Epilogue

Summary

“There is a general bubbling and rejoicing and brotherliness among composers that would have been unthinkable ten years ago,” declared Bernstein in his 1976 Norton Lectures. “It's like the beginning of a new period of fresh air and fun, such as we discerned earlier in the century.” He pointed to Berio's Sinfonia for eight voices and orchestra—whose third movement is a palimpsest overwriting the Scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony with snippets of everyone from Beethoven to Boulez—as an example of “neo-neoclassicism.” Also citing works by Reich, Stockhausen, Britten, Shostakovich and more, he asked rhetorically, “why not, since these recent pieces are so often full of quotes and allusions?”

In what may have been a self-serving gesture, Bernstein's historical narrative did not include an Oedipal struggle. Rather, he celebrated “brotherliness” or dialogue among composers as a healthy means of moving forward: “We are in a position where one style can feed the other, where one technique enriches the other, thus enriching all of music.” He had taken this principle to the extreme in his 1971 Mass, juxtaposing rock music with dodecaphony, Catholic liturgy with a modern libretto. If the New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg called the theater piece for singers, players and dancers “the greatest mélange of styles since the ladies’ magazine recipe for steak fried in peanut butter and Marshmallow sauce,” the work made an important statement about overcoming the ideological divide between modernism and the popular sphere.

Tracing the impact of Weill's aesthetic on Bernstein's musical philosophy does not end with this study. Both Mass and Weill's Der Weg der Verheißung (first performed in English adaptation as The Eternal Road) are quasi-religious, didactic pageants deploying large choruses and a mix of sung and spoken roles. Weill's “biblical drama” is an oratorio about the fate of the Jewish people but also stands as a more universal allegory about human cruelty, veering from allusions to Bach Passions to stage music of an unabashedly popular style. Bernstein—who may well have experienced The Eternal Road given his close friendship with Mendy Wager, son of the impresario who presided over the premiere performances at the Manhattan Opera House in 1937—took this principle a step further in Mass, creating a collective ritual in which music leads the way to a sense of personal faith.