I seldom mix music and politics, although as Socrates pointed out, they are related through music’s influence on the order of the soul. However, I begin this month’s survey with a release that is explicitly political. I recently had an uncanny experience that stretches the meaning of coincidence. I was in the Czech Republic speaking … Read more
Walking across the campus to class, I saw a panel truck parked on the street with a sticker on the tailgate that read: “The Power of Pride.” Below the words was a red, white, and blue patriotic banner with stars on it. The phrase struck me. It contains many paradoxes. Pride can be a dangerous … Read more
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made; of one Being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. We’ve said those words thousands of times at Sunday Mass. We know … Read more
On a recent trip to the Czech Republic, I took only CDs of American music with me. The idea was to catch up on numerous new releases, but I wonder if I was not self-consciously carrying the flag. I recall a summer in Taiwan at National Chengi University eons ago when the leader of our … Read more
On Tuesday, May 14, 1751, Samuel Johnson wrote in The Rambler that “it is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious, and severe. For, as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form … Read more
In the old days when Italians still had children, the mother of any large family, if she was devout, would single out one of her sons and pray that someday he would become a priest. In this tradition, my grandmother chose the gentlest and most intelligent of her four sons and encouraged him to be … Read more
What should I get myself for Christmas? An immodest question, you may suppose, but my family and friends will not buy me classical music CDs as gifts. They think I already have “everything” or, in the case of family, “enough.” The former is the product of envy, the latter of a storage problem and the … Read more
Over the years, I have enjoyed doing a Christmas column in this Sense and Nonsense series. But since columns usually need to be submitted a couple of months before publication, I find I am writing something about Christmas not on the Night Before Christmas, but sometime in September or October, not very Christmas-like months. Having … Read more
If you are tired of the endless CD duplication of the basic repertoire and wonder what musical treasures may remain unheard, do I have a new label for you. On his 50th birthday this last September, music critic and musicologist Martin Anderson formally launched the Toccata Classics label in London, where this Scotsman lives. I … Read more
“You cannot act for twenty-four hours without deciding either to hold people responsible or not to hold them responsible. Theology is a product far more practical than chemistry. Some Determinists fancy that Christianity invented a dogma like free will for fun—a mere contradiction. This is absurd. You have the contradiction wherever you are. Determinists tell … Read more
If I can curb my logorrhea, I will attempt to cover more new releases in capsule reviews in this article than ever before. The number of new CDs from my favorite labels belies the mourning over the demise of the classical music business, and I must catch up with them. The major labels may be … Read more
If I can curb my logorrhea, I will attempt to cover more new releases in capsule reviews in this article than ever before. The number of new CDs from my favorite labels belies the mourning over the demise of the classical music business, and I must catch up with them. The major labels may be … Read more
“Social justice” can be a dangerous phrase. How so? Justice is to render each his due. Justice is always in motion from an inner source, but never complete or automatic. Classically, justice is a moral, practical virtue. I must acquire it and practice it toward others. No one can make me just. I can always … Read more
Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, reminds us always that the Church is something we receive as a gift. It is not a human work but God’s work, and only insofar as we unite ourselves to it can it be said, through God’s grace, to be our work, too. Only then can we claim that our … Read more
Giving advice to high school graduates entering their freshman year of college is the privilege, if not the disease, of elderly professors. Such academics soon realize that all their students are always the same age. By Platonic standards, they are quite young, probably too young to yet be candidates for that wisdom that comes from … Read more
Because this month marks the 60th anniversary of the death of Bela Bartók, I had thought that this column would be dedicated to him. However, the death of two of my heroes has intervened, and it is of them that I must speak. Though they may be largely unfamiliar to you, my hope in writing … Read more
So you want to be a composer. You might want to think twice about it after reading Ivan March’s June 2005 column in Gramophone magazine: “Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, real music and its composers were sidelined in favour of what I call ‘barbed wire’ repertoire…. Atonalism, arguably, was the 20th century’s biggest musical … Read more
Following the election of Benedict XVI, Web sites and my e-mails were filled with wonderments about “when is the new pope going to act?” By “act,” writers mean things like, “defining an infallible position, say, no contraception,” or “tossing out an inept or heretical bishop or two (names provided on request),” or “confronting the universities … Read more
“How much shall we put you down for, sir?” asks the philanthropist on Christmas Eve, standing in the dingy countinghouse where Ebenezer Scrooge plies his lawful trade in misery. “Nothing.” “You wish to remain anonymous?” “I wish,” says Scrooge, “to be left alone!” Mine is a land of loneliness. We may not be as miserly … Read more
Several new CD releases bring to mind the fate of music after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Heady times, they were—for a while. Not only did the epaulets come off the uniforms and the bands from marriage, but the conductors dropped their batons in the new classless society. When the proletariat paradise did not emerge from … Read more