Eighty years ago this week, on January 12, 1941, James Joyce (Dublin 1882 — Zurich 1941), a great wordsmith, an Irish writer counted among the greatest of the twentieth century, fell into a coma following an operation for an ulcer performed the previous day. On January 13th, he died. He was less than a month…
There is a great deal of grotesquery in the world and in the Church. The controversy over the Vatican Nativity Scene this year — a kind of “art” I have described as “weaponized ugliness” — has certainly driven the point home. (One might quibble with my use of “grotesque,” which implies something comical; that said,…
One of the greatest musicians in the history of mankind, and certainly among the greatest composers of the Western European tradition, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), was baptized 250 years ago on December 17, 1770. It is fitting on such a momentous anniversary to offer readers a brief overview of his life and work, highlighting several…
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…
