The program was Leonard Bernstein's Mass, a completely appropriate piece for the occasion. The piece was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy, and is a theater piece that intersperces parts of the Latin Mass with texts in English and Hebrew that would resonate with a 1970s audience.
The FBI warned Nixon that "anti-war messages encoded in the Latin text might be designed to embarass him."
Encoded?
I wonder if this quote from the excellent Wikipedia article about the piece might have been a problem passage:
The street chorus sings with the Latin lyrics until they hit a line which they twist into a complaint or a self-serving boast; i.e. "dona nobis pacem" (English: "grant us peace") turns into the street chorus, "Give us peace NOW!" In this way, Bernstein interweaves and contrasts social commentary and prayer.Anyway, Dr. Taylor's article is worth reading from top to toe.
I have deeply enjoyed watching the Kennedy Center Awards program on the television over the years. I particularly remember when Nathan Milstein was honored in 1987. He shared the stage with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Bette Davis. If the website gets "scrubbed" of its really great history (for reasons I hate to have to imagine), you can go to this archived page, scroll to the bottom, and see the list of honorees by year.
This center and these awards have been really meaningful.
As a person who flies very low under the radar of professional musical life (spending most of it either practicing, playing for pleasure--hopefully for the people who might be listening, and definitely for myself and my partners in musical "crime," playing in the viola section, or having written something that allows the person or people playing it to express themselves musically through it), I never thought that current workings of the federal government would work to intrude on and potentially compromise my musical world. But now I have to think about it.
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