On the evening of October 16, 1978, when Pericle Cardinal Fellici announced that the Church had a Polish pope, an astonished world expected that it might take some time for the newly-elected successor of St. Peter to learn his job. For Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow had had none of the preparation usually considered necessary … Read more
The 20th century is unique in its promulgation of noise. I do not mean industrial racket, the sounds of traffic, or the incessant hum of frost-free refrigerators. I mean the presentation of random noise as art. Never before has an artist asked an audience to come to a pre-arranged place at an appointed time to … Read more
Msgr. Klaus Gamber, the German liturgical historian, remarked that the danger of the priest’s “facing-the-people” innovation in the Mass was that the priest would begin to think that he was an actor or master of ceremonies, not the mediator facing, with all the people in supplication, the same Lord and God. The priest would think … Read more
Wailing cries of impending financial doom resound within the classical music business. Yet never before has such a cornucopia of recorded music been available, while each month more releases of music pour forth that, until few years ago, one had no hope of hearing. The labels suffering the most are those still endlessly replicating the … Read more
Italian music is so synonymous with opera that most music lovers would be hard put to think of any Italian orchestral or chamber music from the last two centuries. The only exception may be the music of Ottorino Respighi, especially his highly colorful tone poems, Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome. A group of … Read more
At a ceremony in a small naval chapel in Washington at which a nephew of mine was installed as master chief of the Naval Security Group Command, I gave the invocation. I had mentioned this occasion to my friend, Brother George Reilly, S.J., who, when World War II ended, had been a corpsman on a … Read more
A year ago this column was dedicated to a survey of the great Stabat Maters composed over a period of 400 years. For my own Lenten edification, I most often return to two 20th century Stabat Maters, very different in character but equally affecting—those by Francis Poulenc and Arvo Part. Here I offer a number … Read more
Easter is this: Christ, true man, crucified under Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor in Palestine, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day. Several identifiable, credible witnesses saw him, ate with him. He was the same Jesus from Nazareth who died, not some other man. This man, Jesus, in fact, was executed in … Read more
The following are short reviews of new CDs featuring the music of composers covered in this column in the recent past. This is not meant as a best of the year list, but as a way for readers to follow up on composers whose music they have particularly enjoyed and wish to explore further. I … Read more
At Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s in 1995, the Holy Father, our best teacher, repeated the majestic “time” themes of the incarnation – today, the hour. Hodie natus est: Today is born our Saviour, Christ the Lord. “The hour when the Son of God is born in the stable of Bethlehem is the hour in … Read more
At the height of Hollywood’s infatuation with things Catholic, no screenwriter would have dared propose such a storyline: Months after his country regains its independence, a son is born to Polish parents in the small provincial town of Wadowice. His mother dies before he makes his First Communion. Raised by his father, a gentleman of … Read more
What can one say of Ludwig van Beethoven, about whom everything seems to have already been said? How about, “Beethoven lives!”? This fall, I saw that announcement inscribed on baseball hats and T-shirts to promote the National Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven concert series. Later the same day, I received further evidence of his existence at Sunday … Read more
See if this story sounds familiar: A happily married couple—she is a pianist; he a rising scientist—have their love suddenly tested by a decline in the wife’s health. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she falls victim to a steady loss of muscle control and paralysis. The desperate husband uses all his professional skills to save her. … Read more
In 1981, I collected the addresses that John Paul II had to that time given to university students and faculties. Each fall, the Holy Father addresses students of ecclesiastical universities and later of state universities in Rome. In the January 8, 1997, English edition of L’ Osservatore Romano, I noticed that the Mass for Italian … Read more
“Before he got here I was worried,” a Polish friend confessed during Pope John Paul II ‘s homecoming pilgrimage this past June. “I thought the people might be tired of him. But he’s done it again. It’s like 1979.” The comparison to those eight days in June 1979 on which the history of the twentieth … Read more
This year is the bicentennial of Franz Schubert’s birth in 1797. In terms of his achievement there is only one other composer to whom he can be compared: Mozart. Perhaps not as precocious as Mozart, Schubert was nonetheless already an accomplished composer as a teenager. In his brief thirty-one years, he created a life’s work … Read more
Writing on environmental aberrations in the Washington Times, Alston Chase, a good writer in this thorny field, proposes that the hostility of environmental advocates to human progress goes back to the Garden of Eden, to its suggestion that in the beginning man was good and in complete harmony with nature. To cure subsequent pollution and … Read more
In his recently published diary, Polish poet and novelist Czeslaw Milosz bemoaned “the hideous music of the second half of the nineteenth century,” and wondered why composers ever abandoned “that heavenly sculpting in sound as in Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and not only in them; lesser composers, too, partook of that beautiful style.” I have often … Read more
David Diamond (b. 1915) is the last of several generations of great American symphonists who flourished mid-century. This list—beginning with Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, Aaron Copeland, and Walter Piston—continues with William Schuman and Diamond himself. Of them all, Diamond has created the most substantial body of symphonies, which now number eleven, in addition to ballets, … Read more
All sin consists in willing a disorder into some existing good. Only individual persons can sin. Institutions, be they economic, ecclesial, familial, voluntary, academic, or civil, as such, cannot sin. They are not persons who bear reality in the world. Institutions are patterns or ways of acting toward ourselves or others. As such, persons do … Read more
