Editor's Note: Regrettably, Hector Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ is little known today, aside from "The Shepherds' Farewell to the Holy Family," which is often programmed independently of the oratorio on classical Christmas albums. This chorus'...
Not unlike the times of Our Lord, we live in the paradox of a world in disorder yet under the appearance of order. Beneath the veneer of optimism and prosperity, many people experience lives of...
"Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence…. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was...
In the iconoclasm controversy of the eighth century, the church debated the possibility of images in worship. The Eastern Church, challenged by the rise of Islam, with its total prohibition of religious imagery, worried that Christian imagery broke the...
Editor's Note: French composer Guy Ropartz wrote Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas in 1905, based on a text by René Avril. This legend in sixteen scenes tells the story of St. Nicholas bringing back to life three runaway boys who were...
The body in its physical structure as such bears a vision of reality: it is an anticipatory sign, and already an expression, of the order of love or gift that most deeply characterizes the meaning of the person...
“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...
"I love him too much." —Joseph Haydn, about his friend Wolfgang Mozart "Joseph Haydn with Mozart," by V. Janschiek
Wolfgang Mozart and Joseph Haydn were the two masters of the Classical Period...
Vast topics are notoriously easy to avoid, and those who undertake to wrestle with them in public owe their audience some concrete reason for their choice. Let me begin with mine.
First, this summer I had...
It is the encounter with beauty, all-consuming beauty, the infinite, which directs the human soul back to God. The sky calls us up; the earth drags us down... On December 2, 1805, the French Emperor...
Clint Eastwood made his name with a squint, a glare, a snarl, and a few well-chosen one-liners. His vigilante loner has served him well in films from the spaghetti Westerns, the Dirty Harry franchise, Unforgiven, Pale Rider, and more.
Calvin Miller
One of the simplest ways to define Christian poetry is as poetry whose subject is Christ. Christian writers today would be quick to point out that such a definition cannot be exhaustive,...
Pick up a Jane Austen novel, and you will discover that behind the long gowns and country dances, people in her era struggled with the same weaknesses we struggle with today. Well-written stories like Austen's bring to life the human drama that is played out in every...
We’re filling up so much of kids’ time with extracurriculars and studying that they don’t have time to play—and without play, it’s harder to develop the self-starter instincts and resilience of an entrepreneur... This election...
