While there have been countless classical pieces about a single season—spring music alone is almost a cliché—complete seasonal cycles are a rarity in the classical canon. If we dig into the repertoire a bit, we find a handful of seasons cycles apart from Vivaldi’s perennial favorite. Here I have settled on cycles by Haydn, Roussel, [...]
Romano Guardini reminds us, above all, to render “to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.” His writings help us to recognize the spiritual necessity of not being slaves of the things of the world. His testimony thus pleads with us to disentangle ourselves from the enemies of [...]
"I feel I am dying," Hector Berlioz wrote in one of his last letters. "I no longer believe in anything." Indeed, by 1869, Berlioz was a frustrated man who had long ago given up his Catholic faith and who had largely given up composing. For many years, the limited and intermittent success of his compositions had [...]
The poetry of John Keats is a window into the mad genius of the Romantics: their lusts and hopes; their ambitions and ignorance; their radicalism and fantasies. In reading Keats, one is simultaneously scandalized and sympathetic to the longing of the Romantic heart. “The best things we have come from madness.” John Keats died only [...]
Susan Treacy's "The Music of Christendom" serves as a useful introduction to whet one’s appetite, but it could have been considerably more fleshed out. Ultimately this book is a primer, something to spark interest in the rich world of classical music in a primarily religious audience. The Music of Christendom, by Susan Treacy (Ignatius Press, [...]
In Samuel Johnson’s novel “Rasselas,” the eponymous character discovers that happiness does not derive from a beautiful place, luxurious palace, or constant entertainment, but depends upon a composed state of mind in possession of truth. Throughout the eighteenth century, novel theories of happiness and utopian ideas of perfect societies gained respectability and popularity. The exploration [...]
It is only the loved and repeated repertoire that will ensure the survival of music, and to be loved and repeated music requires a dedicated audience. Music exists in the ear of the listener, not on the page of the score, nor in the world of pure sound effects. And listeners, deterred by the avant-garde, [...]
Modernity, by God’s grace, may be the site of a new synthesis, the transcending of stale categories of thought and practice, in which a new Christendom can emerge, one in which the reign of God in His glory and love emerges side-by-side with the full dignity and flourishing of man. The Immanent Frame and Great [...]
In our world of recriminating hatreds—in which we desire more to label those we don’t like as sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and, simultaneously, mark ourselves as victims—we often forget some important historical truths. Here’s one we conveniently ignore, dismiss, or mock: Nothing in the world has brought about more equality and justice than has [...]
Love has inspired countless composers, some of whom have written pieces dedicated to, or directly inspired by, their own beloveds. Here are ten of the best musical love letters ever composed. 1. Wagner: Siegfried Idyll Though his reputation rests on his big, long, and loud mythological operas, Richard Wagner was also capable of composing on a [...]
Beethoven's Fourth Symphony is radiantly joyful music, filled with sunlight, humor, charm, serenity, and contentment. What is Beethoven trying to say in this work? Let us not get mired in the muck of life; let us remember the Paradise we lost and the Heaven to which we are aspiring. In the canon of Ludwig van [...]
D.C. Schindler's "The Politics of the Real" is a brilliant addition to the postliberal movement. By understanding liberalism as a distortion of the Christian order, we can recognize it as a sustained war upon reality. And we can understand a true postliberalism as nothing more or less than the New Evangelization, the effort of converting entire [...]
Joseph Butler—Anglican bishop, theologian, and philosopher—strikes me as a man deeply involved with the great program of Christian humanism, one who did his bit to guide the ship of Western thought back to its moorings after skepticism had blown it off course. The Analogy of Religion, by Joseph Butler, edited by David McNaughton (259 pages, [...]
While original in his style, Felix Mendelssohn was certainly no radical. What he offered was a perfect blending of classical proportion with Romantic fervor. In that sense, he amounts to a kind of missing link between Mozart and the remainder of the nineteenth century. Of all the underrated genius-level composers of the nineteenth century, none [...]