Is ‘Mass’ Leonard Bernstein’s Best Work, or His Worst?

NEW YORK — The controversy over Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” began with its premiere in 1971. In his review for The New York Times on Sept. 9 that year, Harold C. Schonberg dismissed the piece as “fashionable kitsch,” “cheap and vulgar.” The same morning, Paul Hume in The Washington Post hailed the work as a “rich amalgamation of the theatrical arts” and “the greatest music Bernstein has ever written.”

I loved it when it was new. Nearly 50 years later, I still do, though I understand why it provokes exasperation.

An opportunity to hear Bernstein’s “theater piece for singers, players and dancers,” as he called it, comes next Tuesday and Wednesday when, in honor of this composer’s centennial, Louis Langrée conducts the forces of the Mostly Mozart Festival in a production directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer at David Geffen Hall.

As in many Bernstein works, the subject is a crisis of faith. The text alternates passages of the Latin mass liturgy with English lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, whose musical “Godspell” had opened in 1970. The piece was composed when America was bitterly polarized by the Vietnam War and protests raged on college campuses. (Sound familiar?)

At the time, Bernstein was pilloried for daring to draw from myriad serious and popular styles in fashioning this two-hour score — a “wild mélange of everything,” as Schonberg put it. Today, when it’s the norm for composers to blend traditions, his approach seems ahead of its time.

“Mass” begins with an intentionally grating Antiphon: “Kyrie eleison,” with solo voices singing the Latin words entwined with percussion instruments; the complexity increases over 2 fidgety minutes, with prerecorded elements played through speakers placed around the hall.

Just when the jumble becomes aggressive, a grounded tonal chord on electric guitar breaks through and brings calm. “Sing God a simple song,” our guide, the Celebrant, says. The sudden shift may seem heavy-handed and the message a little obvious, but the music is beguiling, not so much simple as transparent and generous.

Then the Celebrant sings, softly, “For God is the simplest of all.” At that moment the strings in the orchestra enter, tentatively supporting his tender melodic line with cushioning harmonies. In my favorite recording, Marin Alsop — with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Jubilant Sykes as the Celebrant — does this beautifully.

When the Celebrant sings “Blessed is the man who praises Him,” a pop-style accompaniment pattern begins. Some find it cloying. I think it’s stylish, especially as subtly folded into the overall textures by Alsop, who never overemphasizes the pop and rock elements. (A Bernstein protégé, Alsop considers “Mass” a masterpiece.)

Bernstein juxtaposes a Street Chorus of disaffected people (the jeans and T-shirt crowd) with a formal chorus in robes and a boys’ choir. The Street Chorus first appears in a Prefatory Prayers section, singing Latin words to music driven by marching band flourishes. For all the thumping energy, the music has a touch of stiff irony reminiscent of Shostakovich. There’s a striking passage where a tangle of counterpoint breaks into a rhythmically fractured stretch that recalls, for me, the frenzied auto-da-fé choral ensemble of “Candide,” complete with “wrong-note” injections of band instruments.

A striking passage in this extended number comes when the boys’ choir enters singing “Kyrie eleison,” sounding angelic but a little out of it. Then a boy soloist sings “Here I go up to the altar of God” on a phrase that spirals higher. But his voice is backed by questioning, almost needling, high sustained instrumental sonorities that suggest this innocent is, at best, naïve.

Another remarkable number is the chorale “Almighty Father.” Bernstein’s music balances wistful contemplation with skilled handling of voice leading and harmony. It lasts less than two minutes, and it’s remarkable music. I love the moment when Bernstein sets the words “And fill with grace” to widely spaced chords: a frequent trope in Copland, but taken to a daring extreme here

The presence of Copland, whom Bernstein revered, is felt in another of my favorite sections, the Trope: “Thank You,” for soprano and Street Chorus. “There once were days so bright,” the soloist sings to wistful music that could be outtakes from Copland’s opera “The Tender Land,” but with a more astringent harmonic language. Listen to the way Alsop highlights the piercing woodwinds behind the pleading melody when the soprano sings “The bend of a willow.”

The episodes when the ragtag, war-protesting Rock Singers enter have long been the most cringe-inducing for many listeners. For me, Bernstein’s evocations of rock are only glancing, tinged with jazz and blues. And he rattles the driving rhythms by introducing slight metrical dislocations — for example, during “I Don’t Know,” sung by the First Rock Singer, which, starting around a minute in, makes him sound like a member of the Jets who has wandered in from “West Side Story.”

As Mass progresses, the Celebrant tries to bless the sacraments, but the anarchic Street Chorus, fed up with the “heavenly silence” from a God who has clearly abandoned them, pummels the Celebrant with battering, rock-driven, deafening repetitions of “Dona nobis,” provoking the work’s dramatic climax: The shattered Celebrant throws the chalice to the ground, which stuns the crowd. The Celebrant has a breakdown. “Isn’t that odd,” he sings, almost to himself, as pizzicato basses play fragments of 12-tone riffs.

It’s Bernstein’s contribution to the legacy of operatic mad scenes, and it’s riveting, a 14-minute tour de force for the Celebrant. The most powerful stretch, for me, comes when the Celebrant, unable to rouse the shocked crowd, sings “How easily things get quiet,” then observes “God is very ill.” His phrases try to coalesce into an aching lullaby (“Don’t you cry”) over an undulant riff, but to no avail. Song is impossible, the music suggests.

The Celebrant’s fury and anguish erupt again in fractured phrases — until, finally, a boy soprano, singing atop diaphanous string sonorities, offers advice: “Sing God a secret song.” This begins the final extended episode, when voices, one by one, join together in harmony, in canon. Finally the entire company reprises the “Almighty Father” chorale.

But this time the supportive harmonies are thick with intensifying intervals and pungent bits. The mood is comforting, but uncertain, more quizzical. The crisis of faith has been overcome. For now.