Is Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Mass’, Ultimately, Even A Piece Of Music? Maybe Not – And That Doesn’t Matter

“[The work] is hung on a musical frame. But more saliently to most audiences, perhaps, it is religious, it is social, it is political. … Maybe the technical term for it all is simply this: groovy.” Peter Dobrin considers the new recording of Mass, released for the Bernstein centennial, by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra (and a whole lot of others).