It seems to me that solitude is the natural habitat of the philosophical and imaginative conservative today. He is essentially one who is “unfit for the modern world,” an antiquated being devoted to impossible ideals like Don Quixote. In order for him to remain himself, he must enter into communion with like-minded souls—or, failing that, [...]
The American musical—more technically known as light musical theater—has been one of the most beloved aspects of American culture. Many of the characters, scenes, and situations from the musical shows created during the genre’s golden age (roughly, the mid-20th century) are fixed in our consciousness, thanks to stage productions, movie versions of the shows, and [...]
While everyday life feels rootless, cultural and artistic accomplishment stands as a steady anchor and source of pride and joy and discovery. Music, the most popular and beloved of the arts, connects us to something higher than us, perhaps a way of life and set of feelings that flourished before we were born. Music can [...]
"The Chosen" is one of the few examples of television that really serves a higher purpose. Far beyond “entertainment,” it can enhance our traversal of Jesus’ life through liturgy and prayer. “We expect from TV consequences of the greatest importance for an increasingly dazzling exposition of the Truth.” [1] —Pope Pius XII (first televised Easter [...]
The greatest Christian thinkers of modern times have been those who have proposed the faith as something fresh and invigorating. In doing so, we continue the work of Jesus himself; his task was to call people back to the faithful keeping of God’s word, and our task now is to allow ourselves to be called [...]
Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony is his most sheerly delightful and accessible creation. It is written on a human scale and brings us on a clear and cogent musical and emotional journey. What’s more, this relatively traditional work still shows many of the ways in which Mahler was one of the most original and inventive composers [...]
Several trends have alienated ordinary laypeople from the worlds of both art and intellect, contributing to anti-intellectualism and hostility to the arts, as well as simple indifference to the finer things of culture. This is deplorable because the arts and the life of the mind are both important. When I was about five years old, [...]
Writing can simultaneously take a lot out of you—you feel pleasantly exhausted after firing off a big piece of work—and make you feel wondrously light and buoyant. How is this? I think it is because writing is simultaneously work and leisure, a mental strain and a contemplative joy. We are used to dividing our waking [...]
Truly the violin is a product of all that is best in Western culture: the love of beauty, the cultivation of craftsmanship, studied discipline, and sublime spirituality. The violin has long had an honored place in the tradition of Western music. Like Western culture itself, it has traveled all around the world: for popularity and [...]
To play music is to stop time, to transcend the entire workaday world we all live in and to enter another world, a world of spirit and emotion which is, perhaps, a foretaste of that other life beyond. The ability to make music has been one of the great blessings of my life. I have [...]
The civilization birthed by Israel, Greece, and Rome is the source of culture and individual traditions that can nourish us—traditions that can give us purpose, order, and beauty and rescue us from despair, boredom, and banality. Follow it and live by it, even if others scorn and abandon it. After all, it made us who [...]
One of the most astonishing aspects of the Incarnation mystery is that Christ, while being “God from God, Light from Light,” can withal be spoken of as a human being among human beings. In studying Jesus’ personality, background, concerns, and interests, we touch divinity itself, and learn something of divinity’s plan for humanity as expressed [...]
The mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection lends itself to, perhaps even demands, pictorial realization like no other story. To prove that the Easter spirit hasn’t left the silver screen, here are two more recent entries you may have missed. Movie-watching may not be as common a pastime at Easter as on other holidays, but [...]
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 [...]