Archive
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Articles
The Sense of the Census
We just got our Census form in the mail. Well, it’s not the census form, it’s the warm-up census form, telling us that we’re going to get the census...
Vatican Music
I just lost my lunch all over my desk watching the Youtube promo for this “Alma Mater” release of “Music from the Vatican,” voiced-over by Pope Benedict. They keep...
Beauty and Ms. Boyle
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past ten days, you might not have heard that the big news hasn’t had anything to do with pirates...
“Noah, How Long Can You Tread Water?”
On January 27, 2009, Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-PA 11th District) responded to a caller on C-SPAN , who, struggling to support her family while earning fewer than ten dollars...
Happy New Liturgical Year!
Happy New Year. Yes, I’m pushing it, but not as much as you think. I’m not talking about those woozie performances of “Auld Lang Syne” and the Rose Bowl,...
Some Notes on the Music Front
Britain’s Daily Telegraph is reporting that the Chinese are beginning to put the kibosh on performances of classical music with Christian themes. A performance of the Mozart Requiem by...
Halloween Extravaganza & Procession of the Ghouls
New York’s Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the world’s largest gothic cathedral, offers this on the evening of October 31: a “Halloween Extravaganza & Procession of the...
The Popsicle Index
It’s hot here in Tennessee and I’m thinking about Popsicles. I’ll get back to that. Last weekend, my wife, Janet, and I drove over to Hohenwald, seat of tiny...
Looking for Mary in Christmas Carols
It’s Christmas, so we’re singing carols. OK, it’s not Christmas, it’s really Advent, and “carol” has a particular set of musicological meanings that don’t have anything to do with...
One College That’s Getting It Right
I was stunned. I have been teaching college freshmen for about thirty years in big state institutions, elite conservatories, smallish private universities, and Christian colleges, and I’d never seen...
The Classical Age
Why Classical Music Still Matters by Lawrence Kramer University of California Press, 251 pages, $24.95 It’s perhaps the most stunning comment I’ve ever read about music. Fairly early in...
The members of Philharmonic, pimped by the State Department, are prostituting themselves
In a recent daily article on the First Things website, Santiago Ramos writes about the New York Philharmonic’s February trip to Pyongyang, North Korea, and speculates that the performance...
The Most Beautiful in All Christendom …
It’s probably the best music in New York. OK, I’m not in New York, I’m in Tennessee. And, even if I were in New York, I wouldn’t be able...
A New Song from the Old World
Imagine a book on Renaissance art without any pictures. And I don’t mean without illustrations, I mean without any pictures. No frescos by Michelangelo, Madonnas by Raphael, springtime scenes...
The Malling of Mecca
It’s big. No, I mean really BIG. And I’m not talking about the Burj Dubai , which when it reached 1,680 feet on July 21 became the tallest building...
