Tag Archives: Music

Music That Triggers Deep Longings

Noyes’s “Barrel Organs” shows deep longings triggered by simple melodies.

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Feeding on Beauty in the Midst of Horror

If music sustained camp prisoners during the Holocaust, as Rita Dove describes in this poem, the arts can sustain us during our current pandemic.

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“Sonny’s Blues,” Transcendent Moments

In “Sonny’s Blues, art wars with the world’s darkness and promises momentary relief.

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Listen to the Music that Is All around You

In “As It Is in Heaven,” a famous conductor travels back to his childhood town and helps a church choir find the music that is in and around them.

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King (and Eventually Queen) of Masks

The Chinese film “King of Masks,” followed by a concert of Chinese women performing on traditional Chinese instruments, demonstrated China’s new synthesis, liberated women reclaiming ancient arts that the Communists had tried to erase and from which women had been excluded.

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Inside These Wrappings, a Brighter Life

Spiritual Sunday Yesterday we had a white Christmas in Sewanee, Tennessee, where I am visiting my parents.  The world was brown when we went to bed and white when we awoke.  The symbolism of Christmas snow lies in the promise of wiping everything clean and starting anew.  Grace appears to enter our fallen world. That’s […]

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Song of the Lark at St. Mary’s

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is very excited by our new president, Joseph Urgo, who joins us this week.  Among other things, Professor Urgo is a national authority on William Faulkner and Willa Cather.  I share with you here an excerpt from his program notes for the College’s Summer River concert series.  You’ll understand my […]

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