BOWL ADDS WEIGHT TO LEONARD BERNSTEIN'S MASS.

Byline: David Mermelstein Correspondent

We tend to think of art as set in stone. Paintings and sculptures pretty much are. So are novels for the most part. But plays and operas often aren't. And many purely instrumental works in classical music exist in various iterations.

Leonard Bernstein was as dissatisfied with his music as most other composers. But this peripatetic artist - conductor, pianist and creator of works for the concert hall and the musical theater - rarely enjoyed the luxury of revision; he was generally too busy looking ahead to attend to what he'd already left behind.

There were exceptions: his Symphonies No. 2 (``Age of Anxiety'') and No. 3 (``Kaddish'') were revised, as was ``Candide,'' his imperfect distillation of Voltaire's perfect satire. But Bernstein's Mass, his most monumental work, never got that second look. Composed in haste for the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1971, the work flamboyantly reinterprets a traditional Catholic Mass using a melange of musical styles - symphonic, jazz, gospel, blues, rock 'n' roll, musical theater - to wrestle with issues like the individual vs. society, man's search for meaning and the presence, or absence, of God.

Despite - or more likely because of - its earnestness, the Mass endured a critical drubbing at its premiere. Nor were the ensuing years especially kind. The music was labeled pastiche and considered dated from the outset. And the tortured sentiments expressed in its libretto were dismissed as naive, the language derided as relentlessly hip.

But what's that line about fashion? That if you wait long enough, everything's bound to come back into style. Well, that day appears to be here for Bernstein's Mass, which the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform for the first time Thursday night, with Marin Alsop conducting at the Hollywood Bowl.

You might even call the occasion a harmonic convergence, for several factors seem to have lined up to encourage the event. Moreover, the Philharmonic's performance of the work turns out to be more than just a belated local premiere: Many of the Mass' lyrics have been substantially rewritten by their creator.

That person is not Bernstein, who died in 1990, but rather Stephen Schwartz, composer of the musicals ``Pippen'' and ``Wicked,'' currently a Broadway hit. Pressed to finish his commission, Bernstein asked Schwartz, who had just written the show ``Godspell,'' to contribute English lyrics and structural ideas to the Mass.

Schwartz says he was never entirely happy with his efforts. ``I came in basically three months before the premiere,'' Schwartz says last week. ``Lenny had much of the music and the setting of the Latin Mass mostly done, but there were very few lyrics. And the dramatic structure didn't exist. What got on stage was largely a first draft. It was, 'Write the piece and perform it.' I don't mean to bad-mouth myself, but I've always wanted to do better.''

Bernstein's death, combined with the work's absence from the repertory, suggested that day might never come. But a change in the fortunes of the Mass, culminating in the Bowl date, convinced Schwartz that the time was ripe to revisit the work.

Schwartz says that about 35 percent of the words in the Mass are English, and of those, he's changed at least 50 percent and maybe even 60 percent. ``It was a very simple process,'' he says. ``I sat with the text in front of me, and anytime I read a line I didn't like, I circled it. Then I tried to address every single one of those lines.''

What he has not done is change a single note of Bernstein's score to accommodate his refinements. Indeed, Schwartz worked on the changes with Bernstein's estate, especially the composer's daughter, Jamie. ``I sometimes did three or four passes to satisfy her,'' says Schwartz. ``And she made some suggestions of her own that I incorporated. There were even a couple of places where Jamie persuaded me that what was there originally was better.''

Alsop, who was a student of Bernstein's during the last 3 1/2 years of his life, has been directing a lot of his music lately. At the end of last season, she conducted a concert performance of ``Candide'' with the New York Philharmonic, and her appearance at the Bowl marks her fourth time leading his Mass, a piece she calls ``one of the great 20th-century works.''

She calls Schwartz's new lyrics an improvement. ``They seem less slick now, a little more universal and less clever,'' she says. ``I think it loosens things up, giving the piece a 21st-century sensibility.''

The notion that this much-maligned piece is now fashionable may strike some as unlikely, but Bernstein's Mass has, in recent years, popped up in all sorts of unlikely spots. That trend will continue at least through next year, when Alsop conducts it during the London Symphony Orchestra's 100th anniversary celebrations.

Of course, for purely practical reasons the work will never be a war horse. At the Bowl, the performers will include more than 80 players, divided into two bands, and an ensemble for rock and blues. They'll be augmented by 45 members of the Granada Hills High School marching band. The number of singers is even greater, with the Pacific Chorale contributing 100 voices - and 45 more coming from the Los Angeles Children's Chorus. A so-called street chorus of 16 will handle the pop singing, and a boy soprano will add an ethereal component. There are also 13 dancers serving as acolytes. And finally there's the celebrant, in this case Jubilant Sykes, who will be tacking the central role for the first time.

Chad Smith, the artistic administrator of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a driving force in programming the work at the Bowl, prefers to focus on content rather than manpower and regards the Mass as ahead of its time.

``In many ways, it anticipated where music would be 30 years later,'' he says. ``It sort of prefigures the music we now hear from Osvaldo Golijov and even John Adams. We're more comfortable with an eclectic sensibility now.''

BERNSTEIN'S MASS

What: Leonard Bernstein's major opus, with revised lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Marin Alsop and with baritone Jubilant Sykes.

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday.

Tickets: $1 to $78. [phone]; hollywoodbowl.com.

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Photo:

Stephen Schwartz was eager to revise the lyrics he wrote.