Michael De Sapio is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. A writer and classical musician from Alexandria, Virginia, he attended The Catholic University of America and The Peabody Conservatory of Music. Mr. De Sapio's essays on music, religion, and cultural history have been featured in Fanfare, Touchstone, and Crisis, among other publications. He has also published a screenplay, The Incredible Life of Joey Coletta.
Fifty years ago, most music lovers had not heard of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), let alone heard any of his works. Now he has claimed his place in the canon of great composers. Upon viewing the complete...
Solitude takes us out to deep and spacious waters where we see that silence is one of our greatest gifts and blessings, in which we discover not only ourselves but God as well.
It’s striking the number of...
“Should not the unswerving modernists... come to the realization that there is nothing more wearisome or more barren than the most antiquated of all manias: the rage to be modern?” Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
In my visits...
If culture is simply a matter of private enthusiasms and hobbies, of small details and specialties, then what of a common culture? What about the collective project and shared sense of purpose that built Western civilization?
“The...
Nowadays we hear the Bible read in installments at our weekly liturgies, but sustained reading aloud is rare. Yet reading out loud is irreplaceable. It is a social act, incarnating the words and message in a personal way. In hearing the Bible read, the Word takes flesh...
Of late I’ve grown rather cool toward Christmas. It’s a curious development. When I was a child, Christmas seemed the height of magic and mystery. Now when people ask me my favorite holidays, I answer...
“Music seems to exist in and of itself, like a temple built around your soul.”
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
The story of music in the twentieth century would have been very different without...
Though William Sidney Mount’s name is rarely mentioned except among art experts, the images he created are timeless Americana—skillfully rendered scenes full of homely comforts and the joy of life...
“How glorious it is to paint in the...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Michael De Sapio as he considers the reasons for the decline of the West. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher
That Western culture is...
French Impressionism may well be the most popular artistic style in the world. Even people who know little of art delight in the way painters like Monet and Renoir depicted everyday life and the play of light in...
Igor Stravinsky is endlessly touted as an arch-modernist, but The Soldier's Tale and The Rake's Progress show him to be something more important: a great twentieth-century moralist...
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was certainly the greatest composer...
The Miracle of the Bells doesn’t claim to be great literature, but it is a richly-drawn story about faith and Hollywood, a time capsule of a bygone era that retains its inspirational charm...
The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney (510 pages, Forgotten...
Those of my Dutch neighbor's generation knew exactly what they were doing in the Passion Play that was Europe during World War II. It was her Christian faith that sustained her through the hardships of those years...
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The Bible does not speak of “happiness” as such, though it often speaks of “joy,” one of the signal characteristics which Jesus bequeathed to his disciples...
In The Mind of the Maker, her brilliant book...
