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 [...]

The Pure, True Beauty of “O Holy Night”

By |2024-02-13T05:45:56-06:00December 23rd, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Music|

“O Holy Night” is a carol with a purity, beauty and a timeless message I dearly love. What I’ve always thought of as a humble yet glorious, affecting Christmas carol, turns out to have a vaguely spicy story behind it. Confession: I stopped writing this essay on “O Holy Night,” soured by something I couldn’t [...]

Beethoven & the Greatest Concert of All Time

By |2023-12-21T17:30:54-06:00December 21st, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Beethoven 250, Ludwig van Beethoven, Music, Timeless Essays|

On December 22, 1808, Ludwig van Beethoven—by then an established composer and a renowned piano virtuoso—conducted a concert of his own works, featuring himself also as pianist, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The program included the premiers of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto, and a concluding piece for [...]

Leroy Anderson: Musical Genius in Miniature

By |2023-12-19T09:05:24-06:00December 18th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Christmas, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

What would the Christmas season be without Sleigh Ride, the beloved orchestral chestnut by Leroy Anderson? It’s one of those festive selections endlessly piped into our ears on radio, television, and in every public marketplace, to the point of becoming a sort of seasonal wallpaper—something taken for granted. But if Sleigh Ride is a tune [...]

“O Sapientia”: An Advent Antiphon

By |2023-12-17T20:25:08-06:00December 16th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Audio/Video, Christianity, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

The poem I have chosen for December 17th in my Advent Anthology from Canterbury Press Waiting on the Word is my own sonnet “O Sapientia,” the first in a sequence of seven sonnets on the seven great ‘O’ antiphons which I shall be reading to you each day between now and the 23rd of December. You [...]

Beethoven’s Apollonian Beauty

By |2023-12-16T15:34:06-06:00December 15th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Beethoven 250, Ludwig van Beethoven, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

We think of Beethoven as the stormy rebel, the musical Zeus hurling his thunderbolts. But there exists also Beethoven's Apollonian side. His music can indeed be so elegant, so meltingly tender or nostalgic. So much of what Beethoven composed projects a pastoral peace and contentment, evoking the walks in the country he so enjoyed. Musical [...]

“The Miracle of Saint Nicholas”

By |2023-12-05T19:50:28-06:00December 5th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Audio/Video, Christianity, Christmas, Music, Timeless Essays|

French composer Guy Ropartz wrote Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas in 1905, based on a text by René Avril. From the Naxos recording of this work: This legend in sixteen scenes introduces the story, familiar to the people of Lorraine, of St Nicholas bringing back to life the three boys murdered and pickled by the [...]

“I Must Ever Weep”: Haydn’s Musical Elegy to Mozart

By |2023-12-04T17:30:05-06:00December 4th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Friendship, Joseph Haydn, Music, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|

When Wolfgang Mozart died on December 5, 1791, fellow composer Joseph Haydn was "quite beside [himself] over his death," and the older composer soon paid a veiled tribute to his young friend in the form of a sombre slow movement of a new symphony he was writing for his London tour. "I love him too [...]

Creating Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony

By |2023-11-26T13:41:55-06:00November 26th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Beauty, Culture, History, Music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Timeless Essays|

Tchaikovsky's First Symphony is a delight: fresh, assured and just plain fun to listen to. The violins introduce the first movement with a shimmering, sweet tremolo, giving it a dreamy, gossamer texture, that perfectly illustrates the movement’s subtitle, “Daydreams of a Winter Journey." While a longtime fan of Tchaikovsky, I must confess that, up to a [...]

Discontent, Death, & Desolation: Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”

By |2023-11-09T20:24:06-06:00November 5th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” —Father Zossima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” Is there an opera that better conveys the mood of late autumn—with the inevitability of winter’s desolation on the doorstep—than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin? Based on the “novel in verse” by [...]

A Conductor at Twilight: Michael Tilson Thomas’ Last Days at the Podium

By |2023-11-03T05:41:08-05:00October 31st, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Music|

Last week, I went to see the great American conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, conduct Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I adore MTT not just because he’s a rock star in the classical music and a delightful and compelling orator, but because he has essentially been the host of [...]

All Hallow’s Eve: A Sonnet of Reclamation

By |2023-10-30T18:56:53-05:00October 30th, 2023|Categories: Audio/Video, Halloween, Malcolm Guite, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

As we come towards Hallowe’en, it's worth remembering that the word "Hallowe’en" itself simply means "the eve of all Hallows", and All Hallows is the Christian feast of All Saints, or All Saints Day’, a day when we think particularly of those souls in bliss who, even in this life, kindled a light for us, [...]

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