Music: A Mass for Everyone, Maybe

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The work takes its form from the Catholic Mass, the Kyrie eleison, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. As more or less ironic counterpoint, a populist band of sinners and dancers variously sing, intone or howl doubts and questions in a mélange of musical styles and pop-lyric words by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz, the 23-year-old creator of Godspell, the musical version of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The dramatic climax of the work is the disruption of the Mass. It also involves the spiritual shattering of a young man who begins as a simple guitarist and gradually becomes a priestly celebrant by receiving various sacred vestments—just as the church itself gradually acquired more and more trappings of ritual. Eventually, when he attempts to offer the mob Holy Communion, the symbolic body and blood of Christ, they cry out, "Dona nobis pacem [Give us peace]!" and blame God because man has not abolished war on earth: "Give us peace that we don't keep breaking."

Finally the celebrant, too, is overcome by doubt. He strips off his priestly garb, smashes the holy vessels, and dances madly on the altar like a curate on a bad LSD trip. As he lashes out and people look at him, he shouts angrily, "What are you staring at? Haven't you ever seen an accident?" But his inner state has been defined earlier when he sings: "My spirit falters on decaying altars and my illusions fail." Bernstein's own idea of Communion is achieved at the finale when the entire cast begins to exchange embraces and kisses of peace, and boy sopranos stroll into the auditorium, shake hands with the aisle sitters and whisper, "Pass it on."

Puff and Pretensions. The expressed notion that religious ritual is empty because the world still behaves as if it were pretty much the devil's province, that because man has failed on earth God has failed too is common enough. According to individual taste, one can greet it with a hosannah, a miserere nobis or a sancta simplicitas. Bernstein, after all, is an artist and entertainer, not a theologian. But even his stagecraft, his taste and his music, despite many delights and flourishes, reflect a basic confusion.

As a work of faith or art, though, Mass is catchy rather than compelling, weakest when it should be strongest—that is, at those moments when the proceedings are meant to be at their most serious. It is significant that when, at one point on opening night, the celebrant lifted his arms and intoned, "Let us lift up our hearts and pray," a handful of the spectators rose and bowed their heads. Everyone else remained seated, not sure how serious or how literal a consecration of the Kennedy Center was intended.