Opening Night, September 8, 1971
I have been enjoying the moving personal memories of MASS, the impact on so many lives. They stirred me to contribute a memory from my brother (A double song). I hesitate to add this. Maybe because it dates me. But I am one of the very lucky ones.
A half century ago, I attended the world premiere of MASS. Yes, it altered the course of my life. And with your indulgence, here is my memory of that first MASS.
My father was invited to the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, September 8, 1971, because he worked with JFK during the 1960 campaign, managed “the Catholic issue”, drafting the Houston speech that changed the trajectory of the election, and served the president as an ambassador in Europe and Africa.
My parents adored Leonard Bernstein’s music. Mom’s favorite was West Side Story, they’d seen the original Broadway production. For Dad, it was Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish”.
Dad happened to be overseas that week and Mom said I could go! JFK was my hero, a 17 year old obsessed with politics in those very divisive times. Music was my twin brother’s thing, but back then he was into Crosby Stills Nash. Later, that would evolve; see his MASS memory.
Once the lights dimmed, the intense experience of taking in this vast cultural memorial, meeting many of my father’s friends from the Kennedy years on the promenade above the Potomac, it all just slipped away. The grand opera hall became almost intimate.
From that first simple song to the peace in our clasped hands at the end, I sat spellbound, mesmerized by the immediacy, vibrancy and beauty of this incomparable expression. Evocative, provocative. It just kept coming at you. Music and voices from every corner, all kinds of music, all kinds of people, moving all over the place. Simplicity and chaos.
This was AMERICAN!
Ours was an era of conflicts and crises – the Vietnam war, the massacres, the assassinations, mass protest marches, civil disobedience, violence and riots, college students shot and killed by the national guard, a burgeoning mistrust of each other, chasms between generations, little faith in any kind of leadership or government, let alone any kind of god.
We were lost, we were drowning. At times cacophonous, at times tranquil. Always searching.
Here it all was, playing out before me, the innocence and helplessness, frustration, anger, rebellion, free love and costly avarice, our petulant vanities, our doting, our doubting, and our passionate spiritual resilience to reaffirm the shared sense of community for peace.
Then that ending. Members of the Boys’ Choir drifting into the audience, spreading the touch of peace “pass it on” (at the time ignorantly chided by some critics who didn’t realize it was being faithful to the “sign of peace” in the revised Roman Rite of 1969) and then the recorded voice: "The mass is ended; go in peace." (Was that LB’s own voice?)
Then silence. Not a sound in the cavernous hall. No one budged.
For what seemed an eternity. Everyone sitting still, still, still.
As if we couldn’t move, wouldn’t move from this house, filled with grace.
Minutes passed. Then came the rippling thunderous ovation as though something deeply painful and mournful had been purged and we could all celebrate again. The applause went on and on and on. More than 30 minutes.
We were all at the railing of the same ship, sailing beyond our worldly strife, waving semaphore to another shore: Pacem! Pacem!
Having met JFK as a kid and sitting there that evening facing the imminent prospect of being drafted into a pointless war half a world away, MASS jolted every nerve in my soul, shifting the course of my life from politics to poetics. Leonard Bernstein had seized and summoned it all at once, holding up a mirror to our time.
I knew I had seen a masterpiece. The whole world was wide open, could be touched.
More than 15 years later, I was back at the Kennedy Center to see my brother Charlie who worked there, only to be taken by surprise as we entered the side door to the backstage lobby and heard the sudden booming voice of the Maestro, arms spreading wide with welcome, “Ah, the Wine brothers!”
I was dumbstruck. The two of them talked as we walked to the concert hall. Charlie told him that I had been here on the opening night of MASS. “What do you remember?” he asked. Without missing a beat: “A Simple Song…Things Get Broken…Pax tecum, pass it on”
LB gave me a long look, as if reading straight through me, then threw an arm around Charlie’s shoulders, whispered something, they laughed and smiled. All Charlie would say later was that it was simple and secret.
Today, in these – once again – difficult and divisive times, I am reminded of one the last things LB told us, how concerned he was by the “frightening lack of creativity in leadership” across the whole of society in the face of what he feared were grave looming challenges for humanity. It was incumbent upon artists to get involved, speak up, stir things up.
This was – and is – MASS. The artist speaking up, stirring up. And, for me, that’s Leonard Bernstein’s abiding legacy.
“…go in peace; pass it on…”
James Wine, Köja, Sweden
James Wine, Köja, Sweden