Editor’s note: please see Mediatrix Press for The Bellarmine Translation Project. Today four centuries have passed since the death, at almost 79 years of age, of St. Robert Bellarmine. A memorial tablet on his birthplace praises him as “the glory …
Category: Music
The Literary Summa of Christian Civilization and its Music
It is the seventh century since, at the age of 56, on the night of the 13th of September 1321, the brightest star of Italian literature died in his exile at Ravenna: Dante Alighieri. The father of the Italian language …
The First Major Recording Star was a Catholic
One hundred years ago, at the age of forty-eight, the tenor par excellence died in Naples: Enrico Caruso. He was born on February 27, 1873, in a large family and he enjoyed singing from childhood. Thanks to the Rev. Giuseppe …
Catholic Music: Revisiting The Unanswered Question
Can there still be an unanswered question in the great competition of metaphysical ideals? It may be that we are currently living in an era where clarity is available amongst the confusion of the questions of the modern and postmodern …
St. Joan of Arc
590 years ago, on May 30, 1431, a young French saint died at the age of 19, The Maid of Orleans, that is, virgin, as she is called by all and Friedrich Schiller in his homonyms drama of 1801: Joan …
500 Years Later, Remembering World Explorer Ferdinand Magellan
Half a millennium ago, on April 27, 1521, the Portuguese explorer who made the first tour of the world in human history was killed in the Philippines during an unexpected skirmish on the small island of Mactan: Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão …
Remembering Igor Stravinsky – 1882-1971
Fifty years ago today, on April 6, 1971, at the age of 88, the composer Igor Stravinsky died of a heart attack in New York. He was a musical genius of the twentieth century who did not limit himself — …
The Wounds of Christ: Voices of Mercy and Arrows of Beauty
Editor’s note: we have embedded several videos of the sacred music performances discussed in the following text, but space prevents us from including them all. We encourage you to follow the links as well so you don’t miss out on …
A Musician of Touching Faith – Remembering Astor Piazzolla
One hundred years ago, on March 11, 1921, the greatest musician of Argentina in the second half of the last century was born: Astor Piazzolla. In Argentina he was born in Mar del Plata to Italian parents (the father from …
Napoleon, Europe, and Haydn’s “Mass in Time of Affliction”
Two hundred years ago, “by the tidings, in amaze / the earth is held, and with her gaze / the parting hour doth mutely scan / of this great spirit,” as we read in Alessandro Manzoni’s The Fifth of May. …
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