Hymns are a major source of our imaginative conception of the Christian faith. A good hymn focuses our mind on a memorable cluster of images that illuminate doctrine, preparing us to celebrate the liturgy or providing a respite during it. While the great hymn writers have often taken scripture as their starting point, they have not [...]
"Golgotha" is one of those works, and Frank Martin is one of those composers, about whom you want to broadcast to the world their greatness, beauty, and importance. Writers of a conservative inclination are prone to issue blanket condemnations of the fine art produced in the 20th century. But this is a gross oversimplification. Much [...]
Though Handel's "Messiah" rightly reigns supreme as the king of music for Easter, there are many other seasonal masterpieces that deserve to be heard more often. Here are ten lesser-known classical works that brilliantly depict the dramatic events of Holy Week and Easter Sunday. 1. "Resurrexit" from the Messe Solennelle, by Hector Berlioz (1824) The [...]
In the “St. Matthew Passion,” Bach indulges his gypsy soul. It is as though Bach, in his broad and deep humanity, his capacity for feeling all kinds and degrees of sorrow and joy, was reaching out to all his fellow human beings, believers and non-believers alike, and impressing upon them what was for him the [...]
Fifty years ago, when E. F. Schumacher published his international bestseller, Small is Beautiful, he gave it the subtitle “economics as if people mattered”. In 2006, when I published my own book, Small is Still Beautiful, I gave it the subtitle “economics as if families mattered”. In 1977, when Christopher Derrick published his book, Escape [...]
The fun thing about really getting to know the violin concerto repertoire is that there are always more treasures to discover. The violin concerto repertoire is so rich and satisfying, I’m embarrassed to admit that, prior to becoming an adult beginner on the violin in 2005, I was only familiar with a few of them. This, [...]
"They are finally going to play my music." —Hector Berlioz, on his deathbed Though Hector Berlioz's operas are still little known today—even to the opera-going public, who are much more likely to find the dramas of Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, and Mozart on the program—the increasing recognition of their many glories is slowly making them less [...]
Apart from Arvo Pärt, the grand old man of contemporary classical music, whose work I have admired greatly ever since I first heard Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten many years ago, Michael Kurek is the living composer whose works I especially enjoy. An American residing in Nashville, Dr. Kurek has almost single-handedly flown the flag [...]
Music pervades our lives and always has. It has taken you outside of yourselves and taken you deep within. It has been associated with things divine. There comes a time in every year when I find myself saying to a friend or a prospective student that this is a very musical College [Convocation, St. John’s [...]
Elegance, stability, and order—as well as a sense of pure, elemental joy—are the qualities I hear in Tomaso Albinoni’s music. It is music of Venice through and through, where in the meltingly beautiful slow movements you can all but see the morning light playing on the water of the lagoon, or feel the quiet awe [...]
Make no bones about: Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” is conservative because of its deep appreciation for the sublime and the beautiful. Better yet, its conservatism can be found in its holistic and ordered approach to human emotions, as well as its unbridled love for mystery and transcendent revelation. Considering that it was influenced by the [...]
So here I am, offering you this Valentine’s Day gift, and if you scoff at the notion of celebrating the day, for “Hallmark invented it and that’s that,” consider giving these songs a listen anyway. They are delicious, uplifting, sensuous. And they won’t give you a hangover. Valentine’s Day is a funny sort of holiday. Some [...]
Richard Wagner’s grand operatic drama The Ring of the Nibelung is rightly celebrated as one of the finest accomplishments of modern art. The story that Wagner tells, with the unfolding music meant to convey a primordial sense of enchantment forever lost to us, is about the tension between love and lust; the sacred and profane; [...]
M*A*S*H's Dr. Winchester and the Chinese prisoners in the American camp find a common language in a single piece of music, written a century-and-a-half before: Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. The final episode of the hit TV series, M*A*S*H aired on February 28, 1983, garnering an astounding 125 million viewers, the most in television history at the [...]