Once I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a large book sitting on a table. Its cover was a detail photograph of a roof corner. I was caught immediately, like love at first sight. A detail of a roof was all it took to make me a life-long fan of Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, the [...]
The cause of the environment is not, in itself, a left-wing cause at all. It is not about “liberating” or empowering the victim, but about safeguarding resources. It is not about “progress” or “equality” but about conservation and equilibrium. Its following may be young and dishevelled; but that is largely because people in suits have [...]
In a noble enterprise, the people of my small Catholic parish in the poor part of town are trying to build a beautiful church. The church itself echoes the simple dignity of early Italian Romanesque, monastic architecture. From a closed church in Massachusetts, we have salvaged a complete set of forty-seven stained-glass windows, plus a [...]
We are not born into a savage wilderness but into a beautiful mansion of the Lord that the Lord and those who have gone before us have built. We must avoid neglecting this mansion but rather glorify and preserve it—as we should all of the Lord’s Creation. Whit Stillman, in the novel version of his [...]
Is rhetoric simply a fight, or is it part of a feast that is for the good of both the individual and the polis—as a feast is for the sustenance of ourselves, but more importantly, for the communion of a Body, of a community? Callicles says, “‘Too late for a share in the fight,’ so [...]
The first thing everyone says when they see the new church we are building in Greenville, South Carolina is, “It’s beautiful!” This is not the response I hear when they look on the utilitarian, fan-shaped Catholic auditoria that dominate our suburbs. The instantaneous and unsolicited observation that our new church is beautiful should not be [...]
In the last century, the concept of “progress” was often projected upon the arts as a measurement of quality: “good art” was “progressive art.” If an artist did not commit some “groundbreaking” artistic deed, his work was considered worthless. While progress in science is a fundamental notion, in the arts it is meaningless because the [...]
Here’s something a sixty-three year old man thinks about. Once, girls in their summer dresses filled the sidewalks each June. Their bare arms and shoulders would flash out of halter straps and their legs would strut past hems set well above the knees. Just to look at those girls—the bright, cotton colors of their dresses, [...]
During the infamous Brixton Riots of 1981—clashes between the police and the African-Caribbean community in south London—I was driving back to my parents’ house at night and got lost in the fog. I found myself faced with a dramatic scene: the fog illuminated by fire, as the rioters overturned cars and set them alight. I [...]
As an Englishman I’ve always had something of an ambivalent relationship with Ireland. On the one hand, I grew up in London in the 1970s when the IRA was planting bombs in pubs and at busy railway stations, killing and maiming many innocent victims in a cynical wave of terror; on the other hand, I’ve always [...]
Can we say that all is well in the world of higher music education on this side of the pond? For now, we continue to produce an ample supply of musicians that rank among the world’s best, with the technical proficiency, confidence, and maturity to faithfully perform the great works that were handed down to [...]
The truth is not simply that all that is good, true and beautiful comes from heaven but that all goodness, truth and beauty points to heaven. We see heaven in the light of the heavenly overspill in which we find ourselves. They came to the top of a little ridge with fine views over the [...]
How exactly do music schools intend to train their students to “spark positive change.” Are they putting the string section through classes in the theory and tactics of social and political activism? In the first part of this series, I acknowledged the growing consensus that there is something wrong with higher music education today, and [...]
The world of higher music education reform is abuzz with the excitement and promise of entrepreneurship. But entrepreneurship does not describe the process by which a tradition such as musicianship is handed down from one generation to another. Since at least the 1920s, America has done a fine job of nurturing its budding classical musicians within [...]