The Dominican and the Jazzman

Philosophy makes me angry. I hate it so. But I like Dominicans, especially those of the St. Joseph’s Province, the East Coast guys, so I went to a philosophical lecture a few nights ago by Fr. Michael Sherwin.

It was a lecture and dinner fundraiser for the Angelicum in Rome, which has been run by the excellent (American) Thomas Joseph White for the past four years and will continue to be run by him for another four-year term. The place was happily filthy with professed and lay Dominicans and a great number of friends.

I didn’t really understand much of “Christian Virtue in America’s Nietzschean Wasteland: Thomistic Reflections.” There was something about Nietzsche, and then Alasdair MacIntyre, and then Elizabeth Anscombe. Okay. Fine.  

Sherwin is a giant brain who was particularly close to MacIntyre. For many years, Sherwin held the Chair of Fundamental Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg. He is now Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome and also serves as Director of the Institute of Spirituality. Sherwin was the founding director of the St. Thomas Aquinas Institute for Theology and Culture and the Pinckaers Archives. You get the picture. 

Well, among all the concepts I could not follow, Sherwin dropped the name Ted Gioia, to me one of the most important writers working today. With Gioia, Sherwin wondered about the long-term effects of the fact that we no longer sing music in our lives, including during work, and now mostly listen. Among his vast works, including on jazz, Gioia has written books about song and singing. 

As it happened, Sherwin sat next to my wife and me at dinner, and I asked him about Gioia. It was off to the races. He has known Gioia for years, along with Gioia’s brother Dana, the noted poet (both of whom are Catholic, by the way). The conversation immediately turned to jazz because Gioia is a jazz pianist and has written numerous books about the genre. And then along came the topic of Dave Brubeck. 

It kills me to know that you do not know Brubeck. I am assuming this because as I told this story over the next several nights, hardly anyone knew Brubeck. I had to open Spotify and play “Take Five” so people would say, “Oh, that guy.” This is as stupid as me not really knowing Alasdair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Anscombe, maybe stupider. After all, Brubeck was one of the giants of 20th-century music, jazz music sadly now ghettoized in small clubs and amberized in high school and college jazz programs. 

Sherwin knew Brubeck. Sherwin collaborated with Brubeck. Sherwin still collaborates with Brubeck’s sons—this white-robed large-brained Dominican.

What many people will not know is that Brubeck became a Catholic and wrote religiously-themed music and eventually a Mass. This is a jazzman who, in the 1950s, took college campuses by storm and was on the cover of Time magazine when that really meant something. 

Brubeck grew up on a ranch in California and considered himself a “Prairie Calvinist.” It was during the Second World War that he came to believe “something should be done musically to strengthen man’s knowledge of God.” This impulse came to fruition in the late 1960s with The Light in the Wilderness (1968), “a meditation on the temptations and teachings of Christ.” This is from Sherwin’s 2003 piece on Brubeck in America magazine. 

This was followed a year later by The Gates of Justice, which addressed racial segregation. Brubeck and his racially-mixed band played throughout the South. And then came the 1971 Truth Is Fallen, about the “social effects of embracing a culture of deception.”

In the late ’70s, the publisher of Our Sunday Visitor asked Brubeck to write a Mass. Brubeck demurred, and the publisher pushed and pushed, and finally Brubeck agreed. He was given the parts of the Mass to compose, which he did, but the Our Father was missing. Sherwin says it had something to do with Brubeck being advised by liturgists rather than classical musicians. 

“Where is the Our Father?” they asked. 

“What’s that?” the Prairie Calvinist replied.

“The Lord’s Prayer.” 

“Oh, I know that.” 

Two nights later, the music came to him in a dream. During the writing, it came to him to swim the Tiber, which he did. 

The Mass may not appeal to many. It ought to. It is jazzy and gospely and classical and Gregorian, soaringly beautiful choral songs. It is a work of deep faith. Sherwin writes that it is best heard and seen in a documentary about Brubeck’s performance of it at the Moscow Conservatory of Music from the early aughts. But you should call it up on Spotify right now. 

I met Brubeck once, in the late ’70s. I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and my pal Steve Bennet had heard Brubeck was going to play in a tiny saloon in Spanish Lake, Missouri, a down-at-the-heels suburb of St. Louis. His band was some excellent local players. We went backstage, found his dressing room, parted the curtain, and walked right in. He was sitting alone. We were very boisterous and perhaps a little rude. We thanked him for the night and left. He was very kind. I asked Sherwin why the great Brubeck would play in such a place. Sherwin replied, “He loved to play.” 

Fr. Sherwin has been very close to the Brubeck family for years. How did this happen? I did not ask! So involved has he been that he even had a hand in trying to preserve Brubeck’s wonderful Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired mid-century house in Connecticut. One of Sherwin’s wonderful concerns was the final disposition of Brubeck’s old saddles. 

Sherwin, this big-brained Dominican, now collaborates musically with Brubeck’s sons. You can find the performances on YouTube. Stunning. 

What a magical night we had last Saturday. Sherwin even blessed our marriage, as it was our 22nd anniversary. Yes, this was how we celebrated our anniversary. 

I may not like philosophy, but I do like philosophers, sort of, as long as there is a little jazz talk.