Bach and Mozart

Mozart of course was the ultimate composer for the Enlightenment. A good way to break up any dinner party is to claim Bach’s superiority to Mozart, but there it is: Spend any serious amount of time listening to Bach, and most of Mozart’s work, however wantonly gorgeous, will seem to be…missing something.

—James R. Gaines, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment

Targeted Ministry

C.S. Lewis writes the following in his essay, "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said":

"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out ‘allegories’ to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion."

It strikes me that some people's assumptions about Lewis's writing of Narnia are somewhat similar to the modern evangelical strategy of ministry.

Chesterton on Fairy Stories

"If you happen to read fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales."

~G. K. Chesterton~
All Things Considered
1908

Current Reading

In Defense of Lent

Here's a link to my article about a protestant view of Lent. It was published in the most recent King's Meadow newsletter. To sign up for the free email newsletter, click here.

Happy Shamrock Day?

Apparently the name "St. Patrick's Day" has become too divisive and controversial. Since the origin of St. Patrick's Day is the celebration of the Christian Faith proclaimed to the Irish by St. Patrick (who died on March 17, 461), it seems ironic that some (i.e. Disney and card stores) would seek to declare that religion gets in the way of celebrating this day. For more info, click here for a newspaper article.

Role of Music

Music should be enjoyed prudently and in moderation, like wine, because it has the capacity to excite men to evil as well as good, to intoxicate, and to exclude other worthwhile occupations.
—Gioseffo Zarlino, The Art of Counterpoint: Part Three of Le Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558

"New" Tolkien Book

From the New York Times:

"There will be much celebrating around the Party Tree in Hobbiton: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said in an e-mail message that it planned to release a previously unpublished book by J. R. R. Tolkien that predates his novel “The Hobbit” and his fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings.” The book, “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” was written during the 1920s and ’30s, while Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. It is his English-language narrative of the Norse hero Sigurd the Volsung, whose medieval adventures were — of course — populated by magic horses, dwarfs, dragons and gods with mischievous motives. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said that it would publish the book, with commentary from Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien, on May 5."

Stravinsky Conducts the End of Firebird

Watch how much control he has over the orchestra--even with his facial expressions. What a gifted man!

Igor Stravinsky quotes:
"I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God."

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."

Musical Counterpoint

It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal structures that create each of the voices separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony, which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. The way that is accomplished in detail is...'counterpoint'. —John Ruhn