Lauda laude

Latest instalment in my recent religion-and-theater series (after this and this) was a performance of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" at the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights (part of the Bernstein 90th Birthday extravaganza planned by Carnegie Hall). The Baltimore Symphony under Marinn Alsop were joined by singers, professional and high school, to make a cast of 750 ... which made it almost extravagant enough to fit the location - once a Vaudeville theater in a style David Dunlap has called "Byzantine-Romanesque-Indo-Hindu-Sino-Moorish-Persian-Eclectic-Rococo-Deco," and since 1969 the "Palace Cathedral" of prosperity preacher "Rev. Ike" (whose website informs us he dared to go where most theologians, Bible teachers, and preachers would not. As an evangelist, on TV, radio, and at mass meetings, he had the “nerve” to PREACH “Prosperity NOW!” — long before it became popular to do so.)

The temple-like theater turned theater-like temple now available for hire was just right for a piece which nobody knows how to classify. Broadway and liturgy, drama and ritual, Bernstein called it a "theater piece for singers, players and dancers." It mixes most of a Catholic mass (in Latin) with rock, folk, blues and protest music (it was commissioned in 1968 and premiered in 1971 for the Kennedy Center opening, so you feel the vibe of Woodstock and the yearning for an end to the Vietnam war). It calls for an orchestra with lots of percussion, a blues band, church organ, electric guitar, marching band, huge choir, children's choir, and more... and each of these gets its moment in the sun, playing the kind of music it loves.

"Mass" tells the story of a young priest (the Celebrant, wonderfully performed by Jubilant Sykes) who, to make a long story short, goes mad as his congregation becomes less and less interested or committed; in the end, he destroys the sacrament, upends the altar, tears off his vestments and dances. But that's not the very end, which is the return of the "Simple Song" which the celebrant sang the start, before putting on his vestments (which starts out sounding like some chromatic mystery but is just a downward scale from C to C, with pauses and one turn) -

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

- now sung by a choirboy and joined by the once restive congregation:

Sing God a secret song
Lauda, Laude ...

This performance was seamless, the transitions from highest of high culture music (tone rows, echoes of Stravinsky and Shostakovich) to lowest somehow never jarring. It's like a tragedy, except for the ending, which finds beauty and the restoration of community through the destruction of the officiant... which makes it, for all the imagined sacrilege near the end, kind of a passion play... Like the mass.

Somewhat to my surprise, the music has aged well, but it's very much a piece of its time in its view of religion. In 1971, the churches seemed to be fatally emptying; religion's only hope of survival was as a "secret song," outside established institutions, a protest against a God gone AWOL. But sitting in Rev. Ike's palace - remember that he bought the place in 1969! - one is reminded that religion got through that crisis, and is going strong strong strong. So strong, in fact, that the protest and the anguished doubt in Bernstein's "Mass" seems a fond memory, a reminder of possibilities of spiritual awareness now harder to see.