A Song of Praise to Six Unsung Singers of Sacred Music

By |2024-06-09T14:32:12-05:00June 9th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Catholicism, Christianity, Joseph Pearce, Music, Senior Contributors, Unsung Heroes of Christendom|

These six composers might not have been saints, but the splendor of their voices bears a living witness to the Lord. Well may we hope and pray that their songs may continue to be sung and that they may be heard more clearly amid the din and discord of our modern world. Christianity has died [...]

Schumann’s Enigmatic Violin Concerto

By |2024-06-08T12:07:43-05:00June 7th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Robert Schumann, Timeless Essays|

Composed in a matter of weeks in 1853, the Violin Concerto was Robert Schumann's last major work before the madness set in. The program at the San Francisco Symphony was billed as “Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 in A minor, with guest conductor Roberto Abbado.” Great, enjoyable stuff. But one glance at my playbill once I was seated gave [...]

Hatred Comes in Many Colours: The Politics of Pride & Prejudice

By |2024-06-04T18:29:40-05:00June 4th, 2024|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Featured, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Where there is Pride, there is prejudice; where there is prejudice, there is hatred; where there is hatred, there is the dehumanizing of the enemy; and where there is the dehumanizing of the enemy, there is the extermination that follows. As I watch the rise of the politics of hatred sweep like an angry wave [...]

On Beauty and Imitation

By |2024-06-03T18:13:04-05:00June 3rd, 2024|Categories: Beauty, Books, Culture|

Daniel McInerny's "Beauty and Imitation" seeks to retrieve, with the philosophical aid principally of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, the pre-modern understanding of art as imitation of the beautiful forms that make up sacred order. Beauty and Imitation: A Philosophical Reflections on the Arts, by Daniel McInerny (448 pages, Word on Fire Academic, 2024) Once [...]

On The Importance of Shoes

By |2024-05-30T14:38:58-05:00May 30th, 2024|Categories: Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Timeless Essays|

Let us sneak around in sneakers and slip into our slippers after a busy day, but let us wear dignified and unostentatious shoes for those times when life demands that we be dignified and unostentatious. I was serving as a Housemaster in an English boarding school when I finally learned the full importance of shoes. [...]

The Violin and the Enchantment of Western Culture

By |2024-08-01T10:20:52-05:00May 27th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Michael De Sapio, Music, Senior Contributors|

Truly the violin is a product of all that is best in Western culture: the love of beauty, the cultivation of craftsmanship, studied discipline, and sublime spirituality. The violin has long had an honored place in the tradition of Western music. Like Western culture itself, it has traveled all around the world: for popularity and [...]

“Memoriae Tuae”

By |2024-05-28T10:39:47-05:00May 26th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Film, Memorial Day, Music, Timeless Essays, World War I|

“Memoriae Tuae” Martis nec gladius, belli nec ignis impiger Vivum momentum unquam memoriae tuae consumet Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory* Patrick Doyle wrote "Memoriae Tuae" as part of his score for the animated film, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, a 2018 computer-animated adventure film [...]

“Raffaella”: A Fleeting Glimpse of Joy

By |2024-05-24T09:45:07-05:00May 23rd, 2024|Categories: Beauty, Joseph Pearce, Music, Senior Contributors|

Raffaella Maria Stroik, a 23-year-old ballerina, died tragically in November 2018, drowning in a lake in Missouri. This real-life tragedy has now been transformed or transfigured, as if by magic or miracle, into a beautiful fairytale ballet, inspired by Raffaella’s devout and fervent Catholic faith. Fairyland and perfection have a great deal in common. They [...]

Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s “Republic”

By |2024-05-17T12:26:49-05:00May 17th, 2024|Categories: Books, Character, Culture, History, Myth, Philosophy, Plato, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

Glaucon’s story is part of a well-known political tragedy that swept up many of Plato’s friends and fellow citizens, including Socrates. The evidence for his personal tragedy, however, is deeply embedded in the text. Like a three-dimensional image hidden within a two-dimensional picture, it requires a special adjustment of the eyes to perceive. Perhaps the [...]

“Raffaella”: A New Fairytale Ballet

By |2024-05-14T12:45:13-05:00May 13th, 2024|Categories: Love, Music|

Raffaella is a new fairytale ballet commissioned by the Stroik family, in memory of their daughter, Raffaella Stroik. Inspired by her life, this full-length ballet follows the lineage of classical ballets such as Giselle and The Sleeping Beauty and seeks to embody Raffaella’s motto, “Beauty will save the world.” The ballet will be premiered on Saturday, [...]

Cinderella, “The Sound of Music,” & the Mother of God

By |2024-05-10T12:19:57-05:00May 10th, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Faith, Family, Mother of God, Music, Senior Contributors|

All the immortal myths, sagas, and fairytales we locate in the world of make-believe are retold in the Bible. Likewise with our school's recent production of "The Sound of Music," whose Cinderella story of the pure maid who hears a call from God echoes unconsciously into their lives in a classical Catholic academy. The [...]

Beauteous Truth: On Literature, Culture, & Faith

By |2024-05-07T14:37:27-05:00May 7th, 2024|Categories: Beauty, Catholicism, Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce, Timeless Essays, Truth|

Literature is so effective in giving us a foundational understanding of ourselves, our neighbours, and our shared human existence throughout history because it shows us the way of virtue, the truth of reason, and the beauty of the cosmos and our place within it. Jared Zimmerer interviews Joseph Pearce. Jared Zimmerer: Throughout your collection of [...]

Serenade Bliss From a Pre-Beard Brahms

By |2024-05-07T14:16:47-05:00May 6th, 2024|Categories: Audio/Video, Johannes Brahms, Music|

I didn’t know Brahms had written a serenade, much less two dazzling ones, when he was a younger composer. This is the Brahms that fascinates me right now: the winsome, delicate-looking, blue-eyed, golden-haired young adult, who left behind family to hit the road to tour musically and meet his destiny head-on. You know the phenomenon: [...]

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