A Beautiful City

"We can build a beautiful city.  Yes, we can.  Yes, we can. We may not reach the ending, but we can start. Slowly but truly mending. Brick by brick,  heart by heart."  from A Beautiful City, Godspell, Stephen  Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak

We all know someone from history or who is currently living that we consider to be a genius.  This person's talent and ability far exceeds anything we consider to be ordinary.  Very few people would argue against the fact that Albert Einstein was a genius.  Very few people who argue that Wolfgang Mozart was not a genius.  But what do you call it when the geniuses collide?  Did you know that Einstein toyed with the idea of being a professional musician?  He was good enough on the violin that he played every week with a string quartet. The other three players were members of the Berlin Symphony. They almost exclusively played Mozart.  Einstein said "Mozart's music is the way the universe works".  A genius playing a genius.

I consider Leonard Bernstein to be a musical genius.  I also consider Stephen Schwartz to be a musical genius. You know Bernstein from a multitude of works and you know Stephen Schwartz as the composer of Godspell.  He is also an Academy Award winner, grammy winner and has received many other prestigious awards.

Even if you are familiar with the works of both of these outstanding musicians, you probably don't  know what I've only recently learned that their lives collided in a life-changing and career-changing way for both of them in 1971, Jacqueline Kennedy had commissioned Bernstein to compose a major work to dedicate the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.  Bernstein, in what would become very controversial, decided to write a Catholic Mass.  Bernstein, a Jew, wrote this to honor his Roman Catholic friend Jack Kennedy.  But this was no ordinary mass (a little pun if you're familiar with the mass). This mass was on an unthinkable scale involving stage performers, a boy's choir, a main choir, street singers, an orchestra and a stage band. The work included elements of the traditional mass, but also included, electric guitars, surround sound speakers,  60s protest music and so much more.

In the spring of 1971 with the performance looming in September, Bernstein was completely stuck. He got lost in his own composition.  In May Bernstein attended the off Broadway performance of Godspell in New York City.  Not only was his creativity reignited, but he asked Schwartz to help him complete the text and composition. The collaboration was explosive.  Mass was performed on September 8, 1971 to a mostly warm reception.  In spite of the early critics and naysayers, Mass has been performed internationally several times a year over the past 45 years.

So why does this matter to me?  It matters a whole lot.  In the spring of 1975 I watched Godspell in Birmingham, Alabama.  Besides the musical enjoyment, I experienced a quantum shift in my personal beliefs and theology, especially concerning the death of Jesus Christ.  Four years later in the spring of 1979, with no idea of this intertwining history, I discovered Bernstein's Mass.  I was in the music library of my graduate school and pulled the album randomly off the shelf. The person who walked out of that library two hours later was different than the person who walked in. What sort of shift is more dramatic than a quantum shift? An extremely more huge quantum shift?

Earlier this week I asked Spotify to find Godspell.  What it found was the updated version of Godspell that I didn't know existed.  I got excited too when I learned that it is playing on Broadway.  I was mentally preparing for the trip to NYC when I noticed the article was from 2011. The next article said that it had closed after a successful nine month run.  Oh well. But I have so enjoyed listening to Godspell this week including new music composed for the new show.

For inspiration for this writing I have been listening to selections from both Godspell and Mass.  I find the last two movements of Mass to be a well-spring of help and healing. I drink from that spring both when I'm well and when I'm not.  It concluded just now as it always concludes with "The mass is ended. Go in  peace."  Going in peace is just something I can never get enough of.

To have wandered into Godspell in 1975 and then into Mass in 1979 is extraordinary. For both of them to meet in 2016 is Divine.