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 edition of his music, Paul Hindemith went so far as to call Biber the greatest composer before [...]
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 books coming out recently on the subject of silence; it must be a felt need in our [...]
“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 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, I generally sidestep the East Building, the portion devoted to modern [...]
Even the secular symbols of Christmas—the evergreen tree, holly and mistletoe, Santa Claus the great Gift Giver—all point to the divine presence. Which I suppose is one of the main lessons of this season: If you want to find the Everlasting Man, look where he is hidden. Of late I’ve grown rather cool toward Christmas. [...]
“Music seems to exist in and of itself, like a temple built around your soul.” Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) The story of music in the twentieth century would have been very different without the inspirational force of Nadia Boulanger—conductor, pianist, organist, and teacher to some of the era’s greatest composers. She was a woman who “knew [...]
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 open fields, to hear the birds singing around you, to draw in the fresh air—how thankful it makes [...]
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 in an advanced state of decay is, I would guess, an article of faith for many readers of The [...]
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 shimmering colors. Impressionist music, on the other hand, occupies murkier territory. If we are to believe the [...]
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 (1882-1971) was certainly the greatest composer of the twentieth century, yet most listeners never go beyond his “Russian” period as represented by the meteoric early ballets [...]
If you’ve seen Jan Steen’s famous painting The Feast of St. Nicholas, you understand what an important place that holiday holds in the hearts of Dutch children, like my neighbor, Stien. “A famous legend,” I declare carelessly of the one of the tales of the saint; she corrects me: “not a legend, but a true [...]
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 about theology and art, Dorothy L. Sayers discusses the differences between the biblical and modern attitudes toward life as revealed in [...]
“Leave It to Beaver” was very much a medieval morality play, in which the character of the Beaver repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue. Russell Kirk defined the moral imagination as “an enduring source of inspiration that elevates us to first principles as it guides [...]
Igor Stravinsky was not only one of the greatest composers and minds of the twentieth century, but also one of the last Christian humanists in the world of art. “Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church in all its decoration; it is the church’s [...]
Camille Saint-Saëns indeed had a wonderful sense of humor, but it is his serious, abstract works—especially his chamber music—that show him at his Gallic best and assure his place among the great composers. When it comes to classical music, “the filter of history is by no means always an honest one,” as a writer for [...]