Tomorrow marks 250 years since the baptism of the great German composer, considered the last of the Classics and the first of the Romantics: Ludwig van Beethoven (Bonn 1770 – Vienna 1827). Retracing his life as a man and artist, through his family, economic and character problems, the seriousness of his training and his artistic…
On November 28, 1680, 340 years ago, under the reign of Pope Innocent XI, the eleventh pope he served, the genius symbol of Roman Baroque art died in Rome at the age of 81: the architect, sculptor, painter, and set designer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680). Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644), with whom…
It was on this day, 1590 years ago, that before the age of seventy six, in Hippo, today’s Bona in Algeria, a passionate seeker of truth, the most illustrious of the Fathers of the Western Church went to his eternal reward: St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (354-430). African by origin (he was…
An Artistic Conflict Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. Pilate saith to him: What is truth? Excerpt, John 18:37-38, Douay-Rheims I propose that this one brief exchange summarizes the conflicted state of the arts in our post-modern, 20th and 21st century experience. For there is sacred art, and there is secular or popular art, and…
Today, August 25, 2020, marks the 750th anniversary of the death in Tunis of a man who “summarizes the entire Middle Ages”, who “was a legislator, a hero and a saint”, who embodied “power united with holiness, and it is just the latter that goes to the foreground for him” (F.R. Chateaubriand, Études historiques, in…
These days, we are often told that we need to examine our consciences about our relationship to the natural world. Are we being good stewards? Are we polluting or contaminating the soil or the water? Are we practicing good agriculture and husbandry? Are we re-using and recycling? Are we tempted to keep the air conditioning…
190 years ago today, on August 18, 1830, His Apostolic Majesty Franz Joseph (1830-1916), the penultimate emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, was born in Schönbrunn Castle near Vienna. He reigned for 68 years, from 1848 until the First World War. Going through a portrait gallery of the members of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine,…
Seventy-five years ago, at 7:15 A.M., on August 2, 1945, the composer and conductor from Livorno, considered by many to be the founder of that opera style marked by a strong realism that was verismo in music, died in Rome after a long illness: Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945). In 1940, the fiftieth anniversary of his most…
On July 18, 410 years ago, 1610, occurred the death of Caravaggio, byname of Michelangelo Merisi (1571–1610), at the age of only 38. He died in Porto d’Ercole, Tuscany, while he was trying to return to Rome. Called the “cursed” painter in the nineteenth century, he was in love with reality as it is and…
On July 7, 1860, 160 years ago, in Kaliště, a village on the border with Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire, was born to a family of Jewish merchants of German origins the composer and conductor with whom the symphony experienced triumph and crisis: Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). Jewish by birth and in 1897 baptized,…
In the afternoon 180 years ago, on May 27, 1840, the Genoese violinist and composer, who surprised the world for his splendid technique and the great innovations brought to his instrument, died in Nice, then part of the kingdom of Sardinia (Savoy-Piedmont), at the age of 58: Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840). His biography states that when…
