That was a quote from my old music history professor. One of the high points on my musical resume is that I used to sing in the choir of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra when it was under David Zinman. With a professional orchestra I was blessed during that time to perform such things as the complete Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. I recall the conductor referring to the latter’s text as “Victorian claptrap”, but no matter because the whole experience had a profound effect on me and in many ways was a prompting to my eventual conversion.
So it all came back to me when Matt over at Creative Minority Report forwards a review which suggests to me that the orchestra’s programming has taken a turn for the worse with the performance of Bernstein’s shipwreck:
The composer used the Roman Catholic Mass as a frame-tale around which to wrap his secular approach to religion. With an assist from “Godspell” composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, Mr. Bernstein’s book is a crazy quilt of liberation theology and situational ethics. Worse still, the climactic smashing of the Eucharist near its close is pure sacrilege for practicing Catholics.
I can’t help but wonder if there were any Catholic members of the orchestra who sat this one out in protest.
