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From MASS to Symphonic Rituals
Posted September 20, 2026
From MASS to Symphonic Rituals
by Garth Edwin Sunderland
One of Leonard Bernstein’s greatest gifts was synthesis – an ability to bring disparate styles into a single work and make them illuminate each other. MASS demonstrates this more than any other Bernstein work. There are so many styles at play; simple songs of praise and faith for the Celebrant; blistering rock and blues numbers for the Street Chorus that challenge the very concept of faith in our modern world; High Modernism representing the dogma of the Church; and strange and meditative music representing the mysteries of the cosmos and the unknowability of God.
The central challenge in approaching a substantive orchestral tapestry for MASS was to create a musical narrative without the benefit of text, staging, and dramaturgy. In the theatrical work, we can immediately see onstage that the Celebrant is our protagonist, and the Street Chorus the antagonist. We can see the Celebrant seeking and struggling to convince the Street Chorus to join him in celebrating God, while the Street Chorus counters with all the challenges and terrors of today’s world that can make the very concept of faith unfathomable. The wildy different musical styles support these conflicting views of how to approach the world. But in a purely symphonic context, we don’t have these narrative guideposts.
My solution was to focus each movement on one of the musical concepts, punctuated by interjections from the others.
The first movement, Vox Populi, begins with the mystery of Epiphany, followed by the highly dogmatic Confession music. But then the Street Chorus takes over and we hear a succession of numbers that sneer at both the idea of faith and the teachings and proscriptions of religion. A last interjection from the Church is overwhelmed by a reprise of ‘I Don’t Know’ and a coda of ‘World Without End’ that finds the fury and nihilism of the Street Chorus finally spent.
The second movement, Vox Celebrans, is entirely numbers for the Celebrant. It opens with Epistle, his own anthem of challenge to ‘you people of power.’ This serves as a bridge between the Street Chorus and the Celebrant’s own expressions of faith which follow: Glory to God, ‘Going On’ in the face of doubt, and the culmination of joyful pure faith in Sanctus.
The final movement, Fraction, brings all of Bernstein’s musics for MASS together in succession: a reprise of the mystery of Epiphany; the desperate rock number I Believe In God (whose lyrics poignantly ask ‘But does God believe in me?’, as if in response to the vision of faith in Vox Celebrans); then the dogmatic modernism of the Church reasserting its hegemony in the apocalyptic De Profundis. This is followed by the Celebrant’s Fraction – a musical distillation of his lengthy mad scene, a crisis of faith which hurls themes from the previous movements into a hysterical kaleidoscope. This finally resolves to the simple, human plea for peace and grace of Almighty Father. The final number, Offertory, brings the idea of synthesis full circle, as Bernstein transforms the Almighty Father into a dance of ecstasy that can encompass all people and all visions of faith.
It was important to me that this new work still capture the earnestness of MASS, and this is represented in moments where the orchestra itself interjects and interacts with the music in a theatrical or simply human way. Both MASS and the Catholic Mass that inspired it are a form of Ritual. In this distillation of Bernstein’s exploration of mystery, faith, struggle, and awe from his 1971 masterwork, I hope these moments bring that sense of ritual into these new Symphonic Rituals from MASS.
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Garth Edwin Sunderland is Vice President for Creative Projects at The Leonard Bernstein Office and arranger of Symphonic Rituals from MASS.