MISSA MORATORIA (BERRIGAN ROCK MASS)

CREDITS
Music by John Hostetter and Alan Sorvall
Additional material, poetry and music- 
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Archibald MacLeish, Ezra Pound, Vivian Sorvall
Country Joe and the Fish, Fred Neil 

Performed live by:
John Hostetter-vocals,narration, guitar and 12 string guitar, bongos
Alan Sorvall- vocals, guitars
David Turner-drums, percussion
Larry Tucker-bass guitar
Ken Perlman- poetry narration
Additional material, poetry and music – Ezra Pound, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Archibald MacLeish, Vivian Sorvall, Alice Mack Sawyer, Country Joe and the Fish, Fred Neil
        
Sacraments distributed by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

Performed Dec 15, 1969 at Cornell U.,
Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room

DESCRIPTION
Great oaken doors open into the Memorial Room, a huge, elegant space with paneled walls, leaded glass windows and high vaulted ceilings, like a baronial hall. Tonight, an unexpected audience of 800-900, students mostly, a sea of humanity sitting on the floor, completely packs this 300-capacity room in the student union building. They have come to hear the "Missa Moratoria: A Contemporary Electric Mass for Peace," a collaboration between Daniel Berrigan, S.J. and an Ithaca rock band. Escutcheoned banners, blazoned with the university seal and the emblems of its aspirations, hang amid massive iron chandeliers. Across campus recently a new science building has opened, said to have been funded in part by the Department of Defense. On a recorded soundtrack as Dylan hits the lyric "desolation row," a screaming wail of guitar feed-back from the stage introduces the Mass. For the next hour on December 15, 1969 the room is filled with magic, and Father Dan distributes the sacraments. At the end of this recording you can hear him thank the band. 

Two weeks earlier, that great hall is also packed: December 1, 1969, the broadcast of the national draft lottery. Three hundred sixty-five days of the year, 365 numbers. A U.S. male whose birthday matches the first 100 or 150 numbers drawn stands an excellent chance of becoming a soldier in Vietnam. Dan Berrigan has recently been sentenced to 3 years in prison, one of the Catonsville Nine, for destroying 600 draft records, after having visited Vietnam, where the U.S. military continues to drop ordnance and napalm. Nightly TV news in the U.S. broadcasts footage of Vietnamese civilians screaming, running, their bodies burning. Dan characterizes the Catonsville action as "the burning of paper rather than the burning of children."

Missa Moratoria was the composers' first collaboration in the evolution of America Is Hard To Find, a studio album of original music and poetry produced to fund the April 1970 festival weekend of that same name honoring Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who by that time was a fugitive from justice -- for a greater justice's sake. On Side A, Dan reads his poem "America Is Hard To Find" as well as others he'd been writing, with comments and stories about courageous actions taken in the cause of peace. On Side B, you can hear the recorded version of the completed rock mass, which the band performed in Barton Hall for an audience of 10,000 during that dramatic weekend festival.

Missa Moratoria (Berrigan Rock Mass)

On February 26, 2015, Mary Gilliland and Alan Sorvall met with Daniel Berrigan. S.J. and received his blessing and his permission to share this music and these lyrics online. Dan's soul left his body on April 30, 2016. Actor, musician, and artist John Hostetter departed on September 2 of the same year. We dedicate this project to their memories.

Structural inequality, institutional racism and sexism, gender-orientation and identity related discrimination, hate crimes---these terms the college students of 1969 - 70 had yet to learn, and some to experience more directly than others, as we graduated and looked for our places in an economy driven largely by military actions and its pyramid of entrenched privilege. 

Peace--inner peace, peace within families, peace among nations--could start to level that pyramid. Please make peace. Please make what peace you can.

We invite you to reminisce, relate, and learn more at		https://americaishardertofind.wordpress.com/