Renewed interest in Leonard Bernstein's Mass (1971) may be related to a resurgence of political unrest, religious questioning, and social tensions in the first decade of the twenty first century, or it may be due merely to baby-boomer nostalgia. The Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, the ecumenical movement, and other issues of the day, as commented on by Bernstein and co-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, definitively marked Mass as a period piece, along with its setting of the pre-Vatican II Latin text of the Roman Catholic ...
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Renewed interest in Leonard Bernstein's Mass (1971) may be related to a resurgence of political unrest, religious questioning, and social tensions in the first decade of the twenty first century, or it may be due merely to baby-boomer nostalgia. The Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, the ecumenical movement, and other issues of the day, as commented on by Bernstein and co-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, definitively marked Mass as a period piece, along with its setting of the pre-Vatican II Latin text of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Musically, too, this elaborate theater piece is dated, with its fairly naïve mix of cheeky pop songs, angry urban blues, raucous circus band marches, and pious folk songs with discordant quadraphonic tapes, rigorous canons, austere chorales, and twelve-tone meditations: it overflows with the eclecticism that was the era's answer to the fading avant-garde. Even at the time, some critics wondered if such a topical work could be relevant for future performances. By the end of the...
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