequently in Bernstein’s historic

recording of Mass for Columbia Records (1972), Alan Titus performed powerfully in the

central role of the Celebrant. This precedent greatly influenced subsequent interpretation

of the role and work alike. Photographs of Titus in character have become almost as

iconic as an original, cross-inflected logo for denoting the work in publicity and marketed

materials. Seen historically on programs around the world, the same logo also appeared

together with Titus’ photograph on covers of the original recording and the published

vocal score.9 Such repetitions and mutual associations of imagery subtly emphasize the

materiality of the work as a “mass” perhaps not about Christ at all, nor any distinct faith,

but possibly about the journey of Mass’s Celebrant, and our relation to him as we

encounter his own enactment of faith. Understandably, such a curious work has attracted

a wealth of comment historically, not all of it useful for comprehending its most central

character.

Literature on Bernstein’s Mass

Arguably Bernstein’s most impressive work whether on or off Broadway, Mass

has attracted an extraordinary amount of attention in print. Bernstein himself found

Billboard’s most recent compilation it remains the best selling multiple-record classical album of all time.” In Peter Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace of Music,” Classical Notes, http://www.classicalnotes.net/features/Bernstein.html (accessed June 24, 2013).

9Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,

vocal score, text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Amberson Enterprises; G. Schirmer, 1971). “Corrected” editions followed in 1989 (Jalni Publications/Boosey & Hawkes) and 1998 (Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co./Boosey & Hawkes).

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“mountains of material” to exist about it as early as 1972.10 Much has been written about

the circumstances occasioning the work, the creative process of its key collaborators, and

preparation of its premiere; Bernstein himself contributed to some of this published

material.11 So, too, have studies scrutinized the work in view of the wide-ranging critical

opinion historically elicited.12 Given the intensities of divided opinion and the numerous

critical controversies surrounding even the earliest performances, this period in

Bernstein’s life and compositional output make for fascinating reading, as evident in

many of the key biographies and books on this composer.13

10John Gruen, “Bernstein Talks about His New ‘Mini-Mass,’” Los Angeles Times,

December 31, 1972, CAL 1. 11This vast literature includes the following: Leonard Bernstein, “Leonard

Bernstein Discusses His Mass with High Fidelity,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 68–70; Leonard Bernstein, “A Note from the Composer,” in Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 1971–1972 Season; Opera House, September, Opening Performance, program insert, p. D. “Bernstein Says His Mass Still Has Relevance Today,” Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1981, B5. Gruen, 1, 26, 50. Paul Hume, “Bernstein’s Mass,” The Critic 30/2 (November–December 1971): 59–65; Paul Hume, “Leonard Bernstein: ‘Today We Just Have to Do Mass and Do It Better,’” The Washington Post, September 6, 1981, L6. Robert Kotlowitz, “Catching Lenny,” The New York Times, December 19, 1971, sec. 6, 6–7, 51–56. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz.” Maurice Peress, “The ‘Controversial’ Bernstein Mass” (interview), Music & Artists 4/5 (December 1971–January 1972): 13–14. Rosemarie Tauris Zadikov, “Bernstein Talks about His Work,” Time, September 20, 1971, 42.

12De Sesa; Gutmann “Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace”; David Hamilton,

“Mass and the Press,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 74–76. 13In addition to those previously cited, also see Schuyler Chapin, Leonard

Bernstein: Notes from a Friend (New York: Walker & Co., 1992); Michael Freedland, Leonard Bernstein (London: Harrap, 1987); Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician (Leamington Spa, UK: Berg Publishers, 1987); Paul Myers, Leonard Bernstein, 20th-Century Composers (London: Phaidon Press, 1998); Barry Seldes, Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

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Perhaps influenced by Bernstein’s own account of his expressive intentions,14

views of the work conventionally find it to express a “crisis of faith.”15 Certainly, the

Celebrant experiences over the course of the work a progressively worsening crisis,

falling into doubt and increasing anxiety and frustration with his congregation of “street

people,” and finally slipping into a fleeting state of madness, whose destructive state

consequently reawakens in everyone a renewed faith. A tradition of essentially

approaching Mass as primarily a theatrical work with plot centered on the Celebrant thus

carries tremendous justification,16 a leaning which this “mass’s” subtitle—“A Theatre

Piece”—seemingly clarifies.

Even so, Bernstein’s own comments about the work favor viewing the work’s

dramatic structure in abstract terms. For though embracing the centrality of the Celebrant,

14See, for example, Bernstein, “Leonard Bernstein Discusses” & “A Note”; Paul

Hume, “‘A Reaffirmation of Faith,’” in Atlanta Arts: Monthly Magazine of the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center 7/8 (May 1975): [vi–x, xii]; Alexandra Scheibler, “‘Ich bin ein religiöser Mensch’: Leonard Bernsteins religiöse Werke” [I am a religious man: Leonard Bernstein’s religious works], Musik und Kirche 70/5 (September–October 2000): 316–22; Zadikov.

15This same programmatic backdrop precedes Mass and encompasses all three of

Bernstein’s symphonies (completed respectively, in 1942, 1949, and 1963). See, for example, Philip Larue Copeland, “The Role of Drama and Spirituality in the Music of Leonard Bernstein” (D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1998). As states one scholar, “Mass is the resolution to Bernstein’s sequence of symphonies, each with their own crises of faith”; Helen Smith, There’s a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 205.

16Hume, “Leonard Bernstein: ‘Today,’” L6; Paul R. Laird, “Leonard Bernstein

and Eclecticism: A Preliminary Consideration,” in Res Musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett, ed. Paul R. Laird and Craig H. Russell, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. J. Bunker Clark, no. 33 (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2001), 190; Laird, “Stephen Schwartz,” 265; Alex Ross, “The Legend of Lenny: New York Celebrates Bernstein the Composer,” The New Yorker, December 15, 2008, 86; Segers, 54.

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Bernstein considers him to be a true “character” only reluctantly, as representing a

universal, life-affirming, or religious quality.17 By any name, though, the Celebrant

certainly finds himself situated at the nexus of what has been called “two simultaneous

dramas”18 counterpointing the mass ritual itself against the Celebrant’s own highly

symbolic story, one in which he shepherds a spiritual collapse, both private and

communal, leading to a spiritual reawakening. Indeed, such a “layered” conception of the

work, including of the Celebrant’s dichotomous dramatic function, characterize many

assessments to have appeared.19

In addition, some historical readings of Mass find heightened social or political

commentary on the times, whether as a sign of the peace movement to stop war in

Vietnam, of indignation against the Nixon administration, or of sweeping changes within

the Roman Catholic Church and its style of worship.20 Others concentrate on spiritual

17Bernstein, “Leonard Bernstein Discusses,” 69. 18Leighton Kerner, “Theatre: The Mass in an Age of Anxiety,” Village Voice,

September 23–29, 1981, 111. 19Don A. André, “Leonard Bernstein’s Mass as Social and Political Commentary

on the Sixties” (D.M.A. diss., University of Washington, 1979); Jeffrey Alexander Bernstein, “The Expressive Use of Musical Style and the Composer’s Voice in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001); Peter Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: Mass,” Classical Notes, http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics4/bernsteinmass.html#genesis (accessed June 17, 2013); Robert Hilferty, notes for Naxos, 8.559622–23, 2009; Laird, “Stephen Schwartz”; Paul S. Minear, Death Set to Music: Masterworks by Bach, Brahms, Penderecki, Bernstein (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987); Smith; Habakuk Traber, notes for Harmonia Mundi HMC 901840.41, 2004. Also, see Freedland, 236–38.

20André; William Andrew Cottle, Sr., “Social Commentary in Vocal Music in the

Twentieth Century as Evidenced by Leonard Bernstein’s Mass” (D.A. diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1978); Frank Gannon, “Mass Appeal,” The New Nixon: News and Commentary about the President, His Times, and His Legacy,

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aspects and/or theological implications writ large of Mass,21 at times finding Bernstein’s

style and conception inadequate to accomplish his aims.22 Some related literature

addresses explicitly Jewish musical and/or textual references within Mass.23 One

important study situates another Bernstein composition (namely, his Kaddish: Symphony

no. 3; 1961–63, rev. 1977) within the context of post-modern assimilation of Jewish

identity, though forgoes treatment of his Mass.24 A chapter on Mass elsewhere, however,

http://thenewnixon.org/2009/08/17/mass-appeal/ (accessed June 17, 2003); Carol J. Oja, “Bernstein’s Musicals: Reflections of Their Time,” in Leonard Bernstein: American Original; How a Modern Renaissance Man Transformed Music and the World during His New York Philharmonic Years, 1943–1976, ed. Burton Bernstein and Barbara B. Haws (New York: Collins, 2008), 80–82; Seldes; Anthony W. Sheppard, “Bitter Rituals for a Lost Nation: Partch’s Revelation in the Courthouse Park and Bernstein’s Mass,” The Musical Quarterly 80/3 (Autumn 1996): 461–99.

21Clytus Gottwald, “Leonard Bernsteins Messe oder die Konstruktion der

Blasphemie” [Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, or the construction of blasphemy], Melos/NZ 2/4 (July–August 1976): 281–84; Scheibler, “‘Ich bin’”; Alexandra Scheibler, “Ich glaube an den Menschen”: Leonard Bernsteins religiöse Haltung im Spiegel seiner Werke [I believe in man: Leonard Bernstein’s religious attitude in light of his music], Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft, no. 22 (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms, 2001).

22Herman Berlinski, “Bernstein’s Mass,” Sacred Music 99/1 (Spring 1972): 3–8;

William Bender, “A Mass for Everyone, Maybe,” Time, September 20, 1971, 41–43; Miles Kastendieck, “Bernstein’s Mass in N.Y.,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 20, 1972, 8.

23Jack Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass or a Catholic Mitzvah?,” Journal of Synagogue

Music 3/4 (December 1971): 3–7; reprinted in Jack Gottlieb, Working with Bernstein: A Memoir (New York: Amadeus Press, 2010), 133–37. Jack Gottlieb, “Symbols of Faith in the Music of Leonard Bernstein,” The Musical Quarterly 66/2 (April 1980): 294; reprinted and revised in Jack Gottlieb, Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood ([Albany, NY]: State University of New York in association with the Library of Congress, 2004), 182. Also see Paul R. Laird, The “Chichester Psalms” of Leonard Bernstein, CMS Sourcebooks in American Music, ed. Michael J. Budds, no. 4 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2010), 5–6; and Edmond H. Weiss, “Lenny the Klezmer,” Moment 18/1 (February 1993): 42.

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does somewhat contextualize it along related lines,25 as does other less significant

literature.26

Bernstein’s eclecticism, including within Mass, has by far received the lion’s

share of comment. Some commentators see the work’s eclecticism as a way of fulfilling

certain compositional aims of the composer: that is, of positioning himself strategically as

a leading composer able to mirror a variety of American popular and concert styles; as

facilitating communication with the widest possible audience; and as necessary to

translate into music the very “crises of faith” Bernstein himself saw as endemic to

modern life.27 Some writers go beyond any pragmatic description of Bernstein’s

eclecticism, construing it as the very essence of his compositional approach and

composer identity.28 Much literature, therefore, exists viewing the Celebrant not only

24David M. Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish

Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 25Smith, 171–205. 26See, for example, Philip Clark, “No Easy Way,” Choir & Organ 17/6

(November 2009): 16. 27J. A. Bernstein; De Sesa; Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: Mass”; Hamilton,

“Mass”; David Hamilton, “Music,” The Nation, October 4, 1971, 317–18; Lars Helgert, Review of performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop, October 2008, American Music 27/4 (Winter 2009): 525–28; Hilferty; Paul Hume, “Wealth of Musical ideas in Bernstein’s Mass,” The Washington Post, Times Herald, October 3, 1971, K5; Lindsay Koob, “Bernstein: Mass” (review of recording conducted by Kent Nagano; Harmonia Mundi), American Record Guide 68/1 (January 2005): 82–84; Paul R. Laird, Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research, Routledge Music Bibliographies, ed. Brad Eden/Composer Resource Manuals, no. 57 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Minear; Ross; Smith.

28See André, 34; Burton, 407; Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace”;

Edward Seckerson, “A Mass for Lenny” (interview with Marin Alsop), Gramophone 87/1047 (August 2009): 41; Paul R. Laird, “Bernstein, Leonard,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press),

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against the backdrop of broad and diverse aspects of American society and culture, but

also as emblematic of Bernstein’s own personal, philosophical and aesthetic tendencies.

Some writers go so far as to characterize the Celebrant as frankly or obliquely

autobiographical.29

Far less attention, however, has been paid to compositional factors defining Mass

generally and to the Celebrant particularly, beyond matters of eclecticism and style. Few

analysts, in fact, discuss Mass extensively, whether with30 or without31 actual musical

examples. Others treat only one or more numbers at length.32 Similarly, references to

Bernstein’s uses of existing music in the work, whether of his own music or that of

others, also abound.33 Even so, borrowings for the Celebrant have yet to impact

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2223796 (accessed June 20, 2013). Regarding his Mass particularly, Bernstein himself saw “eclecticism” as its essence. See L. Bernstein, “Leonard Bernstein Discusses,” 68. That Bernstein viewed eclecticism as a measure of greatness arises in the research of Paul Laird, who has written most extensively on this topic. See Paul Robert Laird, “The Influence of Aaron Copland on Leonard Bernstein” (Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1982); Paul R. Laird, “Leonard Bernstein: Eclecticism and Vernacular Elements in Chichester Psalms,” The Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin 25/1 (Spring 1999): 1, 5–8; Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism”; Laird, Leonard Bernstein.

29For example, see Smith, 204–5, 276. 30André; Cottle; De Sesa; Scheibler, “Ich glaube”; Smith. 31J. A. Bernstein; Gradenwitz. 32Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass.” Jack Gottlieb, “The Little Motive That Could,”

Prelude, Fugue & Riffs (Fall–Winter 2005): 6–7; reprinted in Gottlieb, Working with Bernstein, 140–43. Kenneth Grinnell, “‘A Simple Song’ from Mass,” The American Organist 45/9 (September 2011): 70–73; Yugo Sava Ikach, “A Study of Selected Songs by Leonard Bernstein Which Reflect His Contribution to the Evolution of Art Song in America” (D.M.A. diss., West Virginia University, 2003), 78–85; Laird, Leonard Bernstein, 18–22; Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism,” 190–96.

13

scholarship significantly. For aside from isolated statements pertaining to Bernstein

having borrowed, no study has pursued this topic at length either with regard to Mass or

to the Celebrant particularly.

In all, though the existing literature offers many useful forays into Mass and its

Celebrant, much work remains to be done if this “central” role is to occupy more than a

marginal position within scholarship. The document at hand responds by developing its

own thesis that Bernstein’s borrowings for the Celebrant offer a fascinating window into

the composer’s eclecticism. By considering in detail his compositional choices involving

borrowing for the Celebrant, his sources and their compositional uses, his eclecticism

emerges as indeed something intriguingly and artfully managed.

Overview

To accomplish its task of studying borrowings used for the Celebrant, the

investigation draws partly on the aforementioned existing accounts of Mass, together

touching on matters regarding construction and compositional history, collaborative

processes and statements of artists’ intentions, and on the work’s troubled reception. The

drawing of new conclusions about Mass in relation to the Celebrant rests as well,

especially methodologically, on additional scholarly work warranting summary.

For shaping the scholarly study of uses of existing music, my approach embraces

“borrowing” as theorized by J. Peter Burkholder.34 Above all, his underlying assumption

33For example, de Giere, 70; Gottlieb, Working with Bernstein, 99–104; Smith,

198. 34J. Peter Burkholder, “The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a

Field,” Notes 50/3 (March 1994): 851–70. J. Peter Burkholder, “Borrowing,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Grove,

14

that claims of borrowing depend ultimately on attributing to composers the acts of

consciously and/or purposefully appropriating existing music, controls my findings

throughout. Further, Burkholder’s basic idea that the study of borrowing stems from

asking different types of questions has proved equally crucial. He groups the questions

motivating his own inquiry, for instance, into three categories, respectively “analytical,”

“critical,” and “historical” in nature. Burkholder explains that the historical questions

deal with how a composer comes to borrow, how a particular borrowing relates to

previous ones, and the degree to which it is innovative; the analytical questions, with the

material a composer uses as source and how it gets used; the critical questions, with why

the composer borrows in this manner and with what he or she hoped to accomplish.35

These same broad categories guide my own questioning of the borrowings to be

confronted.

In every case, my awareness of particular borrowings for the Celebrant’s music

has been prompted either by brief mention in published literature—especially by Jack

Gottlieb36 and Paul Laird37—or in other instances, by detailed conversations, personal

2001), IV: 5–41. J. Peter Burkholder, “Musical Borrowing or Curious Coincidence? Testing the Evidence,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Indianapolis, IN, November 5, 2010.

35Burkholder, “The Uses of Existing Music,” 864. Also see his detailed list of

questions, ibid., 867–69. 36Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass,” 4, 6–7; Gottlieb, “The Little Motive,” 6. 37Laird, “The Influence,” 95; Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism,” 193;

Laird, “Stephen Schwartz,” 267–68.

15

interviews and emails with Daniel Mathers.38 For illustrations throughout, all musical

examples derive from published scores.39

The study of Bernstein’s musical borrowings for the Celebrant unfolds in five

separate chapters, each addressing a particular solo, along with a culminating conclusion.

The first chapter addresses musical borrowings drawn from Aaron Copland in the

opening solo titled “A Simple Song,” certainly the most famous vocal selection from

Mass. Bernstein’s paraphrase of thematic material from Copland’s film score Our Town

(1940) and Clarinet Concerto (1948) undergird the main, “Psalm” (second) section of this

song. The resulting music provides Mass its own beacon of faith, one whose simplicity

and tonality together pose a stark alternative on the concert scene of the early 1970s.

The second chapter treats borrowing in “The Word of the Lord.” Though nothing

in the score acknowledges his debt to Chilean performer Violeta Parra (1917–67),

Bernstein in fact admitted “theft” of her music for this selection (discussed in chapter 2).

The chapter uncovers the precise source for “The Word of the Lord,” analyzes its relation

to Bernstein’s own newly created strophe, and contemplates the significance of his

appropriation of Parra’s style (of Nueva Cancion) as inked with social protest.

The third chapter examines Bernstein’s setting of the Lord’s Prayer, which he

titles “Our Father. . . .” For this setting, Bernstein self-borrows from his own prior

practice of using “faith” motives compositionally. Analysis reveals the setting to be

saturated with these same motives if viewed as unordered pitch-class sets. These sets

38The bulk of these communications with Daniel E. Mathers occurred in 2013

during June through December. 39The bibliography at end lists all editions consulted.

16

occur not only contiguously, but also on middle-ground and macro levels of composition

within this song. Significantly, Bernstein’s appropriation of his faith symbolism serves to

connect this nominally Catholic work not merely with his own tradition of Jewish-

infused, mystic representation; rather, this practice helps place Mass within a context

sufficiently broad to universalize its “struggle” with faith beyond the confines of its

Christian liturgy.

The fourth chapter inspects the solo Bernstein affixes to the Lord’s Prayer, titled

“I Go On.” Discussion builds on an observation by Jack Gottlieb evokes a classic popular

song titled “I Remember You” (1942), with music by Victor Schertzinger and lyrics by

Johnny Mercer. This jazz/pop standard originated in the film The Fleet’s In, which

Schertzinger himself directed. The argument weighs whether Bernstein indeed borrowed

a motive from the popular song. While analysis of the score leaves one in doubt as to

whether conscious quotation has occurred, much circumstantial evidence suggests that

the compositional connections in Mass are more than fortuitous.

The fifth chapter probes into the Celebrant’s mad scene, titled “Fraction: Things

Get Broken.” This final analytic chapter enlarges upon perceptions of scholar Helen

Smith, who finds the mad scene modeled to a degree on the climactic scene of breakdown

in Benjamin Britten’s landmark opera, Peter Grimes (1944–45).40 As does Britten,

Bernstein strings together snatches of recalled musical ideas in ways calculated to suggest

madness. Originality arises, however, in Bernstein’s level of injecting wordplays and

puns, thus adding a further dimension to the depiction of madness. This operatic

40Helen Smith, “Peter Grimes and Leonard Bernstein: An English Fisherman and

His Influence on an American Eclectic,” Tempo 60/235 (January 2006): 28.

17

influence serves not only to define the “fraction” (or breakage) at the corresponding point

of the traditional mass, but also to heighten the seriousness of Mass as theatre, and to

extend the work’s dimensions beyond those customary of theatre.41 A closing chapter

then formulates conclusions involving the breadth and strategic uses of Bernstein’s

eclectic borrowings.

Analysis of borrowings for the Celebrant reveals much of interest concerning

Bernstein’s compositional process, and of how he seized certain musical potentials within

his sources and manipulated them in view of the dramatic arc created with co-lyricist,

Stephen Schwartz. Attention to it can illuminate this role as the fulcrum on which Mass

depends compositionally, dramatically, and philosophically. While some commentators

have contended that the breadth of eclecticism in Mass threatens its integrity as art, and

renders the work into a pretentious hodgepodge, an altogether different assessment

emerges in the discussion to follow. Far from being arbitrary and uncontrolled,

Bernstein’s compositional handling of the Celebrant, and its reconciling of different

eclectic forces, proves central to making sense of the work as a whole in view of its many

overlapping contexts.

41Paul Hume, for instance, cites the scene as among “the largest scenes ever heard in the musical theater. He achieves in it some of the greatest music of his life.” Hume, “A Reaffirmation,” [viii].

18

CHAPTER ONE

Simply Coplandesque:

“A Simple Song”

On the evening of Mass’s premiere, the so-called “Dean of American

Composers,” Aaron Copland, sat in the box with Bernstein, itself a form of mutual

tribute.1 This inclusion among Bernstein’s guests was not without significance. For

Bernstein considered the elder icon of American music “the closest thing” he ever had to

a composition teacher.2 The friendship of the two men began in 1937, with Copland

eighteen years Bernstein’s senior, and continued until their deaths within weeks of each

other in 1990.3 This relationship has since been described as one of the most influential

1Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 406.

2Leonard Bernstein, “Aaron Copland: An Intimate Sketch,” High Fidelity and Musical America 20/11 (November 1970): 54; reprinted in Leonard Bernstein, Findings: Fifty Years of Meditations on Music (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982; Anchor Books, [1993]), 28.

3Their relationship may have included a sexual dimension at first. See Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 195. Copland scholar Vivian Perlis agrees, stating: “[I]t is clear that Copland and Bernstein shared an intimate relationship. While lasting for only a brief time in the early forties, it had an enduring impact on the quality of their affection and the depth of their loyalty.” Vivian Perlis, “Dear Aaron, Dear Lenny: A Friendship in Letters,” in Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 152.

19

relationships to have impacted music in twentieth-century America.4 As pianist and

conductor, Bernstein conducted and performed Copland’s music perhaps more than any

other conductor. By the 1970s, Bernstein had gone repeatedly on record as lionizing

Copland as something of a messiah figure for American serious music, or at least as its

“High Priest.”5 In a sonnetized tribute from 1980, for example, he referenced Copland as

his “Daedalus, Master, Guide, til [sic] time shall end.”6

Copland’s imprint on Bernstein’s style has long been acknowledged as

considerable, both by Bernstein himself and by others. At least one critic at the premiere

thought Copland’s stylistic influence on Mass particularly hampered the work, as if

Copland’s populist style of mid-career had become hopelessly obsolete, and Bernstein a

mere imitator of stunted tendencies. According to Robert Craft:

[T]he mystery of this score, and of Mr. Bernstein as a composer in general, is how he could live in the spotlight of musical life for so long and still register so little affect from development in music since mid-Copland, on which Mass displays not a whit of progress.7

Others, however, defend the breadth of Bernstein’s eclecticism, and its many Copland

influences, as an essential part of Bernstein’s distinctive musical personality across his

oeuvre.8 In either case, what remains unclear, however, is that Bernstein’s early

4See, for example, Vivian Perlis, “A Farewell to Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein,” The Sonneck Society Bulletin 17/1 (Spring 1991): 3–4.

5See Leonard Bernstein, “Aaron and Moses: Copland at 75,” in Findings, 317. 6Leonard Bernstein, “A. C. (An Acrostical Sonnet, on His 80th Birthday),”

Perspectives of New Music 19/1–2 (Autumn 1980–Summer 1981): 9. 7Robert Craft, “Non Credo,” The New York Review, October 7, 1971, 15.

20

championing of Copland’s music in the 1940s left clear traces on music of the Celebrant

specifically.9

One of the Copland works Bernstein had performed was the composer’s revised

suite of the film score for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, from 1940.10 Copland in fact

dedicated this same published version to him.11 Bernstein in turn thought highly of this

music, considering it, in fact, Copland’s own musical self-portrait.12 For Mass, Bernstein

chose to set his own lyric of “lauda, lauda, laudē”13 by resorting to this same distinctly

Coplandesque music as musical motive (ex. 1).

8See, for instance, Paul Robert Laird, “The Influence of Aaron Copland on

Leonard Bernstein” (Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1982).

9For the ideas presented in this section involving Copland’s influence on Bernstein, and the latter’s borrowing of music by the former, I am indebted ongoing research by Copland scholar Daniel E. Mathers. No previous citation of these borrowings by Bernstein appears within any published literature thus far.

10Copland writes: “After the film premiere, I took some time to prepare a more careful version of an Our Town suite that was introduced at a Boston Pops concert on 7 May 1944 by Leonard Bernstein, to whom the piece is dedicated.” Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942 (New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984), 304.

11Aaron Copland, Our Town: Music from the Film Score ([New York]: Boosey & Hawkes, 1945).

12See the interview with Bernstein quoted in Copland and Perlis, 335. Bernstein featured a selection the music from Our Town (namely, “Grovers Corners,” as self-borrowed into Copland’s Music for Movies, 1942) on a sixtieth birthday tribute to the composer. See Leonard Bernstein, “Aaron Copland Birthday Party,” televised February 12, 1961, in Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, vol. 2; Leonard Bernstein, writer, narrator and conductor; produced and directed by Roger Englander, Kultur D4370, [2013], disc 2 of 9-DVD set.

13This lyric is evidently Bernstein’s own. See Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 267.

21

Example 1. Bernstein’s “lauda” motive and its source variants in Copland’s Our Town (film score 1940; suite rev. 1944).

(a) Bernstein, “lauda” motive from Mass, “A Simple Song,” cadenza (m. 71).

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

(b) Copland, selected variants of motive in Our Town: Music from the Film

Score.

Our Town: Music from the Film Score ©Copyright 1940, 1945 by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. Copyright renewed.

Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., sole licensee. Reprinted by permission.

22

This motive can be taken as an emblem of all the virtues associated with

Copland’s compositional style such as popularized in Our Town and other populist scores

composed during the ‘30s and ‘40s: above all, the virtues of simplicity and

accessibility.14 That this musical motive first makes its appearance in the Celebrant’s

opening song, titled “A Simple Song,” thus makes particular sense.15 The placement of

“A Simple Song” also carries significance. For coming right after some taped cacophony,

blared out electronically at the very beginning of Mass, this Coplandesque style marks a

direct return to the core value of communicative simplicity Bernstein believed largely

absent from contemporary serious music along with tonality.

In the year preceding the acceptance of Mass’s commission, for instance,

Bernstein agonized in The New York Times over “the present crisis in composition and its

possible consequence in the near future.” Specifically, he pondered:

What has happened to symphonic forms? Are symphonies a thing of the past? What will become of the symphony orchestra? Is tonality dead forever? Is the international community of composers really, deeply ready to accept that death? If

14A timeless discussion of these aspects in Copland’s music, including in relation to his complex scores, is Arthur Berger, Aaron Copland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953). For reference to these same topics and related issues in relation to Bernstein’s music, see Paul R. Laird, Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research, Routledge Music Bibliographies, ed. Brad Eden/Composer Resource Manuals, no. 57 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 15–17, 32–37.

15Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,

vocal score, corr. ed., text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 1998), 22. Within the order of service, “A Simple Song” comes as no. 2 within section I, titled “Devotions before Mass.” “A Simple Song” (pp. 17–22) consists of two parts, indicated as “Hymn” and “Psalm” respectively. These sections have the corresponding tempo markings Tranquillo and Poco meno mosso. The curtain rises as the latter section commences.

23

so, will the music-loving public concur? Are the new staggering complexities of music vital to it, or do they simply constitute pretty Papiermusik?16

Similarly, before completing Mass, he had occasion to remark on Copland’s music in

light of this same artistic crisis:

Unlike much of the past decade’s transient works, Aaron’s music has always contained the basic values of art, not the least of which is communicativeness.

As these virtues became unfashionable, so did Aaron’s music. . . . When he started writing twelve-tone I figured that it was inevitable—

everybody has to fool with serialism. . . . But still I asked him, “Of all people, why you—you who are so instinctive, so spontaneous. . . . And that lasted for four more pieces and then he didn’t write any more. How sad for him. How awful for us.”17

In context of the era, therefore, “Simple Song” becomes emblematic of the Celebrant’s,

and Bernstein’s, own simple, tonal brand of faith—something to which the work

seemingly strives to return again and again, and whose failure to do so arguably provides

the central dramatic arc of Mass’s musical organization.18

Along with the borrowed motive from Our Town, one other Copland source

further impacts “Simple Song.” To derive the accompaniment for the main, or “Psalm,”

portion of the song, Bernstein takes his point of departure from the opening of Copland’s

Clarinet Concerto, composed 1948 (ex. 2).19

16Leonard Bernstein, “Bernstein: What I Thought. . .,” The New York Times, October 24, 1965, X19.

17Bernstein, “Aaron Copland,” 55.

18Bernstein’s most sustained theoretical defense of tonality and its value for contemporary music came soon after Mass, at Harvard in 1973. See Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard, The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1973 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); also, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein at Harvard: “The Unanswered Question,” 793 min., col. (West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, [2001]).

24

Example 2. Accompaniment of Bernstein’s “A Simple Song” as patterned after the opening of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto (1948).

(a) Copland, opening of Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, with Harp and

Piano, I, mm. 1–9.

Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra by Aaron Copland

©Copyright 1949, 1952 by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., sole licensee.

Reprinted by permission.

(b) Bernstein, Mass, Psalm portion of “A Simple Song,” mm. 20–24, with parallel tenths.

19Aaron Copland, Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, with Harp and Piano, Hawkes Pocket Scores, no. 831 (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1952).

10 10 10 10

25

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Bernstein paraphrases the accompaniment to derive his own accompanying material.20 He

leaves Copland’s successive tenths, played by harp on C–E moving to D–F, intact. Also,

as in the case of Our Town, Bernstein once again retains Copland’s original key, here the

least complicated key of all, C major. Bernstein’s pervasive lyricism, too, recalls this

Copland movement, as do the lyrical interjections on flute heard within “Simple Song,”

whose descending blue notes appear suggested by Copland’s own elsewhere in the

movement.21

As with Copland’s Our Town, Bernstein shared some personal history with the

Clarinet Concerto as well. Copland had played it for Bernstein when working on the

score. Upon conducting the work for Copland’s seventieth birthday celebration for a

“Young People’s Concert,” Bernstein recollected being so impressed with the Copland’s

use of E-flat in the bass toward the beginning (i.e., after the appearance of the E-naturals

diatonic to C major). Bernstein went on to say that this note could be taken as an example

of what Copland (and others within a French circle of influence) liked to call “la note

choisie”—or the note that “costs” the composer careful deliberation or forethought.22

20Bernstein, Mass, 19. 21See Aaron Copland, Concerto: Clarinet and String Orchestra (with Harp and

Piano), reduction for clarinet and piano by the composer ([New York]: Boosey & Hawkes, 1950), 3, mm. 26–27.

22Leonard Bernstein, “A Copland Celebration,” televised December 27, 1970, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, disc 8. Bernstein also references this concept of “la note choisie” in the personal interview quoted in Copland and Perlis, 340.

26

Interestingly, in his own use of this material, as seen above, Bernstein cuts to the chase

and opted for that same E-flat, instead of E-natural, immediately!23

Both Copland’s Our Town and his Clarinet Concerto thus contribute to the direct,

populist language of the Celebrant and its address of a wide audience. Through recourse

to this populist style, Bernstein celebrates and affirms his own cherished notion of

simplicity, and direct communication, simultaneously grounding Mass with its stylistic,

intellectual center, matched with the notion that “God is the simplest of all.”24 In Mass,

this idealized simplicity based on Copland’s populist model serves as beacon

compositionally and otherwise.

23For some further comments about the Concerto, and particular its first recording by Copland and Benny Goodman, see Bernstein’s letter to Copland from 1952 quoted in Perlis, “Dear Aaron, Dear Lenny,” 170. Bernstein was quite frank in opinion: “The opening is still ravishing. . . . [But] the form doesn’t seem to work.”

24Interestingly, this line arose as Schwartz’s revision to Bernstein’s original line “love is the simplest of all.” See Laird, “Stephen Schwartz,” 267.

27

CHAPTER TWO

Gracias a Violeta Parra:

“The Word of the Lord”

The Celebrant’s solo titled “The Word of the Lord” begins with the Celebrant

reading an epistle “from the book” (i.e., open Bible). He states: “Brothers. This is the

gospel I preach; and in its service I have suffered hardship like a criminal; yea, even unto

imprisonment; but there is no imprisoning the word of God.” This text paraphrases the

apostle Paul’s writing to Timothy: “Where I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto

bonds; but the word of God is not bound” (II Timothy 2:9). The reading of other “prison”

letters then follows, some anonymous and contemporary, and others sacred, as in the case

of Paul’s I Corinthians 4: 9–13. A paraphrase of I John 3: 14–15 also shows up for good

measure. All these additional texts are read by individuals from the onstage “Street

Chorus.” During the second of these readings the musical accompaniment quietly enters,

and continues throughout the intermittent readings which alternate with solo singing

interpolated by the Celebrant.1 As for this for this format of alternating song and speech

about scripture, Bernstein lifted it wholesale from a source few could have known.

The source in question involves a recording by the Chilean folksinger, poet, and

visual artist Violeta Parra (1917–67). Parra remains best remembered today as pioneer in

1Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers, vocal score, corr. ed., text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 1998), 123–28.

28

the popular cultural movement known as Nueva Canción. This movement began in Chile

as an attempt to produce a popular music steeped in folk traditions versus

commercialization, and sought to align itself with struggles for social justice.2 As a figure

that attracted an immense following within Chilean culture and Latin-American Studies,

Parra’s reputation as musician rests on her collecting of Chilean folk music and its

assimilation into her own original recordings of music and texts. As with many popular

artists still today, even her most original music arose without knowledge of musical

notation. Yet many have found her music to possess a vulnerable yet powerful

expressivity, and a universality born of her own popular, even revolutionary, political

sympathies. They arose from her rural background and unique life experiences as a

highly artistic and internationally engaged woman.3 One can hear something of her

2An excellent study in English on Parra and the movement of new song is Albrecht Moreno, “Violeta Parra and La nueva canción chilena,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 5 (1986): 108–26. Also see Miguel Cabezas, “The Chilean ‘New Song,’” Index on Censorship 6/4 (July 1977): 30–34, 36; and Bernardo Subercaseaux, “Notes on Violeta Parra, from Folklore to Chilean-lore,” Papers in Romance 1/1 (Spring 1979): 76–78.

3An extraordinarily vast literature has arisen on Parra in Spanish on her poetry,

music, and visual art. Indispensable is Isabel Parra, El libro mayor de Violeta Parra: Un relato biográfico y testimonial [The ultimate book of Violeta Parra: A biographical account and testimonial], 25th anniversary ed, Serie Ensayo/Testimonio (Providencia, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2009). In English, comparatively little writing has appeared. Among the latter, is a biography plus an overview of her multifaceted career: Karen Kerschen, Violeta Parra: By the Whim of the Wind (Albuquerque, NM: ABQ Press, 2010); Inés Dölz-Blackburn, “Violeta Parra: Singer of Life,” in A Dream of Light & Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, ed. Marjorie Agosín (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 143–57. For a study in English of what may be Parra’s most celebrated song, see Robert Pring-Mill, “Violeta Parra and ‘Gracias a la vida,’” in “Gracias a la vida”: The Power and Poetry of Song, The Kate Elder Lecture, no. 1 ([London]: University of London, Department of Hispanic Studies, 1990), 20–49. Another study in English delving into pointed aspects of her creativity is Romina A. Green, “Unearthing Violeta Parra: Art as Multilayered Discourse

29

many-sided character in her “Versos por la sagrada escritura” (or “Verses for the Sacred

Scripture”). Parra recorded this Chilean folksong in 1956 as part of her album El folklore

de Chile, volume 1, to her own guitar accompaniment.4

Bernstein definitely encountered this song, and to use his own words from an

unpublished interview with musicologist Paul Laird, virtually stole it for Mass. Bernstein

references the borrowing for “The Word of the Lord” while discussing with Laird

compositional use of speech rhythms. The composer states:

[The song] is based, almost stolen, from the Chilean folk music by Violeta Parra. It’s an album of Violeta Parra, who is dead now. I could play you part of it and you’d be astonished at the similarity. You’d say, “but that’s a direct steal,” and you’d be right. In my hands this thing becomes American speech practice even though it started with Chilean religious chanting.”5

Understandably, references to this quite sensational quotation appear elsewhere in Laird’s

published writings as well.6

and Manifestations of Anti-(Neo)Colonialism, Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Otherness,” Academia.edu, http://www.academia.edu/238709/Unearthing_Violeta_Parra_Art_as_Multilayered_Discourse_and_Manifestations_of_Anti-_Neo_Colonialism_Anti-Modernism_Nationalism_and_Otherness (accessed July 23, 2013).

4Violeta Parra, El folklore de Chile [Chilean folklore], vol. 1. Violeta Parra, voice and guitar, Odeón, 1956. Her recording of “Versos por la sagrada escritura” has since reappeared on a recent MP3 album; see Parra, Violeta Parra, Canto popular de Chile [Chilean folk song], RHI, 2009. See http://www.amazon.com/Canto-Popular-Chile-Violeta-Parra/dp/B00DW21EPI/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&sr=1-1&keywords=violeta+parra+Canto+Popular+de+Chile (accessed November 17, 2013).

5Paul Robert Laird, “The Influence of Aaron Copland on Leonard Bernstein”

(Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1982), 95. 6See, for example, Paul R. Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism: A

Preliminary Consideration,” in Res Musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett, ed. Paul R. Laird and Craig H. Russell, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. J. Bunker Clark, no. 33 (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2001), 187–88, 193.

30

Much conflicting evidence, however, surrounds the circumstances of Bernstein

coming to know Parra’s source. One source asserts that the tune was a favorite Chilean

folksong of the Bernstein household introduced by his wife, who had grown up in Chile.

As the critic Paul Hume writes:

Bernstein is a lifetime lover of folk music. The melody upon which the entire sermon of Mass is built, over the text, “You cannot imprison the word of the Lord,” is one of his family’s favorite folksongs, an ancient tune from his wife’s native Chile, where she was raised in what Bernstein called “the practically monastic life of a Latin-American Catholic girl.”7

An authoritative biographer implies that Bernstein possibly encountered Parra singing in

person while on tour in Chile in 1958. According to Burton, while there in Chile he

“learned to love the folk music of Chile through the magical singing of Violetta [sic]

Parra.”8 Outside musicology, some false reports exist that Bernstein supposedly

appropriated not “Versos por la sagrada escritura,” but another song that Parra recorded

titled “Casamiento de negros.”9 Those reports, however, can be dismissed outright, since

7Paul Hume, “Bernstein’s Mass,” The Critic 30/2 (November–December 1971):

64. This article also appeared as Paul Hume, “A Reaffirmation of Faith,” in a souvenir book surrounding the premiere of Mass (pp. 3–10). Unfortunately, no bibliographical data pertaining to details of publication appear on the document, whose cover reads simply “Leonard Bernstein’s Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers.” At least one further reprinted version of the article is Paul Hume, “‘A Reaffirmation of Faith,’” in Atlanta Arts: Monthly Magazine of the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center 7/8 (May 1975): [vi–x, xii].

8Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 288. Bernstein and Dimitri Mitropoulos served as co-conductors of a historic seven-week tour of Latin America by the New York Philharmonic, departing April 27, 1958. See ibid., 287–89.

9One such false report is Ernesto G. Payá, “Leonard Bernstein y ‘Casamiento de negros’” [Leonard Bernstein and “The Black Wedding”], Revista chilena de infectología (online) 27/1 (February 2010): 24; http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0716-10182010000100003 (accessed July 23, 2013).

31

“The Word of the Lord” bears no specific relation to this song. “Casamiento de negros,”

however, did take on something of a life of its own in the U.S., where it became

popularized as the instrumental hit “Melodia Loca” by Les Baxter and his orchestra in the

late 1950s.10 Parra sold this original song to RCA herself, according to the Parra

biographer Karen Kerschen, “for which she received a lump sum payment but lost

copyright.”11

While other authorities also correctly claim Bernstein borrowed “Versos por la

sagrada escritura,”12 only Laird cites Bernstein’s acknowledgment of his source as an

album. Extant archival evidence indeed corroborates only this latter possibility. For in the

Library of Congress, a cassette tape exists transferred from its Bernstein Collection

marked Violeta Parra, volume 1.13 This information corresponds exactly to that of Parra’s

first installment for the recording series El folklore de Chile, which featured the song.

While today locating an original copy of the album from 1956 seems no longer possible,

detailed information about it can be found in the excellent discography appended to a one

volume of Parra’s collected songs, titled Cancionero: Virtud de los elementos. According

10“Melodia Loca” [Crazy melody], in Les Baxter, ‘Round the World with Les Baxter, Capitol T780 [mono], [1956]. Notes on the back of the album are as campy and pretend as anything written for the exotic singer Yma Sumak: “‘Melodia Loca” is a Chilean theme, also called the “Drive-You-Crazy Song” because its monotonous melody and odd progressions are said to have driven numerous Chileans to suicide. Perhaps it should be played sparingly.”

11Kerschen, 95. 12The first to do so was Jack Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass or a Catholic Mitzvah?,”

Journal of Synagogue Music 3/4 (December 1971): 6. 13See the listing for this cassette in the “Sonic” database of the Library of

Congress, at http://.cweb5.loc.gov/cgi-bin/starfinder/6172700/sonic.txt (accessed August 16, 2013).

32

to this source, “Versos por la sagrada escritura” heads side B of the album. This same

publication also includes a photograph of the album’s cover.14

The only known published score concerning “Versos por la sagrada escritura”

resides in a posthumous collection of Parra’s collected folklore entitled Cantos

folklóricos chilenos.15 Example 3 reproduces this score.

14Violeta Parra, Cancionero: Virtud de los elementos [Songbook: Virtue of the

elements] (Santiago, Chile: Fundación Violeta Parra, 1993), 163. The album cover is reproduced as plate 2 on page 167.

15Violeta Parra, Cantos folklóricos chilenos [Chilean folk songs], with musical

transcriptions by Luis Gaston Soublette, and photographs by Sergio Larrain and Sergio Bravo (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Nascimento, 1979), 31. Surprisingly, a version of the collection published within Parra’s lifetime omits “De Génesis prencipiaron.” See Violeta Parra, Poésie populaire des Andes [Folk poetry of the Andes], trans. from Spanish to French and with an introduction by Fanchita Gonzalez-Batlle, Voix, no. 12 (Paris, France: François Maspero, 1965). Minimal overlap, in fact, characterizes these two publications overall.

33

Example 3. Transcription by Luis Gaston Soublette of “De Génesis prencipiaron,” in

Violeta Parra, Cantos folklóricos chilenos.

Score and text used courtesy of the Violeta Parra Foundation,

Milena Rojas Cereceda, Coordinator.

The title there reads “De Génesis prencipiaron,” which heads a score of the melody’s first

verse only, as transcribed by Luis Gaston Soublette; the song’s full text then follows on

the next four pages.16 Bernstein could not have known this publication when composing

Mass, however, given the collection’s belated publication in 1979; rather, his knowledge

of the tune came directly from Parra’s own recorded version. The existence of the

collection should not be overlooked, however, for its inclusion of the transcribed excerpt

and the complete text of what came to be recorded as “Versos por la sagrada escritura”

confirms the song’s folk origins. Moreover, some prefatory notes precede the score and

16V. Parra, Cantos folklóricos chilenos, 31. The song’s complete text appears on pages 32 through 35 of the volume.

34

text within the collection, and these further document the circumstances by which Parra

came to discover this song, and the rural musician who sang it for her. All confirms the

legitimate folk status of Bernstein’s borrowed tune, and as a folksong collected for

posterity by Parra herself.

Whereas Parra’s text delivers a wistful contemplation of the power of sacred

writing, Schwartz’s own text dazzles with lessons on why “you cannot imprison the

Word of the Lord.” Schwarz himself recollects that his lyrics for this number preceded

Bernstein’s music. He also recalls being quite surprised that the composer chose to set

them in the style of Nueva Canción, finding the setting “lovely and completely

unexpected.”17 Knowing this background, one can appreciate the seemingly “divine”

serendipity of their collaboration all the more.

Bernstein’s setting is by turns soft and contemplative or very loud and assertive.

He finds possibilities of mood not at all explicit in Parra’s recording, aside from inserting

new motivic and thematic material, and a completely original accompaniment. For while

Parra strums in 2/4, occasionally interrupting with three unison octaves on the beat (to

great punctuating effect before verses), Bernstein notates his music in music in 9/8, and

with a prominent tremolo figure for solo harp. Both versions are characterized by an

extraordinary rhythmic subtlety. Parra’s vocal line seems almost indifferent to her

accompaniment in 2/4. Bernstein preserves the rhythmic flexibility of her melody, but

retains nothing of her accompaniment or its rigidity. Further, he inserts a declamatory

17Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 267.

35

motive for trumpet in loud sections, coinciding with numerous triplet figures in the

accompaniment for added contrast. At times the piling up of all these separate layers

creates a bubbling energy whose gradual build-up against the speech-like rhythms of the

vocal melody lead into some of the most climactic passages given the Celebrant,

fortissimo.18

Though extremely different from Parra’s recording, the close degree of borrowing

of her melody itself makes the borrowing unmistakable. In fact, by comparing

Bernstein’s own transcription of Parra’s melody, as notated in Mass, with her recording,

one can see that he did indeed essentially—to use his own phrase—“steal” the song. The

original melody itself stayed largely intact during all sections to use this borrowed

melody, though Bernstein did repeatedly change rhythms to accommodate Schwartz’s

text.19 To facilitate comparison with the Parra’s recording, example 4 transcribes the

opening “a” section of Bernstein’s setting, as sung by the Celebrant. The example

transposes the Celebrant’s melody up a whole step (from the printed key of B-flat major)

to the key of C major as heard on Parra’s recording (ex. 4).

18These dynamic changes are diagrammed below; see figure 6 of the document’s concluding chapter.

19The sections to use Parra’s melody in Bernstein’s setting are labeled “a” in the diagram of figure 6.

36

Example 4. Melody borrowed from Parra in Bernstein’s “The Word of the Lord,” first statement of A theme, mm. 6–18, transposed to Parra’s key of C major.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

If one sings or plays along this music simultaneously with Parra’s vocal entrance,

keeping her eighth-note pulse constant, one will see that Bernstein’s melody flows at

relatively the same pace as Parra’s sung version of the same music (ex. 4). In other

words, despite differences involving meters, accompaniment styles, and sung rhythmic

patterns, Bernstein’s principal melody is in effect the Anglicized double of Parra’s

notation-defying rendition. The similarity becomes most evident in comparisons

involving performance, versus musical notation, given the folk origins of Bernstein’s

theme. For melodically, Bernstein did little more than alter Parra’s recorded rhythms—in

all their flexibility—to accommodate Schwartz’s new, unrelated English texts.

37

This borrowing of Parra certainly ties in with Bernstein’s invocations of protest in

Mass. As seen above in the introduction, a wealth of literature has sprung up

documenting Mass as a radical response to the social and political turbulence of the late

1960s and early 1970s. Bernstein’s own personal political difficulties appear to have

climaxed within the period, during which he became a source of wide ridicule and

scandal owing to controversies circulated in the media, especially involving apparent

support of the Black Panther movement and dissent with the Nixon administration.20

With thoughts of protest weighing heavily on Bernstein’s mind while writing Mass, the

work in turn became a vehicle for registering strong support of the peace movement and

other forms of dissent. The most obvious dissenters in Mass are the Street People, with

their rock idiom (not to mention hip or hippie attire in the first production).21 The use of

Parra’s protest idiom, having little in common with commercialized popular music, gave

the Celebrant’s declarations in “The Word of the Lord” about peace, truth, brotherhood,

and love a global, elevated dimension. Bernstein’s appropriation of Parra allowed to

Celebrant to join in the protest yet remain musically distinct from his congregation.

20Tom Wolfe’s satiric portrayal of Bernstein having Black Panthers among his party guests resulted in a book; see Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970). These and other controversies surrounding Bernstein’s career get treated at length in Barry Seldes, Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Alex Ross adumbrates Bernstein’s political difficulties of these years in his own discussion of Mass; see Alex Ross, “The Legend of Lenny: New York Celebrates Bernstein the Composer,” The New Yorker, December 15, 2008, 85–86.

21As observed by Robert Hilferty, Bernstein’s use of rock as a protest idiom in Mass extends to use particular instruments, and types of lyrics and vocalist suggesting rock music. See Robert Hilferty, notes for Naxos 8.559622–23, 2009, 5.

38

CHAPTER THREE

Born of Faith Symbolism:

“Our Father . . .”

That Biblical textual fragments liberally populate the lyrics of Mass has been

observed by Jack Gottlieb. Examples include “The Lord’s Prayer,” from the New

Testament.1 The Celebrant sings it a cappella, at least technically, though the printed

stage directions ask that he go to the piano and accompany himself, picking out each note

with one finger, “as if improvising,” whenever staged. Namely, these staging directions

specify, “The Celebrant, left alone, goes to the piano, picks out a melody with one finger,

searching it out, and sings along with it.” The tempo marking also calls for a casual,

impromptu approach by indicating “Slowly, reflectively (as if improvising).”2

Bernstein composes his own original melody for this setting of “The Lord’s

Prayer” without basing it on any existing melody in toto. In line with the what the

1Jack Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass or a Catholic Mitzvah?,” Journal of Synagogue

Music 3/4 (December 1971): 4. Gottlieb notes resemblance between “The Lord’s Prayer” (derived from Matthew 6: 9–13) and the Kaddish prayer, from which the former is said to derive. Here, however, Gottlieb seems to be talking about common phrases shared by Jewish and Christian prayers, versus borrowing.

2Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,

vocal score, corr. ed., text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 1998), 191. “Our Father . . .” (p. 191) and its adjoining trope, titled “I Go On” (pp. 191–93), together constitute section XIII of Mass, titled “The Lord’s Prayer.”

39

Celebrant had proclaimed in “A Simple Song,” the composer aims to give the effect of

literally making up the song as he goes along (“Make it up as you go along,” sang the

Celebrant). The compositional material nevertheless does come from somewhere. For,

throughout, various motivic kernels used in the setting have striking connection with

those Gottlieb has identified elsewhere as representing omnipotent God throughout

Bernstein’s music.3

In various writings, Gottlieb identifies motives for God in several works by

Bernstein. If reduced to their intervallic content using pitch class terminology, as shown

in example 5, the intervals of these motives can be reduced as [0,2,7], [0,1,6], and [0,1,3],

respectively.4 The second of these sets occurs on the pitches B, C, and F in the passage

from Mass cited by Gottlieb, taken from the closing section titled “Pax: Communion

(‘Secret Songs’).”5

3See, for example, Jack Gottlieb, “Symbols of Faith in the Music of Leonard Bernstein,” The Musical Quarterly 66/2 (April 1980): 287–95. Also see Jack Gottlieb, “The Little Motive That Could,” Prelude, Fugue & Riffs (Fall–Winter 2005): 6–7, which identifies a further faith motive for “Holy Spirit.” These articles have been reprinted respectively in Jack Gottlieb, Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood ([Albany, NY]: State University of New York in association with the Library of Congress, 2004), 178–85; and Jack Gottlieb, Working with Bernstein: A Memoir (New York: Amadeus Press, 2010), 140–43.

4See Gottlieb, “Symbols of Faith,” 287–95; and Gottlieb, “The Little Motive,” 6–7.

5Gottlieb, “Symbols of Faith,” 294.

40

Example 5. Faith motives in Bernstein’s music, as identified by Jack Gottlieb, given set-class analysis.

Not only does this latter set (i.e., [0, 1, 6]), but the same three pitches B, C, and F

underlie the structure of “Our Father. . . .” Such referential use of these same three

pitches can be seen in the final line of the setting, “And lead us not into temptation, but

deliver us from evil” (see ex. 6). There, both corresponding phrase members reference

these pitches as frames, beginning and ending on these very pitches. The ambitus of these

phrase members also emphasizes these pitches as well, descending from F to B, with

neighboring cadential inflections on C. Only a perfect fifth, on B–F♯, at the “Amen,”

releases the music from its prior domination of the tritone.

[0, 2, 7]

[0, 1, 6]

[0, 1, 3]

41

Example 6. “Our Father . . .” (complete), with set analysis.

X = [0, 2, 7] Y = [0, 1, 6] Z = [0, 1, 3]

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Given Bernstein’s inclination to faith symbolism throughout his oeuvre, any

inclusion of such motives in “The Lord’s Prayer” ought not to surprise. Yet, as even

Gottlieb admits, one is left to ponder the degree to which Bernstein may have consciously

sought to imbue his music with this symbolism.6 Thus in contemplating such uses of

“faith” motives, Gottlieb himself has remarked that such subject matter “is, at best, a

6See ibid., 294–95.

42

matter of conjecture.”7 Even so, Gottlieb still regards such recurrent patterns in

Bernstein’s music as symptomatic of Jewish formative influences on the composer.8

Moreover, Gottlieb trusts, along with Bernstein that the unconscious aspect of creativity

provides its own “sure source of wisdom” and order.9

In all, the recurrence of these same motives across so many different Bernstein

works, all linked programmatically with the philosophical idea of “a crises of faith,” itself

seems to reflect a degree of conscious appropriation among musical materials. One would

be very surprised, indeed, to find “The Lord’s Prayer”—of all texts—to be an exception

within this personal practice. And though it may be impossible to prove how consciously

Bernstein saturated his setting of “The Lord’s Prayer” with these same collections of

intervals, one nevertheless can remain in awe of Bernstein’s consistency of approach in

invoking or addressing supreme divinity.

7Ibid., 294.

8Ibid., 294–95.

9Leonard Bernstein, prefatory note to The Age of Anxiety: Symphony no. 2, for

Piano and Orchestra (after W. H. Auden), rev. version (New York: Amberson; G. Schirmer, 1966), ii; quoted in Gottlieb, “Symbols of Faith,” 295.

43

CHAPTER FOUR

Keeping It “Reel”? “I Go On”

Another question of purposeful borrowing surrounds the solo immediately

following “Our Father . . .” in Mass. Titled “I Go On,”1 this song offers not a prayer but a

soliloquy of determination despite increasing doubt, as articulated by the following lyric:

“If tomorrow tumbles and everything I love is gone, I will face regret all my days, and

yet I will still go on.”2 Without elaborating, Jack Gottlieb has suggested that the tune of

this same song possibly alludes to a love ballad and popular/jazz standard from the 1940s

titled “I Remember You,”3 with music by Victor Schertzinger and lyrics by Johnny

1Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers,

vocal score, corr. ed., text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 1998), 191–93.

2Ibid., 193. Schwarz wrote these lyrics; See Carol de Giere, Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from “Godspell” to “Wicked” (New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2008), 484; Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007). In 2004, however, Schwarz apparently included textual revisions to “I Go On” among those submitted to and accepted by the Bernstein estate for Mass. On reasons for revisions to the English texts, see Laird, “Stephen Schwartz,” 266–67.

3According to Gottlieb: “The clarinets which accompany the song ‘I Go On’ remind us of the opening of the Age of Anxiety (although the sung melody unfortunately comes out sounding like the pop song ‘I Remember You’).” Jack Gottlieb, “A Jewish Mass or a Catholic Mitzvah?,” Journal of Synagogue Music 3/4 (December 1971): 7.

44

Mercer.4 The present chapter explores this intriguing possibility of purposeful borrowing

by Bernstein from the song by Schertzinger and Mercer, along with an overlooked

connection to film music implicated by that popular song’s origins within a long

forgotten film musical.

In addition to Gottlieb’s noted observation, one can add that even the lyrics of “I

Remember You” seem evoked by the Celebrant; for Mercer closes his chorus with the

following sentiment not unlike the quotation just cited from “I Go On”: “When my life is

thru [sic] and the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all, then I shall tell them I

remember you.”5 Gottlieb stops short, however, of stating that Bernstein did borrow from

“I Remember You” for “I Go On.” Rather, he calls attention merely to the fact that the

two melodies have some commonality. Indeed, reference to the scores in question

supports Gottlieb’s supposition. While both songs share the same melody, and the

resemblances are thus close enough to suggest borrowing, doubts can remain as to

whether Bernstein consciously appropriated Schertzinger’s melody for the Celebrant. For

aside from the quoted head motives (see ex. 7), the songs are otherwise independent,

without other shared material.

4“I Remember You, from the Paramount Picture The Fleet’s In,” music by Victor Shertzinger, and words by Johnny Mercer (New York: Paramount Music Corp., 1942). The only extant copy located is missing its cover, in the Singin’ Sam (Harry Frankel) Collection, Morrisson-Reeves Library, Richmond, IN. A version minus the written-out accompaniment can be found in The Hal Leonard Real Jazz Standards Fake Book: Over 250 Songs, 2nd, “C” ed. (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corp., n.d.), 206–7. The remaining popular hit from The Fleet’s In, titled “Tangerine” (with music by Victor Schertzinger and words by Johnny Mercer), occupies pages 492–93 of this same collection.

5“I Remember You,” 3.

45

Example 7. Shared motives of “I Go On” and “I Remember You” (1942).

(a) Bernstein, “I Go On,” opening motive, 4–5.

(b) Bernstein, “I Go On,” varied recurrence of motive to signal beginning of second strophe, accompaniment, mm. 27–28.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

© Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

(c) “I Remember You,” music by Victor Schertzinger, words by Johnny Mercer, motive of refrain + varied repetition, mm. 13–17.

© Copyright 1942 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Copyright Renewed All Rights Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC,

8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203 International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

In all, only the intervallic successions of four- and five-note occurrences of the

motive correspond exactly. Yet that is where such close similarity ends. Neither does the

46

secondary literature support the possibility of Bernstein having borrowed for this song,

since no further citations of “I Remember You” occur in the literature.

Details surrounding “I Remember You” further complicate the possibility of its

borrowing for Mass. The song comes from a WWII-era propaganda film titled The

Fleet’s In, directed by Schertzinger himself.6 Unfortunately, as for the rest of the picture,

The Fleet’s In amounts to a totally forgettable movie.7 Bernstein might well have had its

deplorable quality in mind when previously composing the aria “What a Movie!” (for his

opera Trouble in Tahiti, in 1951, to the words “What a movie! What a terrible, awful

movie!”).8 The first few words of “I Remember You,” in fact, reference Tahiti, while

conversely, the aria mentions “the U.S. Navy boy’s” coming to rescue a comrade lost at

sea.9

6The Fleet’s In (1942), produced by Paramount and Paul Jones, associate producer; directed by Victor Schertzinger, 93 min., b/w, Loving the Classics, 2008. A dubbing of the musical soundtrack has been released as The Fleet’s In: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, musical score by Johnny Mercer and Victor Schertzinger, Hollywood Soundstage, no. 405., n.p.: Hollywood Soundstage, n.d. For a still photo/frame from The Fleet’s In, with vocal soloist Dorothy Lamour at front right) during an ensemble rendition of “I Remember You,” see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y-28yx9auc (accessed November 16, 2013).

7The film boasts an impressive roster of talent, including the Jimmy Dorsey Band,

Eddie Bracken, Cass Daley, Leif Erickson, William Holden, Betty Hutton, Dorothy Lamour, Helen O’Connell, and others. But the comic scenes and comic dance numbers fall flat, despite the belly laughs dotting the soundtrack. What little plot there is—of very cute guy catching equally cute girl—has no interesting twists.

8Leonard Bernstein, Trouble in Tahiti: An Opera in Seven Scenes, vocal score,

corr. ed., words by the composer ([New York]: Jalni Publications; Boosey & Hawkes, 1988), 83–97 (sc. VI).

9Ibid., 89, with these references: “comes the good old U.S. Navy asingin’ [sic] a song” (p. 91); and “dancing with the U.S. Navy boys” (p. 92). The pop song asks, “Was it in Tahiti?” (“I Remember You,” p. 3).

47

In addition, aspects of the plot of The Fleet’s In invite comparison with two other

Bernstein compositions featuring quite similar scenarios. The premise of sailors going on

shore leave in search of love and romance, as in The Fleet’s In, found subsequent use in

two new works by Bernstein, both from 1944: first, in the ballet Fancy Free, to a scenario

by choreographer Jerome Robbins; and second, in the musical comedy On the Town, with

book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, based again on the same idea.10 In

all, the question remains whether the Celebrant, too, seems as if to have encountered this

same awful movie and its well-known song “I Remember You.” Still, the preponderance

of evidence suggests that Bernstein did know the song and exploited it.

However vaguely, such musical connections with the vernacular world of film

music contribute stylistically to the realism of the character. In “I Go On,” that influence

works subtly, at once visible on the surface of the music, as it were, and yet also covertly.

That the Celebrant too, like the composer, would have commerce with the very real and

often trashy world of pop songs and Hollywood, thus seems natural.11

10See details of conception and publication involving these two works in Paul R. Laird, Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research, Routledge Music Bibliographies, ed. Brad Eden/Composer Resource Manuals, no. 57 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 54–55, 56.

11Paul Laird advances the general idea that, in Mass, vernacular references occur “on the surface, obvious for all to hear, providing the kind of ready communication one often associates with Bernstein’s music” (as opposed to “deeper vernacular references encountered in some other works by Bernstein). Paul R. Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism: A Preliminary Consideration,” in Res Musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett, ed. Paul R. Laird and Craig H. Russell, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. J. Bunker Clark, no. 33 (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2001), 193.

48

CHAPTER FIVE

Into Madness:

“Fraction: Things Get Broken”

Above the peak “orgiastic cacophony” of the “Dona nobis pacem,” the

now crazed Celebrant screams back, “Pacem! Pacem! Pacem!” and “. . . hurls the raised sacraments to the floor. The Chalice is shattered; the Monstrance is smashed.”

In the most shocking violation of expectation in the work, the “Fraction,” traditionally the breaking of the bread, is now turned into the literal breaking of the ritual objects; the breaking down of the Celebrant and the Mass; and the people breaking away from the Church. Everything is fractured and shattered, as well as the music and the text.1

The climactic portion of Mass just described is a “mad scene” in all but name. As

the dramatic centerpiece of Mass, it showcases a mastery of musical wordplay and

prompts some of the most interesting musical and textual interactions to be encountered

in all of Bernstein’s music. The present discussion of borrowing in this particular solo

begins by noting the influence of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes, a work with

which Bernstein had special, historic connection. While the thesis of Bernstein’s

modeling his mad scene on that of Grimes has been intimated elsewhere, this connection

1Gary De Sesa, “A Comparison between a Descriptive Analysis of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and the Musical Implications of the Critical Evaluations Thereof” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1984), 198; De Sesa quotes the phrase “orgiastic cacophony” from Peter G. Davis, “The Religious Composer,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 74. Another excellent description of what immediately precedes the mad scene in Mass, see Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician (Leamington Spa, UK: Berg Publishers, 1987).

49

will be expanded upon here to elucidate the construction of madness in Mass and, by

extension, its signification of spiritual decline and crisis.

On Peter Grimes as Bernstein’s Plausible Model

For the climax of Mass, Bernstein indeed chose to compose a full-fledged, solo

mad scene. It forms the penultimate large section of the work (marked section XVI),

which Bernstein himself referred to as “mad scene,”2 with the overall title “Fraction:

Things Get Broken.” 3 If scholars are correct, Bernstein found precedent for this scene,

presumably learning from perhaps the most famous mad scene for tenor in twentieth-

century opera, that of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes (1944–45).4 Contextual evidence

lends credence to this possibility, since Bernstein himself led the American premiere of

Peter Grimes in summer 1946 at Tanglewood.5 Subsequently, he remained a lifelong fan

of this work, even choosing Four Sea Interludes from the opera for his final conducting

2See Robert Kotlowitz, “Catching Lenny,” The New York Times, December 19, 1971, sec. 6, 54. Schwarz discusses his collaboration with Bernstein on this number in Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 268–69.

3Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers, vocal score, corr. ed., text from the liturgy of the Roman Mass; additional texts by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 1998), 237–54.

4For the mad scene of this opera, see Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes, Op. 33: An Opera in Three Acts and a Prologue; Derived from the Poem of George Crabbe, vocal score by Erwin Stein, corr. ed., words by Montague Slater ([London]: Boosey & Hawkes, 2003), 363–71.

5Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 151. Burton gives the specific American premiere date as August 6, 1946.

50

concert. This last concert also occurred at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990, just weeks

before his death.6

One Bernstein scholar in particular has stressed Bernstein’s affinity for Peter

Grimes. Namely, Helen Smith finds that opera to have been a seminal influence on the

development of Bernstein’s own compositional style, stating that “echoes of the opera are

heard throughout his compositional output.”7 Regarding Mass specifically, Smith finds its

mad scene to echo Britten’s opera. Her summary is quoted at length in place of any

particular musical example. For her description captures the essence of this scene in

Mass:

The fraction is the time in the service where the bread is broken before communion, but in Bernstein’s adaptation it is the Celebrant who breaks, crumbling under the pressure of the religious trappings, and the expectations of his congregation. As he reaches his lowest point, his song incorporates fragments of numbers we have already heard, strung together as he grapples for his sanity. This is evocative of Britten’s portrayal of Peter’s breakdown, in which he also clings to past events and recalls earlier musical phrases.8

Smith’s emphasis on breakage echo the composer’s own comments about the destruction

of the Celebrant’s “psyche,” and the symbolism he hoped to create, though without

singling out any influence of Britten:

[The Celebrant] comes on, sings “Pacem” three times, and the whole cast falls to the floor and stays there for 16 minutes. It’s the whole goal of Mass, where it’s

6Ibid., 521, 532. Bernstein died on October 14.

7Helen Smith, “Peter Grimes and Leonard Bernstein: An English Fisherman and His Influence on an American Eclectic,” Tempo 60/235 (January 2006): 24.

8Ibid., 28. This idea gets revisited by the author in Helen Smith, There’s a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 186.

51

going, the climax, and it’s all schizo, catatonic, just what I wanted. It’s about the breakage of minds, of order, of the mass itself, of the [C]elebrant’s faith.9 Bernstein’s mad scene thus offers up what has been called “a bewilder[e]d,

delirious and schizophrenic soliloquy,” one in which “ambiguity and paronomasia [or

wordplay] abound,”10 and rife with religious symbolism.11 Along with Smith, others also

remark on the Celebrant’s breakdown as apparently modeled musically on that of Grimes

through such use of “shattered phrases.”12 Still others point to this abundant quotation of

previously sung material without citing the specific influence of Peter Grimes.13 In

addition to reliance on thematic recall, however, one can note further similarities between

the two mad scenes.

9Kotlowitz, 54. Bernstein also references the destruction of the Celebrant’s

“psyche,” and the symbolism he hoped to create, in Leonard Bernstein, “Leonard Bernstein Discusses His Mass with High Fidelity,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 69.

10De Sesa, 198.

11This symbolism includes a specifically Jewish dimension. Regarding the latter: “In the Jewish wedding, the shattering of the glass is included specifically to remind those involved of the destruction of the Temple. The Celebrant’s actions in ‘Fraction’ are probably an outgrowth of the symbolism in that ceremony.” William Andrew Cottle, Sr., “Social Commentary in Vocal Music in the Twentieth Century as Evidenced by Leonard Bernstein’s Mass” (D.A. diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1978), 87. On the integration of Christian and Jewish influences in Mass, see especially Alexandra Scheibler, “Ich glaube an den Menschen”: Leonard Bernsteins religiöse Haltung im Spiegel seiner Werke [I believe in man: Leonard Bernstein’s religious attitude in light of his music], Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft, no. 22 (Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms, 2001), 195–96.

12This phrase comes from Alex Ross’s description of the Celebrant’s mad scene. See Alex Ross, “The Legend of Lenny: New York Celebrates Bernstein the Composer,” The New Yorker, December 15, 2008, 86.

13See, for example, Davis, 74; and David Hamilton, “Music,” The Nation, October 4, 1971, 318.

52

These striking similarities include extensive use of a cappella writing; placement

of the mad scene following a huge crowd scene; uses of dynamic extremes; and ending

with similar moods. The Celebrant’s mad scene begins with the marking “catatonic,”

whereas for Peter one finds the marking “weary and demented.”14 To end these scenes,

both the Celebrant and Peter become utterly speechless and drop off into silence.15

Bernstein is not content to simply imitate Britten, however; for in other ways he outdoes

him. The Celebrant’s mad scene lasts approximately twice as long as Grimes’s

corresponding climactic crisis, and his madness results in far greater antics. One imagines

only with difficulty, for example, the comparatively repressed Grimes taking to any altar

and dancing wildly upon it, let alone ripping off vestments and waving them like flags.

Further, their styles of accompaniment differ greatly. Britten juxtaposes the off-stage

sounds of chorus and fog-horn against Grimes’s otherwise a cappella solo. Bernstein,

however, forgoes choral writing during the mad scene, and instead uses pit orchestra and

organ.16 Finally, Bernstein indulges in puns or word-plays throughout in an intellectual

way foreign to his fisherman counterpart, Grimes.

In the case of Britten’s opera, different authors touch on the aspect of Grimes’s

madness as articulated through a jumbling, distorting process of thematic recall. Three

14Bernstein, Mass, 237. Britten, 363.

15Joseph Kerman stresses the significance of Peter’s ending in silence as crucial for understanding his psychological dissolution. See Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama, new, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 216.

16Bernstein’s published score of Mass does call for at least some noise during this section: “noises of breaking glass” (p. 237); “the Celebrant hits or kicks percussion instruments on each accent” (p. 239) of one particularly “wild” passage; he smashes objects and “defiles the Altar” (pp. 238, 242–43, 246); and he snaps his fingers (pp. 237, 243, 254) and claps his hands (p. 252).

53

key aspects of this process can be isolated, all of which arguably served as conceptual

starting points for Bernstein.

First, according to Hans Keller, instrumental sections (i.e., Britten’s “Interludes”

in Grimes) themselves premise and undergird the psychological portraiture, for example,

by integrating for the listener Peter’s “disintegrated mind.”17 Second, there is typically a

unifying, cyclical aspect that emerges with regard to the entire work in Britten: Keller

basically affirms that these moments of cyclical return unfold psychologically “an

extremely subtle build-up” in which markers of chronology disappear and interpenetrate,

and together accomplish unifying meanings both intellectually and emotionally

compelling—as, in short, “the most conscious thematic relationship to composer and

listener.”18 Third, there is in Britten an unusually heightened sensitivity compositionally

to the relationship of text and music. Stephen Walsh explains:

One of the reasons for its effect [of Grimes’s mad scene] is the astoundingly sensitive word-setting. The whole scene demonstrates admirably Britten’s approach to words and his understanding of how they can be made vehicles, both for meanings which go beyond their own familiar significations, and for a special kind of music which comes, by some alchemy, from the combination of phonemes and notes.19

17 Hans Keller, “Peter Grimes: The Story; The Music Not Excluded,” in ibid.,

328. 18Hans Keller, “Thematic Relations (on the ‘Mad Interlude’ in Peter Grimes),” in

Britten: Essays, Letters and Opera Guides, ed. Christopher Wintle and A. M. Garnham, The Hans Keller Archive, ed. Christopher Wintle (London: The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust in association with Plumbago Books, 2013), 50–53.

19Stephen Walsh, “Peter Grimes: A Musical Commentary,” in “Peter Grimes”;

“Gloriana,” Opera Guide, ed. Nicholas John, no. 24 (London: John Calder, 1983), 28.

54

These observations together go far in summing up some of the most impressive features

of Britten’s approach in Grimes and elsewhere.20 These same aspects hold true of

Bernstein’s treatment as well.21

Going Mad, Grimes Style

Highly Conflated, Instrumental Writing

Just as in Britten’s Peter Grimes, so in Mass does instrumental music play a part

in depicting the psychological state of the character. In the case of Grimes, Britten deems

such sections “Interludes”; in Mass, Bernstein titles them “Meditations.”22 Bernstein

20For additional discussions of Grimes’s mad scene, see William R. Braun, “Crisis

Point,” Opera News 72/9 (March 2008): 22–25; Peter Freisinger, “Three Operatic Madmen in Twentieth-Century Opera: A Comparison and Analysis of Wozzeck, Peter Grimes, and The Rake’s Progress” (D.M.A. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1999); J. W. Garbutt, “Music and Motive in Peter Grimes,” in Benjamin Britten: “Peter Grimes,” comp. Philip Brett, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 170; Muriel Hebert Wolf and Stuart L. Keill, “Opera as a Forum for the Insanity Defense,” The Opera Quarterly 3/2 (Summer 1985): 20–21.

21For helpful general studies on madness in opera and theatre, see Derek Russell

Davis, Scenes of Madness: A Psychiatrist at the Theatre (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1992); Susan McClary, “Excess and Frame: The Musical Representation of Madwomen,” in Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 80–111; Ellen Rosand, “Operatic Madness: A Challenge to Convention,” in Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, ed. Steven Paul Sher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 241–87. Unfortunately, the Celebrant’s mad scene in Mass has yet to impact such scholarship. Arguably, it also displays signs of what has been termed a distinctly Jewish “holy madness” common in plays by Elie Wiesel. See Harry James Cargas, “Drama Reflecting Madness: The Plays of Elie Wiesel,” America, November 19, 1988, 421.

22Interestingly, both composers drew concert numbers from these respective excerpts. Benjamin Britten, Four Sea Interludes, from the Opera, “Peter Grimes,” op. 33a (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1945). Leonard Bernstein, Three Meditations from “Mass,” for Violoncello and Orchestra, G. Schirmer’s Edition of Scores of Orchestral Works and Chamber Music, no. 134 (New York: Amberson; G. Schirmer, 1978).

55

reprises a total of two of these instrumental “Meditations” in the course of the Celebrant’s

mad scene, reference to which frames the solo’s beginning, middle, and end.

In measures 4 through 31 (beginning), 110 through 117 (middle), and 310 through

315 (end) of “Fraction,” Bernstein reprises and paraphrases material drawn from the prior

instrumental section labeled “Meditation no. 2,” measures 1 through 12 (as section VII of

Mass, where “everybody quietly sits or kneels” in prayer as the sole stage action).23 This

passage in the second Meditation (see ex. 8a) comes as unusual in several regards. First,

to any listener closely familiar with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the quotation from a

mysterious, transitional section of the Finale cannot go unnoticed. Bernstein quotes

Beethoven’s music, abolishing rhythmic regularities, sameness of dynamics, and

eliminating immediate note repetitions (cf. ex. 8b). Perhaps this quotation has a degree of

pun involved, since the corresponding text from Friedrich Schiller includes mention of

“bowing” down.24

Via these same distortions, Beethoven’s idea ends up sounding more like Boulez,

for example, or any similar avant-garde composer of the 1970s, than like Beethoven.

Moreover, in Bernstein’s hands, the passage becomes serialistic, again in the pointillistic,

Boulezian tradition stemming from Anton Webern’s serialism. Example 8c transcribes

this row, and assigns the respective order numbers 1 through 11 (literally drawn from

Beethoven), and adds the implied sole remaining pitch (i.e., order no. 12) B natural.

23Bernstein, Mass, 119, 120.

24The German text of example 8b, from Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode an die Freude” [Ode to joy] (1785), can be translated as follows: “Do you bow down, you millions? Do you sense the Creator, world?” Anonymous translation given at SongMeanings, http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858628547/ (accessed January 5, 2014).

56

Example 8. Bernstein’s “row,” via Beethoven, as used in Mass.

(a) Bernstein, “Meditation no. 2,” Mass, mm. 1–12.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

(b) Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (“Chorale”) in D Minor, op. 125 (1822–24), IV,

mm. 730–45.25

Score in public domain.

25These measures correspond to those assigned 76 through 91 in the numbering

scheme used in Ludwig van Beethoven, The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven in Score, ed. Albert E. Wier, The Miniature Score Series (Melville, NY: Belwin Mills Pub., n.d.), 342–43.

57

Example 8. Continued.

(c) Bernstein’s derivative row, with order numbers.

In “Fraction,” Bernstein indeed interpolates the B natural immediately following

the sustained A (i.e., order no. 11), thus completing the row. Example 9 illustrates this

gradual unfolding of the row in the opening of “Fraction.” Perhaps the sound of

shattering glass suggested by its emphatic arrival on the downbeat of measure 15 was

already in Bernstein’s mind upon writing the cymbal crash occurring at the corresponding

point of the “Meditation” (ex. 8a, end of m. 11).

58

Example 9. Order positions of row as unfold in “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 7–

18.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

59

In one stroke, this highly distorted quotation with which “Fraction” opens thus

references a very broad swath of Western art music. As has been noted, the appeal to

Beethoven signals Bernstein’s own concern with universality. The quotation can thus be

read as meaning that the stakes in Mass, as in the Ninth Symphony, surpass any one

group of people, religion, or set of beliefs, and so forth. Yet, when combined with the

shocking, destructive stage actions of the Celebrant, and his “catatonic” manner of

singing, the quotation acquires a parodic dimension not at all flattering to the

contemporary serial idiom simultaneously invoked. Namely, the coincidence of insanity

and serialized atonality, in short, seem mutually reinforcing relative to the very different

world formerly inhabited by the Celebrant in “A Simple Song” and elsewhere.26 In fact,

Bernstein commonly resorted to some of the most complex techniques of modern music

to convey troubling mental states and to critique threatening situations. Using advanced,

contemporary compositional devices to capture unpleasant or disturbing emotions, to

critique pressing societal problems, or even to suggest nuclear annihilation and the end of

mankind, all, for instance, have been observed as characteristic of Bernstein’s

compositional approach writ large.27

26Bernstein clearly was an outsider relative to the Pulitzer-Prize-winning brand of contemporary composers. See Joan Peyser, Bernstein: A Biography, rev., updated ed. (New York: Billboard Books, 1998), 492–93.

27For related discussions of “theatricality” and the question of conscious, literal, or unintended programmatic meanings attaching to serialism and atonality in Bernstein’s music, see Phillip Ramey, “A Talk with Leonard Bernstein,” in Leonard Bernstein Conducts His Three Symphonies: “Jeremiah”; “The Age of Anxiety”; “Kaddish,” Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, Columbia Records/CBS MG 32793, 1974. David Ernest Boelzner, “The Symphonies of Leonard Bernstein: An Analysis of Motivic Character and Form” (Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977). Edmond H. Weiss, “Lenny the Klezmer,” Moment 18/1 (February

60

Further use of this same material occurs at original pitch levels elsewhere in

“Fraction,” including in conjunction with other quotations of music originally presented

in Mass. At the very end of “Fraction” (see ex. 10a), for instance, a reiteration of a

refrain-like passage taken from “Agnus Dei” (see ex. 10b), wedded to the words “How

easily things get broken,” elides with the final pitches A and B terminating the row. This

elision occurs in measure 315, just a few measures before the final bar of “Fraction” (ex.

10).

Example 10. Refrain based on “Agnus Dei” of Mass.

(a) End of “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 310–22.

1993): 44. Others discuss Bernstein’s strategic use of style as well. See Paul R. Laird, Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research, Routledge Music Bibliographies, ed. Brad Eden, Composer Resource Manuals, no. 57 (New York: Routledge, 2002); Peter Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: Mass,” Classical Notes, http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics4/bernsteinmass.html#genesis (accessed June 17, 2013).

61

Example 10. Continued.

(b) Source: “Agnus Dei,” vocal parts, mm. 61–63.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Additional material surrounding the return of the row in “Fraction,” however, had

originally been presented instrumentally in Mass in the very first of the “Meditations”

(labeled section V). Marked Lento assai, molto sostenuto, “Meditation no. 1” supplies

two themes to “Fraction”: a slow, ponderous theme (from mm. 1–10) and a contrasting

idea marked tranquillo (from mm. 17–22; reprised dolce).28 Bernstein recalls these two

ideas in “Fraction” at measures 280 through 297 and 306 through 310 (first idea), and at

measures 300 through 305 (second idea). The statement at measure 280 of “Fraction”

plays significantly into the scene’s death imagery to close the mad scene. This use of

music to suggest death at this point can also be read in light of Britten’s precedent.

As has been observed elsewhere, the mad scene in Peter Grimes leads to the

immediate death of the singing character. Thus in Mass, Bernstein drives home this point

of symbolic (though not actual) death of the Celebrant through use of dirge-like music.

The expressive indications accompanying the reprise of the “Meditation” at measure 280

literally affirm this funereal connection: “Dirge-like, with a steady tread” (see ex. 11a). In

28Bernstein, Mass, 98, 252–54.

62

this passage, Bernstein sets words to music originally played instrumentally during prayer

(ex. 11b).

Example 11. Dirge music in Mass.

(a) “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 280–84.

(b) “Meditation no. 1,” mm. 1–4.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

63

Density of Thematic Recall

While the literature previously cited on Britten observes the importance of

motivic or thematic development within his cyclical use of themes, Bernstein’s mad

scene emphasizes something quite different, without abandoning development altogether

(as seen in the examples already quoted from “Fraction”).29 Beyond sheer alteration of

material, what distinguishes Bernstein’s process of thematic recall in “Fraction” is its

degree of cyclical returns. Very little compositional material is new in the mad scene,

despite the solo’s protracted length. This minimal, essentially non-derivative material

occurs as charted in table 1. What stands out about the Celebrant’s mad scene, rather, is

its stringing together of discrepant fragments stated earlier in different contexts

throughout Mass. This excess of quotation itself mainly characterizes his madness.

Table 1. New material in “Fraction: Things Get Broken.”

“Fraction”

(mm.) Description Note on Text

15–20, 29 New vocal melody, counterpointed with material derived from “Meditation no. 2”/mm. 1–12

“I never noticed that.” Used as basis for refrain: “Haven’t you ever seen an accident before?”

46–50, 103–5 Paraphrased from mm.15 – 20; overlapped with motive from “World without End”/mm. 104–5

Refrain: “Haven’t you ever seen an accident before?”

51–84, 152–58, 210–16

New material, raucous and jazzy (Poco più mosso; reprised Allegro furioso), with interpolated measure (m. 75) parodying the “lauda” motive

“Come on, come on, admit, it, Confess it was fun.”

120–28, 137– New material (Adagio)—[Lullaby “Quiet . . .”/”Shh. . . .”

29Helen Smith finds Mass unusual with regard to other works by Bernstein in forsaking development of recurrent motives. See Smith, There’s a Place, 193.

64

45 no. 1]

128–36, 145–51

New material (Andante)—[Lullaby no. 2]

“Sleep . . .”/ “Stay.”

The extraordinary density of the thematic recall in “Fraction” call on a variety of

techniques for assembling and manipulating its own self-quotation of material heard

previously in Mass. Table 2 summarizes these passages marked by thematic return,

identifies the source as occurs in Mass, and comments on the musical or textual changes

involved. Remarks about musical changes appear in column three, under the heading

“technique of borrowing.” There, different terms denote different methods of using the

materials identified in the immediately preceding column (marked “source of

derivation”). The final two columns pertain to changes involving texts.

Table 2. Thematic recall in “Fraction: Things Get Broken.”30

30Asterisks preceding measure numbers signal quotation of material previously sung by the Celebrant prior to “Fraction: Things Get Broken.”

“Fraction” (mm.)

Source of Derivation/mm.

Technique of Borrowing

Textual Changes

Use as Textual Refrain within

“Fraction” 1–4 “Agnus Dei”/159 Paraphrases

motive Retains “pacem.”

[none]

4–31, 110–17, 310–15

“Meditation no. 2”/1–12

Paraphrase Adds text “Look. . . isn’t that odd. . .”

31–35, 44–45, 118–19, 316–22

“Agnus Dei”/61–63

Paraphrase, setting

New text “How easily things get broken.”

*75 “A Simple Song”/71

Quotation Retains text [Refrain function removed from “lauda”]

*85–99 “Gloria Tibi”/5 – Quotation, New text [none]

65

16 paraphrase *97–102 “Our Father . . .”/1 Quotation,

setting Retains text [none]

104–9 “World without End”/5–8

Paraphrase New text [none]

159–210 “Prefatory Prayers”/1–136

Stylistic allusion

Instrumental version precedes accompanied vocal rendition with new text

[none]

*213 “Sanctus”/106 Quotation Retains text [none] 216–31 “I Don’t

Know”/121–34; “Agnus Dei”/1–19, 46–48

Quotation New text [none]

232–35 “Agnus Dei”/35–38

Quotation New text [none]

236–44 “World without End”/13–16, 35–44

Quotation New text [none]

244–50 “God Said”/1–9 Paraphrase (a cappella)

Alters text [none]

250–51 “Confiteor”/12–13 Quotation (a cappella)

Alters text [none]

251–54 “Thank You”/219–22

Paraphrase (a cappella)

Alters text [none]

254–57 “Gloria in Excelsis”/109–12

Quotation (a cappella)

Retains text [none]

257–59 “Half of the People”/156

Quotation (repeated; a cappella), with extension

Retains text at first, then alters

[none]

259–64 “Hurry”/1–5 Paraphrase (a cappella)

Alters text [none]

264–68 “Easy”/209–12 Quotation (a cappella), with paraphrasing extension

Alters text [none]

268–72 “Meditation no. 1”/25–28; “Meditation no. 3 (De Profundis, part 1)”/1–5

Paraphrase (a cappella)

Retains/puns text (of “De Profundis”)

[none]

66

In all, Bernstein quotes materials directly without changes (marked “quotation” in

table 2), quotes with various degrees of alteration (“paraphrase”), retains texts, changes

them, and adds new ones. At one point (m. 159), Bernstein alludes to the style of

carnival/circus music first played by a marching band in the “Alleluia” (i.e., to close

section I, titled “Devotions before Mass”). Though the theme itself is new, the merry-go-

round sound of “grand organ,” and noisy percussion, reinforces the carnivalesque, even

burlesque, atmosphere, midway through “Fraction,” as the Celebrant wildly dances (see

ex. 12). Only after this euphoric highpoint is the Celebrant able to sing this same theme

(at m. 184).

272–74 “I Don’t Know”/145–47

Paraphrase (a cappella)

Retains/puns text

[none]

274–75 “Agnus Dei”/passim

Recurrence of declamatory rhythm

Recurrence of text

[none]

*275–80 “Sanctus”/103–11 Paraphrase (mostly a cappella)

Retains/puns text

[none]

280–97, 306–10 “Meditation no. 1”/1–10

Paraphrase Adds text “I suddenly feel”

300–305 “Meditation no. 1”/17–22

Paraphrase Adds text [none]

67

Example 12. Dance theme in “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 129–64.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

The compositional tour de force, however, comes later in a section Bernstein

labels “Cadenza” (mm. 244–79). In technical terms, the compositional procedure

involved can be termed “patchwork.” This term has been defined by J. Peter Burkholder

as occurring when “fragments of two or more tunes are stitched together.”31 While table 2

details the self-quoted fragments within the cadenza, example 13 reproduces this passage.

Shaped added to the example indicate these various quotations, which succeed each other

successively without break; at times, they overlap (e.g., as the marking shows on the

downbeat of m. 250). This jumbling of recalled, fragmented ideas conveys the broken-

down state of the Celebrant the maximum point of disintegration. For once he reenters in

the subsequent dirge material (at m. 280), there will be no further antics and euphoria.32

31J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 4.

68

As has been observed, such “fragmented recapitulation” of previous materials qualifies as

“perhaps the most extraordinary moment in Mass” (ex. 13).33

32Much of the material presented in table 2 arises in De Sesa’s analysis, 198–228;

though my own analysis has been conducted independently.

33P. G. Davis, 74.

69

Example 13. Use of patchwork in cadenza of “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 245–78.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

70

When one views the entire “Fraction,” as a whole, made up mostly of quotations

throughout, one sees a gradual movement from a “catatonic” state at the opening to

alternating extremes of jazzy, harsh anger (m. 51) and lullaby (m. 120); to furious dance

(m. 152); to the climactic breakup of the cadenza (m. 244); to an increasingly tender

dirge (m. 280); to a final demise, back into a catatonic bewilderment (m. 310). Figure 1

graphs these many changes, showing the importance of changes in tempi and dynamics

throughout in articulating these and other sectional divisions.

Figure 1. Various formal aspects of “Fraction: Things Get Broken”:

hybrid, episodic form (A B C D – E A').

That the cadenza comes as the third, and final, section of “patchwork” itself gives

some indication as to the exceptional density of thematic recall obtained in this solo. Its

71

density seems threatening and overwhelming purposefully by design, as itself a

projection of the Celebrant’s psychological disintegration. Even so, if one were to attempt

to summarize the form with these broad internal shifts in mind, then the diagram

presented in figure 2 emerges.

Figure 2. Tonal aspects of musical form in

“Fraction: Things Get Broken.”34

As evident from observations in figure 2 concerning “tonal orientation” (third row

of the fig.), one can see that tonal thinking lurks behind the dizzying detail of “Fraction.”

34Within the figure, descriptions for the category “general mood” are prompted both by the music itself and by sung words, printed expressive markings and stage directions appearing within the score itself. Examples of the latter are as follows: “He [the Celebrant] cradles the broken Monstrance” (m. 129); “He slowly stands and descends the pit steps” (m. 311); and, “He disappears into the pit” (m. 319). Bernstein, Mass, 244, 254.

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Significantly, the cadential pitch A—derived from the converted row of Beethoven (as

illustrated in ex. 8)—retains its status as a tonal focal point on this broadest level of

formal organization as well.35 The inclusion of Roman numerals within figure 2 identifies

these large-scale tonal relationships with respect to A as tonic. As with Britten’s mad

character in Grimes,36 Bernstein’s Celebrant is never completely severed from tonality,

regardless of the depths with which it is concealed. Little wonder, then, that at the very

beginning of “Fraction,” even the outburst on “Pacem!” itself references “A” as the high

note (see ex. 14). Further, this opening accents the A every way possible, through

placement in register as the high note, through duration, and through dynamics.37

35That Bernstein’s uses of row tend to carry tonal implications has been observed elsewhere. See David M. Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 146.

36On the vaguely tonal nature of the mad scene in Grimes, see Braun, 22, 24–25.

37The preceding choral blues riff on “Dona nobis pacem” also participates in preparing the primacy of A, since its melody also begins with the pitch sequence G – E – A. See Bernstein, Mass, 221–36.

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Example 14. Accented A opening “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” mm. 1–5.

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz

©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Wordplays

The remaining topic to be discussed involves the unusual degree of wordplays in

“Fraction.” Bernstein’s wordplays will be regarded as a sign of the same “heightened

sensitivity” to the relation of text and music previously observed in Peter Grimes. As

with the amount of thematic recalls in “Fraction,” however, so too does its use of punning

far exceed anything comparable in Grimes.38

Figure 3 presents a tally of the wordplays occurring within “Fraction.” Most of

them work through elision of vowel sounds or syllables, as in “Let there Be [light]”

joined with “Beatum Mariam semper Virginem” (see ex. 13, m. 249). Other wordplays

38Clearly Bernstein enlisted the help of his co-lyricist in this regard. Schwarz himself recalls that he contributed the words to this solo before Bernstein began composing it. See Laird, 267.

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involve substitution of similar sounding, but vastly different word successions, as in “I

don’t know” for “Adonai” (see ex. 13, mm. 271–73). Still others turn on word pivots,

where the last word of a phrase initiates a new phrase, as in “I don’t sing Gratias”

launching “Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam” (see ex. 13, mm. 253–

57). Finally, there are puns that only a musician is likely to catch: first in measure 268,

where the singer’s “profundis” (from “De profundis”) extends the Celebrant beyond any

reasonable range for this voice type, out of tenor or baritone limits into the sole comfort

zone of basso profundo (see ex. 13, m. 268); and second, in the use of fixed-do solfège

on E/mi and G/sol (see ex. 13, mm. 275–78). In addition to distinctly linguistic puns,

therefore, Bernstein indulges in a form of musical-textual wordplay that only a composer

can do, obliterating barriers between words and music while punning both dimensions

simultaneously. Perhaps Bernstein sought to outdo Britten on this front as well.39

Figure 3. Textual wordplay in cadenza of “Fraction:

Things Get Broken,” mm. 245–78. Elision/substitution (m.)

- 249: “Let there be” elided with “Beatam Mariam semper Virginem” - 251: a of “Beatam” doubles for I (in “I miss the Gloria”) - 257: am (of “tuam” initiates “amen” - 259: I’m in (in “I’m in a hurry”) arises from “Amen” - 268: day (of today”) doubles for De in “De profundis” - 271: ad Dom (of “ad Dominum”) prompts Ado of “Adonai” - 272: I don’t know prompted by Adonai - 274: no (of “nobis”) in place of know (for I don’t know) - 274: nobis (of “I don’t nobis”) prompts “Miserere nobis” - 275: Mi (of “Mise[rere nobis]”) implies Me (in “Mi alone”)

39For an excellent discussion of the use of language in portraying madness, see

Sonia Cunico, “Translating (Dis)Ordered Speech in Drama,” Babel 51/1 (2005): 1–15. Cunico essentially offers a poetics of madness, and virtually all her observations apply equally well to the madness of “Fraction.”

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- 278: so (of “so . . .,” for implied soul) doubles for the solfège syllable sol

Overlapping (m.)

- 254: Gratias”(from end of “I don’t sing Gratias”) initiates “Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam”

- 264: Come (of “You said you’d come”) initiates “Come love, come lust . . .” - 276: Mi (of “Mise[rere nobis]”) doubles as Mi of “Mi alone”

Insider/musical puns

(m.) - 268: singer goes beyond depths of his normal tenor/baritone vocal range at mention of “profundis” (as in basso profundo) - 276: mi (solfège syllable) stated on the pitch E - 278: sol (solfège syllable) stated on the pitch G

________________________________________________________________________

Mass by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz ©Copyright 1971 by Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Schwartz.

Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Reprinted by permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

By having a mad scene at this point of Mass, Bernstein exploited an operatic

convention of long-standing for suggesting decline and the approach of death. The rather

fantastic wordplays in “Fraction” contribute immensely to the unusual nature of this

music and its dramatic, symbolic function. When “Fraction” does finally fade completely

into silence, it is the silence of death to which “Fraction,” and Mass thus far, has led. As

noted, therefore, Mass surprises and shocks by reversing the usual flow of religious

works from expressions of “mortality” to “blessedness.” As Paul Minear explains:

In Mass the movement is reversed—from an initial statement of confident faith, sometimes expressed in traditional creeds and chants, toward a wave of skeptical, even cynical, rebuttals; and these rejections increase in intensity until the theatrical depiction of death engulfs every singer and actor in a prolonged silence.40

40Paul S. Minear, Death Set to Music: Masterworks by Bach, Brahms, Penderecki, Bernstein (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), 146–47.

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If “Fraction,” then, is about the death or “breakage” of everyone and everything, then

why would not Mass end there?

In the words of theologian John Gallen:

It is then that Leonard Bernstein, believer and artist, shines through most brilliantly. Peace reasserts itself: not ignorant or simple-minded peace, innocent of worry and struggle and attack, but the more precious gift of peace that exists and endures in the midst of horror.41

That apotheosis, which the continuation of Mass holds in store, derives from reprising the

Celebrant’s “lauda” motive. This summation, titled “Pax: Communion (‘Secret Songs’)”

provides the rest of the story and especially the key to Mass as a work of reaffirming

faith. For to revisit Bernstein’s words about “Fraction”:

It’s about the breakage of minds, or order, of the mass itself, of the celebrant’s faith. . . . It’s what we all need before we can make our way back to faith and ourselves—an act of self-destruction.42

The “Fraction” as a whole, therefore, itself can be read as ultimately one large pun,

punning breakage of the mind versus of bread for salvation.43

41John Gallen, “Bernstein’s Mass Opens Kennedy Center (II): The Mass—Successful Liturgy?,” America 125/9 (October 2, 1971): 229.

42Kotlowitz, 56. Similarly, elsewhere Bernstein states: There are 160 people sitting there, none of whom can breathe, make a move, or take the next step in life because of the fraction that has occurred. There has been a fraction of many things: of the vessels, of the psyche of this quasi-character, and of faith itself. And at that point, everyone has to look very, very deeply into himself to find that very thing that he has destroyed.

Bernstein, “Leonard Bernstein Discusses,” 69.

43Hamilton, 318.

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CHAPTER SIX

Conclusion: Celebrating the Celebrant

Only after a prolonged silence on the stage do sound and movement begin

to return. A single flute begins a wistful, thin melody, as if to mark daybreak. The line of melody is taken up by a boy soprano, singing to God a secret song of praise: “Lauda, laude.” He touches a prostrate figure, a bass soloist rises to his feet, and the solo becomes a duet. They touch two other “dead” singers, and a tenor and a soprano rise to join in the canon. One by one, two by two, the song of praise awakens the dead, and the dead arise to join in the song until all dancers and actors share in the lauda, laude. Unobtrusively the [C]elebrant returns to the stage and is received with the whispered words, “Pax tecum”—in sharpest contrast to the earlier shrill demand for peace. With this quiet acceptance of peace, the chorus begins to move from the stage into the aisles of the theater, extending the touch of peace from row to row. Finally the stage is emptied, and the audience is enclosed by the choir. The final words are given:

The Mass is ended; go in Peace.1

Bernstein’s Mass remains a controversial work. Yet, many who know the

composer’s oeuvre well insist that it deserves recognition as a masterpiece. Paul Myers

hails it as Bernstein’s “most ambitious theatre work.”2 Humphrey Burton cites it as the

composer’s “most original work”’; as the “peak moment in Bernstein’s life” socio-

politically; as occupying “the very center of Bernstein’s creative work and the closest he

1Paul S. Minear, Death Set to Music: Masterworks by Bach, Brahms, Penderecki, Bernstein (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), 158–59.

2Paul Myers, Leonard Bernstein, 20th-Century Composers (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), 159.

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ever came to achieving a synthesis between Broadway and the concert hall.”3 Edward

Seckerson believes it “a work that is increasingly coming to be regarded—as this writer

always believed it would—as Bernstein’s most important achievement.”4 Conductor

Maurice Peress refers to it as “one of the most important works of the twentieth

century.”5 Peter Gradenwitz calls it “one of the boldest pieces of musical theatre as well

as of liturgy-based compositions that have ever been written—and performed.”6 At the

same time some consider Mass to represent the pinnacle of Bernstein’s compositional

achievement, others also perceive the work as visionary in anticipating many of the turns

taken by concert music in a post-modernist age.

Regarding this latter point, David Schiff cautions:

It may be as misleading, however, to praise Bernstein for anticipating this year’s fashion . . . as it was to dismiss him for failing to adhere to the approved models of twenty years back. . . . He needs to be understood in the context of his own generation.7

The mixture of styles as seen in Mass—in short, its unbridled eclecticism and refusal to

stay within any rigid cultural boundaries, along with its unabashed embrace of tonality—

has in time become the norm. Thus in retrospect, it seems prophetic, at the very least.8

3Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 406, 407.

4Edward Seckerson, “A Mass for Lenny” (interview with Marin Alsop), Gramophone 87/1047 (August 2009): 39.

5Maurice Peress, quoted in Joan Peyser, Bernstein: A Biography, rev., updated ed. (New York: Billboard Books, 1998), 422.

6Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician (Leamington Spa, UK: Berg Publishers, 1987), 210.

7David Schiff, “Re-hearing Bernstein.” The Atlantic Monthly, June 6, 1993, 65.

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Yet, as Schiff states, Bernstein belongs to his own generation, rooted in the music of his

own early, especially Coplandesque influences, inclusive of a strong impulse toward the

American nationalist tendencies that were so powerful during those formative years.9

For some critics, such influences made both Bernstein and Mass anachronisms at

best within the context of the early 1970s.10 Yet, as Joan Peyser observes, “Bernstein

symbolized the cross between concert music and Broadway, as well as the demise of the

academic view”; thus, many of his most esteemed composer colleagues could never take

him seriously in view of his popular connections and reliance on tonality at a time when

8Jeffrey Alexander Bernstein, “The Expressive Use of Musical Style and the

Composer’s Voice in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001), esp. 45–46. Alicia Kopfstein-Penk, “Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts: Context and Canons” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 2012). Paul R. Laird, “Stephen Schwartz and Bernstein’s Mass,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, ed. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. Susan Parisi, no. 50 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 269. Maurice Peress, “The ‘Controversial’ Bernstein Mass” (interview), Music & Artists 4/5 (December 1971–January 1972): 13. David M. Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 177–80. Seckerson, “Mass,” 40–41.

9Schiff, 65, 66–68.

10Of all the terrible reviews Mass received, that of Robert Craft stands out in this regard; Robert Craft, “Non Credo,” The New York Review, October 7, 1971, 15–16. Perhaps it was Craft, however, who was behind the times, if one accepts the following observation by Helen Smith: Mass is “an embodiment of artistic trends and ideas from the 1960s, channeled through the structure of the service of the mass into a piece that portrays the turmoil and tension of that decade, although underlined with Bernstein’s perhaps naive [sic] belief that, somehow, love will find a way”; Helen Smith, There’s a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 174. And even those to harshly criticize Mass as vulgar in turn typically saw it as a specimen of the “cultural schizophrenia of our age”; see Herman Berlinski, “Bernstein’s Mass,” Sacred Music 99/1 (Spring 1972): 3–4, 6, 8.

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serious music had seemingly moved well beyond them.11 Therein lies Bernstein’s legacy,

according to Peyser:

What Bernstein probably never predicted was the degree to which younger Americans would attempt to reconcile these disparate elements. Whether they have succeeded is not the point here. The point is that those composers making the effort see Bernstein as the one who led the way.12

If so, then audiences have come a long way from the time when a work such as Mass

could be commonly perceived as lacking “a coherent esthetic identity”;13 or too diluted

by diversity;14 and greeted so flippantly and insultingly by critics such as Harold

Schonberg. In one of the most memorable lines of invective, this critic of The New York

Times trashed and belittled Mass as “the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’

magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and marshmallow sauce.”15

In the end—and whether or not one accepts Mass as harbinger of things to come,

or regards its eclecticism as successful16—the work ought not be faulted for failing to

11Joan Peyser, “The Bernstein Legacy,” Opera News 65/1 (July 2000): 24–25. 12Ibid., 71.

13Frank Segers, “Bernstein’s Mass: A Medley of Styles, and Its Message Nearly

Fog-bound,” Variety, June 5, 1972, 2. Alternately, one can say with Don André that “it is this very mixture of styles from serialism to ‘rock’ that is the Bernstein style”; Don A. André, “Leonard Bernstein’s Mass as Social and Political Commentary on the Sixties” (D.M.A. diss., University of Washington, 1979), 34.

14See reports in Michael Freedland, Leonard Bernstein (London: Harrap, 1987), 238.

15Harold C. Schonberg, “On the Risk of Playing It Safe,” The New York Times, September 19, 1971, D15.

16Agreement on the subject of whether Bernstein managed his eclecticism

successfully in Mass or in any work remains divided. Even a sympathetic scholar as Jeffrey Bernstein, for instance, faults Mass’s eclecticism to a degree, charging that it

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overcome the constraints and influences of its time, whatever they were.17 Rather, it

should be appreciated for managing them so successfully. One knowledgeable scholar

with reservations about Mass asserts that it is ultimately “the force of its conception”

distinguishing the work above all else.18 Clearly, no work had ever been quite like it.19

Such an accomplishment holds true despite what Gary De Sesa sums up as the impossible

expectations held by critics of the time:

If one were to make a compilation of what the critics expected of Mass it would be a work which brought peace, restored faith, and alleviated the restlessness of mankind, solved unemployment, housing and discrimination, revealed God in the flesh, or at least his voice, comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable, and a host of other impossibilities, not the least of which would have been that no series of notes in the score resembled any other series written in all of music history, including those of Bernstein himself.20

“fails to create a coherent expressive surface” or “a unified expression.” J. A. Bernstein, 3, 4.

17David Schiff, for example, writes that when new, Mass was received as a grotesquely unsubtle attempt to pander to the post-Woodstock young, with peace, love beads, and LSD,” climaxing “with a blasphemous “bad trip.”. . . Its simulations of rock sounded even more fake than those in Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, Bernstein’s ostensible models.

Schiff, “Re-hearing,” 58.

18J. A. Bernstein, 50. 19As the composer remarked: I have not written a Mass. I have written a theater piece about a Mass. . . .

. . . [I]t is both a theater work and a religious work. It is and is not a Mass. It is and is not a pageant. It is and is not a show. It is without precedent. It is a piece I have been writing all my life, and everything I have written before was in some way a rehearsal for it.

Rosemarie Tauris Zadikov, “Bernstein Talks about His Work,” Time, September 20, 1971, 42. Also, Bernstein claimed, “It is a very difficult thing to conceive. There is no precedent for that piece which contains the whole Latin Mass, symphonic music, plus pop-sounds and blues”; quoted in Freedland, 236.

20Gary De Sesa, “A Comparison between a Descriptive Analysis of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and the Musical Implications of the Critical Evaluations Thereof” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1984), 309–10. The literature on Bernstein has many

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Moreover, though times have changed, no one matches him, states Habakuk Traber, in

“the unvarnished, merciless radicalism with which Bernstein makes his various stylistic

levels collide with and penetrate one another.”21

The eclecticism of Mass arises both consciously, as a means to an end, and as an

unconscious, built-in facet of Bernstein’s compositional approach in general.22 Bernstein

knew that eclecticism was “the essence” of Mass and “had to be”; and he foresaw that

this might “militate against” the work’s reception. He took steps compositionally in this

direction, therefore, knowing that its eclecticism “had to be very carefully handled, so

that the eclecticism worked positively and not negatively, as a pastiche.”23 For many, he

succeeded in doing so. These writers find Bernstein’s eclecticism in Mass remarkable for

being controlled, motivated, and effective beyond any “shock or novelty effect.”24 Critic

Alex Ross, for instance, spells out that Bernstein was not “facile trickster”; “his

manipulations and appropriations served carefully calculated expressive ends,” with

consummate craftsmanship, structural integrity, and knack for developing materials.25

other examples of unfair, impossible attacks, including this poisoning of the well by Leon Botstein: “Theatricality is a key to the success of Bernstein’s composing, and also to its superficiality. It is both the source of his wide popularity and the root of his triviality.” Leon Botstein, “The Tragedy of Leonard Bernstein,” Harper’s, May 1983, 40.

21Habakuk Traber, notes for Harmonia Mundi HMC 901840.41, 2004, 16. 22Gary De Sesa interjects that eclecticism was perhaps the only way Bernstein

could have met the different objectives he was up against in composing Mass. De Sesa, 312.

23See Leonard Bernstein Discusses His Mass with High Fidelity,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 68–69.

24David Hamilton, “Music,” The Nation, October 4, 1971, 318.

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Similarly, Peter Davis commends Mass for Bernstein having “forged a pliant unity from

what might have been chaotic diversity,” and for having a “kind of technical

prestidigitation that gives Mass its formal glue and keeps the dizzying eclecticism from

getting out of hand.”26

As literally the “face” of Mass, the Celebrant lies at the heart of this unique work,

one that many consider his finest. Moreover, the Celebrant functions on several planes

simultaneously within Mass, dramatically, musically, and philosophically. And he does

so practically or literally, as was apparently grasped on opening night and recorded by

Paul Hume:

The Celebrant, his arms stretched wide, said: “Let us all rise and pray. Almighty Father, bless this house, and bless and protect all who are assembled here.” At that moment, the 2200 people gathered there realized that in that prayer, the Center had been dedicated.27 On other levels, the Celebrant shapes and resolves all dramatic aspects of the

work through his symbolic death and equally symbolic rebirth, as part of the communal

rebirth and reaffirmation during the closing “Pax.” Musically, he provides the most direct

expression of “faith” in the work: faith’s affirmation, its loss, and ultimately, its

reaffirmation. Further, of all that transpires in Mass, the Celebrant anchors most

25Alex Ross, “The Legend of Lenny: New York Celebrates Bernstein the

Composer,” The New Yorker, December 15, 2008, 84.

26Peter G. Davis, “The Religious Composer,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2 (February 1972): 73, 74. Bernstein’s daughter Nina notes another interesting aspect of the potentially overwhelming eclecticism in Mass: “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.” Nina Bernstein, “Mass: Overview,” in “Leonard Bernstein,” The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc., http://www.leonardbernstein.com (accessed June 11, 2013).

27Paul Hume, “Bernstein’s Mass,” The Critic 30/2 (November–December 1971): 60.

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transparently and cogently its philosophical trajectory. The Celebrant demonstrates most

clearly, to quote Peress’ observations about Mass, that “we must all look within ourselves

for peace and understanding before we have the right to pass it on to another human

being”; and that the role evinces the power of “a simple person singing simple music

about belief, as opposed to . . . electronic barrage.”28 Bernstein himself was explicit about

this spiritual, or religious, dimension of Mass in relation to the Celebrant. He said in one

interview:

The Celebrant represents what in every person allows him to live, to go from day to day, which is the capacity to believe. That is what is destroyed along with the order of the Mass and the vessels of Communion. Then there is the long silence. Everyone in that silence has to look inside himself, and find in himself that spark of God. Not in any icon or symbol or trappings of religion but inside. Only when he finds that can he begin to relate to another person, then to a group, ultimately to society. And this is the miracle I saw take place.29

Hence, even in religious terms, the Celebrant figures crucially within Mass. Whatever

breakdown of barriers the work accomplishes occurs not merely as the result of blending

disparate styles. The Celebrant himself has agency in accomplishing that melding; in

other words, he personifies the very “radical project of inclusiveness” Jeffrey Bernstein

and others have seen Bernstein’s eclecticism as embodying.30

28Peress, 13.

29Zadikov, 42. Others remark on this distinctly religious significance or message of Mass. See J. A. Bernstein, 3, 37; Theodore S. Chapin, notes for Sony Classical SM3K 47158, 1991, 8–9; De Sesa, 310–11.

30J. A. Bernstein, 4: “For Bernstein erasing boundaries of musical style was emblematic of erasing boundaries between people and groups of people.” Many have remarked that the eclectic nature of Bernstein’s music exerts tremendous “appeal” for audiences. Paul Laird discusses the subject most extensively, including in Paul R. Laird, Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research, Routledge Music Bibliographies, ed. Brad Eden/Composer Resource Manuals, no. 57 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 32 ff.; and in

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The role of the Celebrant provides ample opportunity for viewing the workings of

Bernstein’s eclectic approach in relation to a wide range of diverse materials. From

evocations of traditional Judaic chant to such celebrated contemporary composers as

Copland and Britten; from allusions to popular music, Broadway and film to the global

wayside of Chilean folk music; all went into the extraordinarily rich musical makeup of

the Celebrant. All these antecedents condition this central character’s musical definition

and its uniqueness within the work, and they contribute to making Mass intriguing, well-

ordered, and communicative. Perhaps in Bernstein’s own openness to such a broad mix

of diverse sources and influences, the composer achieved his own best bid for originality.

For in the end, the Celebrant sounds like nobody but Bernstein.

As noted in the prior chapter, scholars have remarked on the theatrical or

“referential” use of contrasting styles as a crucial characteristic of Bernstein’s style.

Helen Smith, for example, cites the use of pop idiomatic material in Mass as a way “to

embody the convictions of the Street Chorus, who are representative of the general

populace.”31 The Celebrant sings art songs, though his mad scene is more dramatic

“scene “than “song.”32 Yet, owing to this mad scene, the Celebrant also touches upon,

Paul R. Laird, “Leonard Bernstein and Eclecticism: A Preliminary Consideration,” in Res Musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett, ed. Paul R. Laird and Craig H. Russell, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, ed. J. Bunker Clark, no. 33 (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2001). Also, see William Bender, “A Mass for Everyone, Maybe,” Time, September 20, 1971, 42; Smith, 192, 273. Aaron Copland was perhaps the first to cite an “immediacy of emotional appeal” as “the most striking feature of Bernstein’s music”; Aaron Copland, “The New ‘School’ of American Composers,” The New York Times Magazine, March 14, 1948, 54.

31Smith, 205.

32One analyst, for example, approaches “A Simple Song” and “I Go On” as art

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and literally recapitulates, most every kind of music heard in Mass. Thus the Celebrant,

too, ventures beyond single artistic confine.

In composing music for the Celebrant, Bernstein’s use of a variety of different

kinds of existing music offers a prism for carefully probing the eclecticism of this

composer and its connection with various compositional facets and aims. The borrowings

in all five of the Celebrant’s five principal solos each illuminate the nature of Bernstein’s

eclecticism within his compositional approach, and in quite different ways within each of

the selections. Each of the solos implicate different aspects of the Celebrant’s raison

d’être and give a composite portrait of how in Mass Bernstein grappled with a number of

his own personal motivations and professional aims.

In light of the analyses herein presented, some of the most crucial ways in which

the Celebrant’s borrowings intersect with Bernstein’s own aesthetics or values and

objectives can be briefly summarized. In “A Simple Song,” Bernstein’s appropriation of

Copland’s style grounds his musical idealization of simplicity and “faith,” and bolstered

his own reactionary stance against the musical avant-garde circa 1971. In “The Word of

the Lord,” his appropriation of Violeta Parra’s style of Nueva Cancion transfers to Mass

an idiom linked with social protest, and furthers his own object of protest against

repressive political regimes everywhere, aside from implicitly registering dissatisfaction

with the Nixon administration then in charge. In “Our Father . . .,” Bernstein rises to the

task of setting “The Lord’s Prayer” in a way that paid homage to his own past—Jewish

past at that—of setting religious texts and of exploring his deeply religious sensibility as

songs having a mixture of styles--in turn something for which Bernstein became known. Yugo Sava Ikach, “A Study of Selected Songs by Leonard Bernstein Which Reflect His Contribution to the Evolution of Art Song in America” (D.M.A. diss., West Virginia University, 2003), 78–85.

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composer. In a way very different from the anger and anguish of the mad scene, this

reliance on his own existing procedures ultimately places Mass within a context

sufficiently broad to universalize its struggle with faith beyond the confines of any one

religion. In “I Go On,” his use of material with vernacular origins in Hollywood serves to

keep the Celebrant “real,” that is, to keep him close to the vernacular world so that “the

guy in blue jeans” beneath the vestments never totally disappears. An analogy to

Bernstein’s own situation as composer thus arises, since in his output overall, vernacular

influence never completely vanishes but functions as a sort of musical bedrock. Finally,

in “Fraction: Things Get Broken,” Bernstein carries the Celebrant through a virtual

résumé of musical styles and texts. Though representing a “fraction” of all that had gone

before in Mass, this solo also achieves a fusion in that it draws everything together,

including a distinctly operatic dimension of influence. In its own way, therefore, as with

other theatrical and operatic works by Bernstein, “Fraction” too can be taken as figuring

within his lifelong search as composer for a distinctively American form of musical

expression.33

As evident in the work’s concluding peaceful section (i.e., “Pax”), Bernstein

erects at the conclusion of Mass an apotheosis in which a return of the Celebrant’s

“lauda” phrase provides the composer’s material for effecting a communal

transformation. Consequently, this same musical idea emerges as the vehicle for

conveying the work’s major philosophical underpinning: the reaffirmation of faith. It

33For an important pronouncement by Bernstein on the subject of his hopes and designs for “a distinctive American musical theatre,” see the following interview: Howard Taubman, “Tunesmith of Wonderful Town,” The New York Times, April 5, 1953, X1, X3.

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invites one to experience a spirituality without dogma.34 At the very least, it seeks a

return to the traditional values of tonality and simplicity in serious music. Critic Alex

Ross refers to this reprise of “A Simple Song” as “a glowingly tonal canon on “Lauda,

Laude,’ and a powerfully gentle blessing of the house. The sequence may be Bernstein’s

greatest theatrical invention.”35 At antipodes is the Celebrant’s mad scene. The unusual

solo unfurls a frantic précis of most every stylistic proclivity to have gone before in Mass,

whether sung by himself or others, or played instrumentally; and whether carnivalesque,

devout, parodic, questioning, bluesy, wild, jazzy, serial, crazy, reverent, and so forth. It

could not be more different from “A Simple Song,” which it self-quotes and sarcastically

parodies.

The foregoing discussion taps some of the most important ways compositional

choices for the Celebrant pose interesting angles of critique into the breadth and strategic

nature of Bernstein’s eclecticism. By no means does it pretend to be exhaustive—the

work is too rich for any such list. Even so, it gives some overall indication of how in

composing music for the Celebrant, Bernstein wrestled with the plethora of competing

aims, tensions, and influences converging upon the work.

Though dominated by the Celebrant, Mass features many solos for different voice

types and in different musical styles, some for “rock/theatre voices” and others “for

34Robert Hilferty notes that after the communal reprise of the motive of “A Simple Song,” it is through the “untarnished simplicity” of the Celebrant finally returning to the stage and briefly singing “in moving unison with the boy soprano” that he “finds his faith again.” This ending ties in with “the subtle argument made in Mass that belief in music is a kind of proof of the soul, which strongly suggests a divine presence.” Robert Hilferty, notes for Naxos, 8.559622–23, 2009, 6.

35Ross, 86.

89

classical voices.”36 An appendix below documents all the individual vocal solos from

Mass appearing within separate published editions, for all available voice types. Several

extractable solos from the work have been published and await becoming part of the

standard repertory for singers in auditions and recitals. The so-called “Tropes” entitled

“Easy,” “I Don’t Know,” and “Thank You,” for example, along with remaining music

extracted from the role of the Celebrant, would make excellent additions to the standard

literature for a range of vocal types. Further, each solo reflects the truth of a position

implied by David Hamilton: that it is not the style of Bernstein’s source material that

count, but rather what he actually does with his eclectic musical ideas.37 Together, all the

different types of numbers in Mass exemplify Peter Gutmann’s thinking that the wealth

of Bernstein’s material counts for little by itself. Significance, rather, resides in “that one

man could be so thoroughly conversant with so many disparate musical styles and could

blend them all together with such consummate ease is the ultimate testament to

Bernstein’s eclectic genius.38

36Leonard Bernstein, Art Songs and Arias: 33 Selections, medium/low voice, ed. Richard Walters ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2007), 9. For solo selections from Mass in “rock/theatre style,” see Leonard Bernstein, Bernstein Theatre Songs: 49 Songs, high voice, ed. Richard Walters ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2010); Leonard Bernstein, Bernstein Theatre Songs: 47 Songs, medium/low voice, ed. Richard Walters ([New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2010). Marin Alsop, however, maintains that none are actual “pop songs,” but rather “far-out-there art songs”; Seckerson, 40.

37David Hamilton, “Mass and the Press,” High Fidelity and Musical America 22/2

(February 1972): 75.

38Peter Gutmann, “Leonard Bernstein: Mass,” Classical Notes, http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics4/bernsteinmass.html#genesis (accessed June 17, 2013). Paul Laird also extols Bernstein’s ease or “fluidity” of moving between styles; in

90

In the case of the Celebrant, the resulting music calls on traditional musical forms

in all except for the final solo of “Fraction,” whose exceptionally extended, free, episodic

form fulfills its structural/dramatic purpose within the work. In every other instance

examined, however, the solos require a far less expansive and straightforward canvas

than in the mad scene. All are internally unified and tightly constructed through the use of

traditional forms common within vocal literature. Three of them belong to the class of

song form (A B A). These song forms occur as diagrammed in the following three figures

showing one direct, simple use of the form (fig. 4) and two extended variants thereof

(figs. 5 & 6). The remaining solo gets cast as a strophic form (i.e., use of verse and

refrain; fig. 7). These forms mirror the thoroughly classical background of the composer,

and lend immeasurably to the clarity and accessibility of the music.

Paul R. Laird, The “Chichester Psalms” of Leonard Bernstein, CMS Sourcebooks in American Music, ed. Michael J. Budds, no. 4 (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2010), 66.

91

Figure 4. Formal diagram of “Our Father . . .”: song form.

Figure 5. Formal diagram of “A Simple Song”: song form (A B A) with introduction.

92

Figure 6. Formal diagram of “The Word of the Lord”: repeated song form.39

Figure 7. Formal diagram of “I Go On”:

strophic form.

39For simplicity’s sake, this figure makes no reference to spoken readings

interspersed at measures 1 through 4 (otherwise tacet); 5 (during entrance of accompaniment); and 45, 47 (between stanzas, while accompaniment continues).

93

In sum, the Celebrant stands at the nexus of all the diverse, even conflicting aims

that converge in Mass. He embodies and plays out the ultimate clash of values captured

within itself, bringing about their inevitable collision, and rediscovering the seed of

salvation already planted within himself. The Celebrant serves as both protagonist and

sacrificial lamb. He is Mass’s most crucial voice and its main site of contestation and

internal conflict. His “lauda” functions as mouthpiece for the work and tangible

demonstration of the composer’s presence. He personifies the very hybrid world of a

mentality equally secular and religious, and equally popular and serious. The Mass he

inhabits might suggest a religious service, a musical, an opera or symphonic concert, or

none of them—but possibly that synthesis for which this marvelously theatrical composer

had longed for all along. The Celebrant, in a nutshell, seems situated at the crux of

everything quintessentially Bernstein about Mass.

Back in 1971, immediately following the unveiling of the Kennedy Center and the

premiere there of Mass, one critic presciently wrote:

In England poet laureates have a way of composing eminently forgettable odes for ceremonial events. Here in America, when we impose such burdens on our unofficial architect and musician laureates we insist on much more. Could any builder have met the complex and conflicting demands of a cultural center for the nation’s capital? And think of the burdens Bernstein had to bear when he agreed to write something for the center’s opening: those of competing ideologies, the love of J.F.K., the horror of violence, the love of . . . peace, the amorphousness of contemporary arts, the whole synesthesia “thing,” not to mention the crises in religious, civic and social faiths. One would be hard put to find other American artists who might have come closer to achieving the impossible.40

One can add that today with decades of further hindsight, one can still agree that with

Mass Bernstein indeed came closest to attaining the impossible—to accomplishing all the

40C. J. McNaspy, “Bernstein’s Mass Opens Kennedy Center (I): Against Odds, It Came off Well,” America 125/9 (October 2, 1971): 229.

94

goals facing the creation of Mass. And yet, even if one had never heard of the Kennedy

Center and love beads, Mass would still have tremendous significance, meaning, and

emotional power. For in the words of Edward Seckerson:

[L]ike it or not, Mass is Bernstein’s personal credo, perhaps even his epitaph. . . . An act of faith, if you like, its music a universal symbol of that faith with the power to move and heal, to break down and transcend the cultural and religious barriers that divide us.41

For bringing all that into focus and the stakes of Mass to a head, and for revealing the

extraordinary sensitivity with which Bernstein assimilated his eclectic forces and

resolved them into a moving, unified result, we have the Celebrant to thank.

41Edward Seckerson, “Leonard Bernstein at 70: The New York Years,” Gramophone 66/783 (August 1988): 259. Smith, 276 also closes with reference to this quotation.

95

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Baxter, Les. ‘Round the World with Les Baxter. Capitol T780 [mono], [1956] (LP). Bernstein, Leonard. Kaddish: Symphony no. 3; Chichester Psalms. Gerard Schwartz,

conductor; Yvonne Kenny, soprano; Willard White, speaker; Michael Small, treble; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Choir; Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir; Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Choir; and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Notes by Neil W. Levin and Jack Gottlieb. Naxos 8.559456, 2005 (CD).

________. Leonard Bernstein at Harvard: “The Unanswered Question.” 793 min., col.

West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur, [2001] (DVD). ________. Leonard Bernstein Conducts His Three Symphonies: “Jeremiah”; “The Age

of Anxiety”; “Kaddish.” Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Notes by Phillip Ramey, including “A Talk with Leonard Bernstein.” Columbia Records/CBS MG 32793, 1974 (LP).

________. Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and

Dancers.” Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Alan Titus (Celebrant); other soloists; Norman Scribner Choir; Berkshire Boy Choir; and orchestra. CBS Records Masterworks M2K 44593, [1989] (CD).

________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Kent Nagano,

conductor; Jerry Hadley (Celebrant); Julian Frischling (Boy soprano); Pacific Mozart Ensemble; Rundfunkchor Berlin; Staats- und Domchor Berlin; and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Notes by Habakuk Traber. Harmonia Mundi HMC 901840.41, 2004 (CD).

________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Kristjan Järvi,

conductor; Randall Scarlata (Celebrant); Company of Music; Tölzer Knabenchor; Chorus sine nomine; Absolute Ensemble; and the Tonkunstler-Orchester Niederösterreich. Notes by Mervyn Cooke. Chandos Records CHSA 5070(2), 2009 (CD).

________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Leonard Bernstein,

conductor; Alan Titus (Celebrant); other soloists; Norman Scribner Choir; Berkshire Boy Choir; and orchestra. Columbia M2 31008 stereo, [1972] (LP).

________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Leonard Bernstein,

conductor; Alan Titus (Celebrant); other soloists; Norman Scribner Choir; Berkshire Boy Choir; and orchestra. Notes by Theodore S. Chapin. Bernstein Century. Sony Classical SM2K 63089, 1997 (CD).

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_________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Marin Alsop, conductor; Jubilant Sykes (Celebrant); Asher Edward Wulfman (Boy Soprano); other soloists; Morgan State University Choir; Peabody Children’s Chorus; and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Notes by Robert Hilferty. American Classics. Naxos 8.559622–23, 2009 (CD).

________. Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. Neal Gittleman,

conductor; John Wesley Wright (Celebrant); other soloists; Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra; Kettering Children’s Choir; and the Wright State University Department of Music and Department of Dance & Motion Pictures. Non-commercial, archival recording of the only fully staged production in the continental U.S. upon the work’s 40th anniversary of its premiere, broadcast on Dayton Public Radio, September 24, 2011 (CD).

________. “Mass” at the Vatican City. Performed at the Vatican City as part of the

Jubilee 2000 celebrations of the Roman Catholic Church. Stage and television direction, set design and costumes by Enrico Castiglione. Boris Brott, conductor; Douglas Webster (Celebrant); other soloists; La Corolla-Piccole Voci; and Choir and Orchestra of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. 118 min., col. West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur D2823, [2004] (DVD).

________. The Original Jacket Collection. Notes by Humphrey Burton et al. Sony, 2008

(CD). ________. A Portrait: Bernstein Conducts Bernstein; The Theatre Works. Vol. 2, Mass;

Dybbuk. Notes by Theodore S. Chapin and Robert Jacobson. Sony Classical SM3K 47158, 1991 (CD).

The Fleet’s In. 1942. Produced by Paramount and Paul Jones, associate producer.

Directed by Victor Schertzinger. 93 min., b/w. Loving the Classics, 2008 (DVD). The Fleet’s In: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Musical score by Johnny

Mercer and Victor Schertzinger. Hollywood Soundstage, no. 405. N.p.: Hollywood Soundstage, n.d. (LP).

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, vol. 2. Leonard

Bernstein, writer, narrator and conductor. Produced and directed by Roger Englander. Kultur D4370, [2013] (DVD).

Parra, Violeta. Canto popular de Chile [Chilean folk song]. RHI, 2009 (MP3). ________. El folklore de Chile [Chilean folklore], vol. 1. Violeta Parra, voice and guitar.

Odeón, 1956 (LP).

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Unpublished Studies

André, Don A. “Leonard Bernstein’s Mass as Social and Political Commentary on the Sixties.” D.M.A. diss., University of Washington, 1979.

Bernstein, Jeffrey Alexander. “The Expressive Use of Musical Style and the Composer’s

Voice in Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2001.

Boelzner, David Ernest. “The Symphonies of Leonard Bernstein: An Analysis of Motivic

Character and Form.” Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977.

Burkholder, J. Peter. “Musical Borrowing or Curious Coincidence? Testing the

Evidence.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Indianapolis, IN, November 5, 2010.

Copeland, Philip Larue. “The Role of Drama and Spirituality in the Music of Leonard

Bernstein.” D.M.A. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 1998. Cottle, William Andrew, Sr. “Social Commentary in Vocal Music in the Twentieth

Century as Evidenced by Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.” D.A. diss., University of Northern Colorado, 1978.

De Sesa, Gary. “A Comparison between a Descriptive Analysis of Leonard Bernstein’s

Mass and the Musical Implications of the Critical Evaluations Thereof.” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1984.

Freisinger, Peter. “Three Operatic Madmen in Twentieth-Century Opera: A Comparison

and Analysis of Wozzeck, Peter Grimes, and The Rake’s Progress.” D.M.A. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1999.

Kopfstein-Penk, Alicia. “Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts: Context and

Canons.” Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 2012. Ikach, Yugo Sava. “A Study of Selected Songs by Leonard Bernstein Which Reflect His

Contribution to the Evolution of Art Song in America.” D.M.A. diss., West Virginia University, 2003.

Laird, Paul Robert. “The Influence of Aaron Copland on Leonard Bernstein.” Master’s

thesis, Ohio State University, 1982.

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Websites

“Aaron Copland Collection” (Online Collection). The Library of Congress, Music Division. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/copland/ (accessed August 4, 2013).

Bernstein, Nina. “Mass: Overview.” In “Leonard Bernstein.” The Leonard Bernstein

Office, Inc. http://www.leonardbernstein.com (accessed June 11, 2013). Gannon, Frank. “Mass Appeal.” The New Nixon: News and Commentary about the

President, His Times, and His Legacy. http://thenewnixon.org/2009/08/17/mass-appeal/ (accessed June 17, 2013).

Green, Romina A. “Unearthing Violeta Parra: Art as Multilayered Discourse and

Manifestations of Anti-(Neo)Colonialism, Anti-Modernism, Nationalism and Otherness.” Academia.edu. http://www.academia.edu/238709/Unearthing_Violeta_Parra_Art_as_Multilayered_Discourse_and_Manifestations_of_Anti-_Neo_Colonialism_Anti-Modernism_Nationalism_and_Otherness (accessed July 23, 2013).

Gutmann, Peter. “Leonard Bernstein: Mass.” Classical Notes.

http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics4/bernsteinmass.html#genesis (accessed June 17, 2013).

________. “Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace of Music.” Classical Notes.

http://www.classicalnotes.net/features/bernstein.html (accessed June 24, 2013). Laird, Paul R., and David Schiff. “Bernstein, Leonard.” Grove Music Online. Oxford

Music Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2223796 (accessed June 20, 2013).

Payá, Ernesto G. “Leonard Bernstein y ‘Casamiento de negros’” [Leonard Bernstein and

“The Black Wedding”]. Revista chilena de infectología (online) 27/1 (February 2010): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0716-10182010000100003 (accessed July 23, 2013).

“SongMeanings.” http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858628547/ (accessed January 5, 2014).

“Sonic” database of the Library of Congress. http://.cweb5.loc.gov/cgi-

bin/starfinder/6172700/sonic.txt (accessed August 16, 2013). “YouTube.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y-28yx9auc (accessed November 16,

2013).

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APPENDIX

Vocal Solos from the Mass

Published Separately

The following compilation documents editions of vocal solos excerpted from

Bernstein’s Mass and published singly. This compilation does so by providing

bibliographical data of each volume having one or more selected solos from the Mass;

and, in the case of collections, by giving individual titles for all such excerpts

represented. All excerpts cited (and all corresponding titles) derive from the work’s

complete piano-vocal score as published in authoritative, commercial editions available

since 1971. Whenever designated and/or transposed for particular voice types, the

editions listed below retain such designations within their summaries.

A quite unusual item requires separate summary, as follows: Leonard Bernstein,

Mass: Concert Selections for Soloists and Choruses, edited by Doreen Rao ([New York]:

Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2010). The back cover of this

publication describes it as offering “a shortened and manageable edition for chorus,

soloists and chamber orchestra.” Prepared with performance limitations in mind, this

“newly adapted and edited” version with piano accompaniment thus aims to facilitate

performance of parts of the work in a version amenable to limited resources and settings,

such as by “school, community and church choirs.” (There is no mad scene, for example.)

110

For the same reason, a chamber orchestration also stands available for rental in this

particular version lasting approximately only forty minutes.

Published Editions

Bernstein, Leonard. An Album of Songs. New York: Amberson Enterprises; G. Schirmer,

1974.

“A Simple Song” “The Word of the Lord” “I Go On”

________. Art Songs and Arias: 33 Selections. Medium/Low Voice. Edited by Richard

Walters. [New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2007.

“A Simple Song” “Thank You” “The Word of the Lord” “Hurry” “World without End” “Our Father . . . I Go On”

________. Art Songs and Arias: 29 Selections. High Voice. Edited by Richard Walters.

[New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2007.

“A Simple Song” “Thank You” “The Word of the Lord” “Hurry” “World without End” “Our Father . . . I Go On”

________. Bernstein Theatre Songs: 49 Songs. High Voice. Edited by Richard Walters.

[New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2010.

“I Don’t Know” “Easy” “World without End” “I Believe in God”

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________. Bernstein Theatre Songs: 47 Songs. Medium/Low Voice. Edited by Richard

Walters. [New York]: Leonard Bernstein Music Pub. Co.; Boosey & Hawkes, 2010.

“Easy”

________. “A Simple Song,” from Mass. New York: Amberson Enterprises; G.

Schirmer, 1971. ________. Song Album. [New York]: Jalni Publications; Boosey & Hawkes, 1988.

“A Simple Song” “I Go On”

________. “The Word of the Lord,” from Mass. Arranged by Paul Wittke. New York:

Amberson Enterprises; G. Schirmer, 1971. Brunelle, Philip, ed. American Arias: A Collection of Essential Contemporary Works.

Baritone/Bass. [New York]: Boosey & Hawkes, 2004.

“A Simple Song”