Please join Peter Kalkavage as he discusses the metaphysics of music: music's role in the liberal arts, the paradox in the union of rational and irrational, order and feeling in its composition, and music's connection and reflection of the deeper order of the natural world, of being. Introduction: In this podcast, we hear from Peter [...]
One of the fathers of authentic American music, Scott Joplin had an enormous influence, reaching even beyond America to Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky… “It is never right to play ragtime fast.” This admonition from the composer appeared on more than one of Scott Joplin’s rags, written between the time of his residence in Sedalia, [...]
High Art is not going away. There are people who require an art of greater complexity than popular culture usually affords them, who hunger for something deeper, more complex, something that reflects the human experience… There is nothing more American than the Three Stooges throwing a pie in the face of a soprano warbling “Voices [...]
In Modernity, the capacity for effortless knowing is denied, ignored, or misunderstood. As a result, the origin of all knowledge is taken as unaided human effort and activity. The Two Modes of the Mind If we lack a word for an experience, we obviously cannot talk to others about it, and the experience, no matter [...]
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 [...]
The music of Michael Kurek is rooted in the past, and his own guiding philosophy is rooted in a love for the transcendent, triune splendor of the good, the true, and the beautiful, a love which is itself a fruit of his Christian faith. Michael Kurek As editor for the past sixteen years [...]
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 [...]
Every artist copes with reality by means of his fantasy. Fantasy, better known as imagination, is his greatest treasure, his basic equipment for life. And since his work is his life, his fantasy is constantly in play. He dreams life. Psychologists tell us that a child's imagination reaches its peak at the age of six [...]
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed what became known as his "Elegy" in 1884 on a commission from the Moscow Society of Artists, who were honoring Ivan Samarin on the occasion of his fifty years of acting. Tchaikovsky titled the piece for string orchestra, which was meant to open the ceremonies, "A Grateful Greeting," though its spirit [...]
In truth, much of my favourite music is not sacred but profane, insofar as it is not overtly religious or in the least liturgical; and yet these profane favourites are certainly sublime, reflecting the goodness, truth and beauty of Creation, the harmony of the cosmos and the music of the spheres… Several months ago I [...]
Jean Sibelius wrote In Memoriam (Op. 59), in memory of Eugen Schauman, a Finnish nationalist who assassinated the Russian Governor-General of the Duchy of Finland, in a bid to further Finnish independence. The work is a funeral march for orchestra. Sibelius composed a first version in 1909 and completed a final version in 1910 (both [...]
Music was meant to create an effect in its listeners that embraced more than the perception of its sounds alone; it was meant to have an effect deeper than words, deeper than rational thought, and touching the emotions and that mysterious thing which the poets call “the soul”… As Sir Roger Scruton has explained elsewhere [...]
Handel’s “Messiah” was originally intended for Passion Week, but by the 1960s had been almost completely transformed into a Christmas event. Why? The other day, I heard an announcer on a local classical radio station gently chide his listeners, saying, “It’s almost Easter, and I haven’t had one request from our audience for selections from [...]
J.S. Bach’s “Mass in B Minor” is the summation of his life’s work and one of the supreme masterpieces of Western classical music. Yet mystery surrounds the work. What was its purpose, how did it come to be written, and how was it intended to be performed? No work of Johann Sebastian Bach is more [...]