Here are ten glorious pieces of music for Holy Week that will remind you that there is beauty in this world. As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve always taken Holy Week seriously in a personal way, and the reading of “The Passion of the Lord” on Palm Sunday always deeply affects me. You’d think I’d never heard the [...]
Later generations of Catholic Church leaders continually held up Palestrina’s music as the model for what sacred music should be. Whenever church music seemed in a rickety state—as in the semi-operatic effusions of the Victorian era, or the folky derivatives of the late 20th century—Palestrina was always there as a lighthouse to guide us back [...]
It is Beethoven—not Bach or Mozart—who is the most universally popular composer in the classical canon. Why is this? Some authors have posited his democratic social beliefs or his personal story of victory over deafness. These are all certainly factors, but I prefer to look first at the aesthetic qualities of the music itself. Johann [...]
Many classical music purists today consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music to be excessively sentimental, admittedly lush but too similar-sounding once you’ve heard one concerto. But is this a fair assessment? Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18 is the kind of music that grips you by the collar and draws you into its world instantly, [...]
Franz Joseph Haydn is the most companionable composer. His music is accessible in an almost daily way, without overwhelming us. The whole panoply of life is there but in scale, humanely so, without grotesque exaggeration. I love Haydn. If I had to be left with only one composer in my life, it would be he [...]
Tradition is the extension of democracy through time. It is the proxy of the dead and the enfranchisement of the unborn. “Tradition may be defined as the extension of the franchise,” wrote Chesterton. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” And he [...]
Please enjoy this symposium on the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, with contributions from our distinguished panel, including composer Michael Kurek and Principal Trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Balio. Clicking on the CD cover art next to each symphony will guide you to a listening recommendation on Spotify; at the bottom of [...]
Johann Sebastian Bach shows how mind and soul, spirit and body connect. In its complex richness and wholeness his music suggests the unity of faith and reason, science, and imagination. Full of relationships that stimulate the ear and the mind, it expresses the multifold splendor of creation itself. “To strip human nature until its divine [...]
Hector Berlioz brightened the world with his art. He marched to the beat of his own drum—sometimes literally. My binge on Berlioz has made me warm to the composer. And I am readier, I think, to accept him on his own terms. Many years ago, a reader introduced himself to me outside the Metropolitan Opera [...]
Einojuhani Rautavaara Yuja Wang was the star we’d all come to seeat San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall last Sunday afternoon. A change in programming had rewarded us in dividends; she’d be performing not just one but two piano concertos. For most of the audience, I’m guessing, it was Ravel’s intense Piano Concerto for [...]
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi’s music is timeless. Performed within the orchestral world, period films, and popular culture today, his works and melodies are recognizable, even to a movie crowd. Yet his work was often discredited in his lifetime because he was prolific. Composers and critics alike believed that Vivaldi’s sheer quantity of production outweighed his quality. Vivaldi and [...]
American wars produce songs of hope, encouragement, nostalgia, longing, sadness, and humor. Only one war produced a stirring song of triumphalist heresy. The war that made us independent gave us “Yankee Doodle,” a frivolous tune that threw back in the face of the Brits a term they had used to belittle us. The most popular [...]
Wherever we are—in restaurants or in the Metro or wherever—we are overhearing music coming at us from all angles, and we are learning how to ignore it. We live in a society where, if we do not learn to ignore it, we cannot also learn to listen to it. This puts an enormous strain on [...]
A primary aim of my work is to counter the widespread misconception that Christianity somehow “weakened” or “polluted” the cultures of Europe. It is often claimed by Neo-Pagans that the faith was simply a foreign imposition forced upon an unwilling population. However, a closer examination of contemporary sources reveals a far more nuanced reality. Joseph [...]