Cultural incompetence, panic and plagiarism in the Bernstein Mass

In the light-filled Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center complex, lady director Elkanah Pulitzer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz sat with WNYC's John Schaefer before the July 18, 2018 showing of Bernstein's Mass. Here are snippets from their conversation and commentary:

1. PROMISE

Leonard Bernstein, it seems, promised Jackie Onassis to write a Mass to honor JFK on his death, but this didn't get realized until he was asked to make a piece to honor the unveiling of the JFK Center which had a strict deadline. He conflated his idea of the Mass into the opening concert for the Center, not realizing he is Jewish and as a Jewish woman told me yesterday, "We don't believe in Jesus!"

So the chutzpah of him to even futz around with the highest prayer of the Church honoring our Lord and Savior, which is a crazy idea to them. If a performance artist would do a pubic desecration of the Torah, I wonder if the ACLU and other Jewish groups would not rise up in arms.

2. PLAGIARISM

There is no original words but a few, simply to cobble some simple songs and a skeletal narrative/dramatic arc. Even if it's "all about the music" the Latin Mass was the main text, music and framework. Elkanah had to work within the "Catholic Mass". There is great thrill among some audience members ("imagine that in a rehearsal!") when Elkanah revealed that when they did the Readings part of the Mass, which consisted of the Epistles, during rehearsals, there were not a few tears shed from its power.

This had a two-fold effect on me: I was appalled that they indeed used the Mass structure for real--the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Second, I really was surprised that they were surprised; it's the Word of God, duh! 

I want to tell the audience members: Go to a real Mass and there you will truly see the difference. Be changed, healed! Christ lives there, is present, the best Food you can find, the best Friend and Healer you can ever meet. Your God. And His Word: it's a sword, it corrects and edifies and transforms. It slices you open and sews you right back if you are prepared to hear.

3. AMATEURISH THOUGHT

But this is as far as they were able to hear, it seems. There were no real Catholics on board or even close in their advisory group, such is their insularity, is my assumption. For if there were and they were well-formed in the faith, the reaction would be like my pastor's: a fallen face saddened at the disrespect of the person of Christ. They would refuse this piece. It would be marked as blasphemous. No self-respecting Catholic or educated artist should be participating on this rushed piece which is only for sensationalism's worth (the Celebrant has a crisis of faith and falls under pressure by the mob).

I want to tell Elkanah, "Listen, child, get your character research a little better than Bernstein ever did and cancel your affiliation to him. Priests are willing to die for Christ. They address their doubt by flicking it away, not indulging it in a dialogue, which the devil would prefer. 

Priests: they move the world, they are not moved by the world especially that which is in darkness. 

Look at Pope Paul VI. Did he flinch when even the Vatican theologians wished he would affirm contraception for families? No, he released Humanae Vitae to tell them of God's plan for man and woman in full and fruitful and total giving, contraception-free. And such is the divorce and porn and abuse-riddled world now because they didn't listen to him.

Stephen Schwartz was recruited in panic by Lenny's agent sister Sheryl so the piece can be finished in time. It seems so "imperfect", "all the songs are first draft", Schwartz comments, that when he realized he is not dead yet and can create rewrites, he them shot off some versions of these songs and floated it out there, so directors can do a mix-and-match depending on their preference.

Here's one major take home: artists are finite. (I had been active as one too and was a groupie to institutions like the Lincoln Center.) But this just bears great witness to: a plagiarized, poorly thought and unreflected work will not give you the happiness you seek. Art will never be the highest art: theology is. 

Watching Romeo and Juliet three times in a row, like the lady in the bathroom line, is not going to get you to heaven on earth or to heaven, period.

Use your time for better things. Use your life and money for God in the person of God! In the Holy Mass, not especially on these joke shows.

4. GRAND FRUITLESSNESS

Their world-class conductors and singers and players, all 200 of them, can give their polite support and aesthetic comments on it, and Elkanah hoped this could be a movement of some sorts, amplifying its rebellious cred as a middle finger to the current admin. 

One doesn’t bother making a movement with mirrors. You solve problems with the Holy Mass, not the cartoon of it. You honor Christ, not dishonor and mange His Word and His Message of Unity, under One Bread.

They miss the whole commonsense reality which is: by spreading the scandal of attacking the Mass, your hurting yourself who is digging deeper into ignorance, the Mass attendees, the Church which is all of us, and most of al, Christ who took a nail for you on his right foot, left foot, right side, right hand, left hand and a whole lot of pain so you can die into eternal happiness. And you twist His prayer with this He gets this anti-cleric, Eucharist-smacking production?

Elkanah referenced that it seems all involved in it get a nervous breakdown because it is so difficult, like "conducting four Airbuses", she quotes Langre, the conductor. It is one thing to have a difficult task but to have it edifying and worthwhile at the end. It is almost like the work of Planned Parenthood--building a juggernaut of systems for killing. Leonard Bernstein's way of trying to get an audience and thrash surrounding his work, because it is inherently unlistenable and unwatchable. "Controversial", "aged well" is how the panelists tried to frame the dialogue that surrounds it in this tony lodge of powdered patrons, excluding "sacrilege" and "mess"and "worst work".

5. DOOM

It doesn't even have a clear ending because the director doesn't even know where Bernstein's real purpose is: hope? But Schaefer even points out, to which Schwartz agrees, there is descending tonal off-note in the most popular and upbeat song (The Simplest Song) which connotes not all is well. Elkanah even had asked Schwartz why the lyrics are ambiguous in some of the songs and thus for all Bernstein's and Schwartz's talk of hope and resurrection, she couldn't even translate that directorially and so gave an vague ending.

A real Mass is a joyful celebration, we are not gloom-and-doom, because we already have celebrated the Passion and Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what they failed to understand again and again: the core of the Mass is Christ's living, dying and living again, but in us.

Getting the set design and costumes' terminology correct ("chasuble") will not cut it without a dramaturge that is minimally theologically awake. Or a programming chief that is culturally competent and respectfu

To make this open to all religions is what Elkanah hopes that the Mass will do and that it will spread. It sounds very Masonic and heretic: making syncretic all faiths and therefore making useless the primacy of God in the person of Christ. Listen, kids, there is no Way but Christ. Get some homework done before you start rehearsals. This is exactly what pope Francis called in the heresy of pelagianism.

The Mass this the Mass that, everything the panelists refer to is the Bernstein Mass but they just call it the "Mass", when it ain't, children, it ain't.

No Christ, no juice, so leave it alone.