About Robert Reilly

Robert R. Reilly (born 1946) is a writer and senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He is the author of several books, including The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music, and Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything.

Mere Mortals Eavesdropping: The Greatness of Mozart

By |2024-01-27T13:47:50-06:00January 26th, 2024|Categories: Featured, Music, Timeless Essays, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

Mozart was not like us. The question as to why Mozart died so young is always superseded by: How could he have existed at all? How could you ask more of a miracle? In 1991, the bicentennial of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death was the occasion for massive festivals and grand recording projects, as well as [...]

Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”

By |2023-12-24T23:23:09-06:00December 24th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Hector Berlioz, Hector Berlioz Sesquicentennial Series, Music, Timeless Essays|

Hector Berlioz was a professed atheist, but could anything as tender and touching as "L’Enfance du Christ" have been written by a man who did not believe? And what of Berlioz’s closing line to the work: “Oh my soul, what remains for you to do but shatter your pride before so great a mystery?" The [...]

Recovering the Sacred in Music

By |2023-09-30T12:27:58-05:00September 25th, 2023|Categories: Arvo Pärt, Christianity, Henryk Górecki, John Tavener, Music, Poland, St. John Paul II, Timeless Essays|

The music of Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener is the music of a new civilization. These composers have gone against the prevailing grain of the twentieth century for the sake of a greater love. The attempted suicide of Western classical music has failed. The patient is recovering, no thanks to the efforts of music’s [...]

Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”

By |2022-01-06T12:37:24-06:00December 10th, 2021|Categories: Audio/Video, Catholicism, Christmas, Hector Berlioz, Music, Timeless Essays|

Could anything as tender and touching as "L’Enfance du Christ" have been written by a man who did not believe? One hopes that professed atheist Hector Berlioz was able to find the Christmas that he portrayed so beautifully. The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote that “The major poetic idea in the world is and always [...]

America Must Return to the Noble Traditions of Her Founders

By |2023-07-04T22:48:28-05:00September 27th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, History, Politics, Slavery|

That it is the founding principles themselves to which we can turn to recover from the great evils of slavery, of the loss of virtue and moral standard, and of grotesque dehumanization should be a measure of the gratitude we owe to our Founding Fathers for their magnificent achievement. Robert R. Reilly is the author [...]

Antonín Dvorák: Composing Music of Joy in the Kitchen

By |2021-04-30T16:33:29-05:00September 7th, 2020|Categories: Antonin Dvorak, Music|

Antonín Dvorák’s music expresses joy, especially in all the sentiments associated with home. Dvorák’s favorite workplace was the kitchen, amidst the domestic racket of his large family. Fleeing the congestion and mayhem of New York City in the early summer of 1893, Antonin Dvorák, along with his wife and six children, alighted from a train [...]

The Road to Same-Sex Marriage was Paved by Rousseau

By |2014-01-12T16:45:17-06:00July 24th, 2013|Categories: Homosexual Unions, Natural Law|Tags: |

There is more to same-sex marriage than politics. It only becomes plausible if you accept certain assumptions about how to distinguish what is natural from what is unnatural and what is right from what is wrong. The intellectual origins of the debate stretch all the way back to the Greeks, but radical changes in philosophy [...]

Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen

By |2017-06-05T13:03:06-05:00February 5th, 2013|Categories: Beauty, Film, Music|Tags: , |

One of the privileges of writing this column is that I occasionally get to meet the composers of the music I review. I had a meeting this past year with a musician with whom I have been in correspondence for some time. Morten Lauridsen, the most frequently performed American choral composer, came to Washington, D.C. [...]

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