April 15, 1781, was Easter Sunday. Boswell tells us that he went to services at St. Paul’s in London, then to Dr. Johnson’s for a chat. Dr. William Scott dropped in and remarked that some of the best essays in The Spectator were written with “the warmth of wine.” When Johnson did not want to … Read more
Some critics think composers should be seismic devices. Music should not only reflect its time, but foretell things to come. In fact, it should even help usher in the new age. However, both politically and artistically, the cultural revolution is now over, and so too should be this view of music as a revolutionary muse. … Read more
He came to explain his Bosnia policy to the nation on November 27th. But sitting in the glare of television lights, clutching his hands for dear life, the president interrupted his Oval Office address for a bit of campaigning. His target was the Catholic vote. “A few weeks ago, I was privileged to spend some … Read more
Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was the greatest Catholic composer at the turn of the nineteenth century and the greatest English composer since Purcell some two hundred years earlier. Elgar’s mother, Ann, was a convert to Catholicism and, despite her husband’s objections, raised her children in the faith. Among the things she used to read them as … Read more
Intellectual disorder eats at the heart of every university, journal, city, and, yes, church. We are taught that there is no truth to be known—the only thing that exists is power. Everyone stands for an arbitrary commitment. Truth-tellers and truth-claimers are the most dangerous people in our social contract: They imply that it is possible … Read more
You probably missed the centenary of French composer Charles Gounod’s death in 1993. Not much attention was paid to this once phenomenally popular composer, who lived from 1818 to 1893. He is supposed to be completely passé, a relic of Victorian times; his saccharine tunes would send us moderns into insulin shock. Yet, even those … Read more
In John Paul II’s letter on the Third Millennium and in his encyclical on Christian unity, he has let us know what he things about the diversity among Christians. Rouhgly, it ought to stop. While not lessening the importance of prayer for unity, the Holy Father is putting considerable pressure on all of us, Catholics, … Read more
Over the past four years, Pope John Paul II has developed what is arguably the most sophisticated moral, philosophical, and theological analysis of democracy on offer in the world today. In a triptych of encyclicals — Centesimus annus (1991), Veritatis splendor (1993), and Evangelium vitae (1995) — the Holy Father has both secured the teaching … Read more
Everyone loves Christmas — even agnostics. The English tolerance for, if not cultivation of, eccentricity easily embraced Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), the agnostic composer of some of this century’s most beautiful religious music, including Hodie Christus Natus Est, finally available here in time for Christmas on a special EMI import CD (CDC 54128). This is … Read more
Somwhere, I once acquired from a book story, a copy of The book of Common Prayer of the Protestant episcopal Church in the United States. I have the volume on the Sacraments, Rites, and Ceremonies, which contains the Christmas Service. This book was published in New York with no date. On the inside title page, … Read more
Fleeing the congestion and mayhem of New York City in the early summer of 1893, Antonin Dvorák, along with his wife and six children, alighted from a train in the little Bohemian settlement of Spillville, Iowa. Perhaps by then his worldwide fame had spread even there, but this quiet town in the middle of nowhere … Read more
An aura of unreality thickened by a fog of bitterness hung over the 1995 major league baseball season. The unreality had to do with the fact that 144 games do not a season make. Amputating April from the 1995 major league agenda not only distorted the pastime’s normal rhythms; it also rendered this year’s statistics … Read more
Aristotle suggests that there is something higher than praise, even though praise is perhaps one of our highest acts. Praise results from our capacity and willingness to acknowledge that someone else, besides ourselves, has actually accomplished something worthwhile. Praise is, in this sense, our highest reward from others and the most precious gift. Yet, there … Read more
Dialogues des Carmelites by Francis Poulenc is an opera for those who hate the French Revolution. I am among them. As I discovered during my journeys through France over the past thirty years, the destruction still most present to the modern-day traveler resulted from neither world war, nor from any of the calamities of the … Read more
On July 3, 1778, Samuel Johnson wrote to James Boswell at Auchinleck, his home in Scotland. Boswell had evidently been complaining that Johnson had not replied to his precious letters. Johnson responded to Boswell by saying, in effect “Look, Sir, stop complaining.” Johnson then proceeded to give Boswell a memorable lesson about good correspondence and … Read more
Requiems are for the living. They shape our attitude toward death. What should we expect? Peace and serenity, or terror and judgment? Heaven or hell? It depends on the composer. In their Requiems, Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi frighten us with rafter-shaking, apocalyptic visions of the Dies Irae. Just as composing symphonies became a problem … Read more
On April 28, a Friday morning, about ten-thirty, I boarded United Express at Islip, Long Island, for the flight back to Washington. The plane landed at about noon at Dulles. On the flight back, I thought I had better make arrangements for a ticket to the West Coast to see my family after classes ended … Read more
English composer Edmund Rubbra [1901-1986] probably did not read The New York Times. At least, he did not respond to, nor was he guided by, the terms of the artistic dilemma propounded by the headline to a music review published in the early 1980s: “Beauty or the Pain of Truth?” The question is obviously loaded. … Read more
In And the Beagles and the Bunnies Shall Lie Down together, we see little Sally busily writing, head down, almost on the notebook. Charlie Brown is looking at her, as he does at all women, with some perplexity. “I have to do a paper for school on Ken and Abel,” she explains to her brother. … Read more
A week after Tad Szulc’s biography of Pope John Paul II appeared in the bookstores, David Shaw, the media critic of the Los Angeles Times, wrote a remarkable four-part series arguing that the American press — obsessed with issues of sexual morality and incapable of understanding the Church in terms other than those drawn from … Read more