Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55) is considered by musicologist as the beginning of the end of the Classical Era. Beethoven began composing the symphony in 1803 while in residence in Heiligenstadt. Beethoven had move to Heiligenstadt in late 1801-early 1802 on the advice of his physician, Johann Schmidt, to rest his hearing, which had been giving the composer trouble since 1796, when the composer was 26 years old, and began to fail dramatically at the turn of the century.

It was in Heiligenstadt that Beethoven wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament where the composer put to paper the reconciliation of his hearing loss with his determination to live for and through his composing. In the testament, Beethoven alluded to suicidal thought, a fact confounded by the sunny and determined music he composed while there in residence (consider his Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 26).

Beethoven originally considered dedicating the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte. Beethoven greatly admired ideals and ideology of the French Revolution. The composer saw Napoleon as the embodiment of such ideals but instead, dedicated the work to Prince Franz Joseph Maximillian Lobkowiz.

Beethoven continued to entertain giving the work the title of Bonaparte only to become disgusted and disillusioned when Napoleon proclaimed himself. Urban legend has the composer scratching the name Bonaparte out so violently that he tore a hole in the paper. Beethoven changed the title to Sinfonia eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire d'un grand'uomo ("heroic symphony, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man").

Beethoven composed most of the symphony in late 1803, completing it early in 1804. The symphony was premiered privately in summer 1804 in his patron Prince Lobkowitz's castle Eisenberg in Bohemia. The first public performance was posted in Vienna's Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805 with the composer conducting. Beethoven's originally scored the symphony for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B flat, 2 bassoons, 3 horns in E flat and C, 2 trumpets in E flat and C, timpani and strings.

The two orchestras and conductors are Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra (in the first American cycle in decades) on BIS and Philippe Herreweghe and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic on Pentatone. These two conductors and orchestras approach Beethoven from two vastly different but well-established directions with two equally unique and fresh performances. Hybrid SACD further adds value to these recordings. When starting with music of the quality of the Beethoven Symphony cycle listener is guaranteed nine sublime pieces of music.
 
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven Symphonies 3 & 8 [Hybrid SACD]
Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska
BIS
2005

Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra expand their sonic palette with their fine recording of the Third Symphony (coupled with the Eighth) as an SACD hybrid. Where their previously released Fifth Symphony was sumptuous but somewhat one dimensional in sound. Gladly, this expands to a three dimensional amphitheater sound that places the listener with the orchestra in the front and on both sides.

While Vanska insists on strict adherence the Beethoven's metronomic documentation, his first movement allegro con brio is slightly slower than those employed by the period history performances popular in the 1980s and '90s. His opening E flat Major chords have command and authority and are briskly delivered before conductor and orchestra settle into a determined momentum. These first two notes have been the most important of the symphony performance since Felix Weingarten squeezed them from The Vienna Philharmonic on to acetate sides in the 1930s. Vanska readily acknowledges this.

The Marcia Funebre: Adagio Assai was a sensation when Beethoven introduced it as the second movement, blowing the sonata form perfected by Haydn and Mozart into ravenous particles. Vanska approaches the movement with a measured determination in the low strings. The conductor and orchestra continue to produce this performance in the third and final movements as if deftly carved from marble. Vanska achieves a heroic resolution to the Eroica that is as stately as it is modern.
 
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 [Hybrid SACD]
Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Philippe Herreweghe
Pentatone
2007

Philippe Herreweghe continues his Beethoven Symphony survey from the vantage point of modern instruments confined by period practices. This was previously accomplished by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Chamber Orchestra of Europe with his set from the early 1990's. At the time Harnoncourt made quite a stir with his interpretations. Herreweghe is doing the same thing at the close of the 2000s with the incorporation of natural horns and baroque tympani.

Where Herreweghs's previously release Fifth was a piece of music the listener could enter and walk around in, seeing (hearing) the Beethovenian nuances from several different angles, his performance of the Third Symphony is a sonic affair where the listener stands outside the work, circling it and seeing it as the monument it is.

The symphony is presented as a crystalline palace into which the listener may see (hear) its treasures without achieving the intimacy allowed in Herreweghs's Fifth. The Royal Flemish Philharmonic weaves a seamless tapestry of sounds with oboes becoming violas and low horns becoming cellos. Where Vanska is decidedly determined and thoughtful, Herreweghe again performs a high wire act: he initiates the symphony and allows it to develop with its own inertia, directing the performance only enough to keep it from spinning out of control. This makes for an exciting and essential reading of this Beethoven masterpiece.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

Liszt's piano pieces were composed for his performance pleasure. They were technically challenging, conceived by Liszt to show off his talent on the concert stage. Piano transcriptions of popular orchestral and operatic pieces of the mid-nineteenth century became a chosen interpretive mode for the pianist. Most popular among Liszt's transcriptions of other composers' work are his preparations of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies.

Liszt began his symphonic transcriptions 1838, completing Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 and 7 the former two being published by Breitkopf & Härtel and the latter by Tobias Haslinger. Five years later, in 1843, Liszt arranged a transcription the Eroica Symphony's Scherzo: Allegro vivace which he had published by Pietro Mechetti in 1850. In 1840, Liszt added these transcriptions to his concert lists, giving them ample exposure for the sale of sheet music.

It would not be until 1863 that Liszt would complete his set at the behest of Breitkopf & Härtel. Liszt reworked the original three transcriptions and sped his way through the remaining Symphonies without losing too much of "the Beethoven" in them. However, the pianist was brought up short on the choral finale of the famous Ninth Symphony. In a fit of frustration, Liszt observed that he may have to accept, "...the impossibility of making any pianoforte arrangement of the 4th movement...that could in any way be...satisfactory."

Regardless, Liszt labored on to adapt the 4th movement for single piano, completing it in 1865. Liszt had previously addressed his fourth movement problems in his transcription for two pianos in 1850. But the pianists persistence paid off in his single piano efforts and the full cycle of transcriptions was published in 1865 and dedicated to Liszt's then son-in-law Hans von Bülow. Liszt's Beethoven Symphony transcriptions remain a mountain in the piano repertoire.

Available recordings of the Liszt-Beethoven transcriptions are sparse whether recorded separately or as a cycle. Glenn Gould recorded scintillating 5th and 6th Symphony performances in the late 1960s. It is a pity he did not commit a full set to tape. Of the complete cycles, there are only three. The first was recorded by French pianist Cyprian Katsaris for Teldec in the 1980s and later re-released by Warner Group in 2006.

Contemporaneously, Harmonia Mundi released a cycle in the late 1980s-early 1990s performed by Jean-Louis Haguenauer, Georges Pludermacher, Alain Planes, Michel Dalberto, and Jean-Claude Pennetier (the Nineth Symphony transcription being for two pianos). These performances were assembled into a box released in 1995. During the same period, English pianist Leslie Howard recorded all of Liszt's piano music for Hyperion. The Beethoven transcriptions made a tidy subset to this mammoth undertaking, being boxed separately and released in 1995.

Shortly before Howard completed his Liszt survey, Naxos began its own program for recording all of Liszt's piano music; using different pianists for each release (the label is currently doing the same for the complete sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti). Wisely, Naxos chose a single, singular pianist in Konstantin Scherbakov to perform the Liszt-Beethoven Cycle. Scherbakov completed his cycle in 2006 at which time it was boxed.

The Naxos Liszt-Beethoven Symphony set is completed with Liszt: Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (arranged for 2 pianos) (Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 28) with pianists Leon McCawley and Ashley Wass. The two releases make for a most complete survey of Liszt's Beethoven Orchestral transcriptions.
 
Ludwig van Beethoven / Franz Liszt
Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1-9 Transcribed by Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov
Naxos
2006

Konstantin Scherbakov was born in Barnaul, Siberia in 1963. He has previously recorded the standard Russian repertoire for Naxos including Godowsky, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky. Scherbakov possesses a muscular, aggressive piano style that recalls the great Ukrainian pianist Sviatoslav Richter.

Scherbakov's performance style is well suited for the Liszt transcriptions, giving them a virile life of their own. Scherbakov's set of Liszt transcribed Beethoven Symphonies was originally released as separate discs comprising five volumes of Naxos' Liszt Complete Piano Music. The cycle was released in the following order: Volume 15, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (1999) Volume 18, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 (2001) Volume 19, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 (2003) Volume 21, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies No. 9 (2004) Volume 23, LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8 (2006) Box Set: LISZT: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (2006)

These separate volumes were assembled into the complete box with no additional documentation other than each volume's insert. This is a trend in the repackaging of Naxos discs as themed releases also seen in releases Of Beauty and Light: The Music of Philip Glass and The Silence of Being: The Music of Arvo Part.

Scherbakov dispatches the Beethoven "Big Three" (the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies) with certain grace and confidence. His pianistic approach is measured in an almost militant, marching way. This can readily be heard in the pianist's performance of the Fist and Second Symphonies, as well as the first movement of the Ninth Symphony. Scherbakov boasts Horowitzian overtones in these performances.

Scherbakov's Sixth Symphony is sunny and bright in the pastoral first three movements and suitably dark and menacing in the thunderstorm before resolving in a reverent fifth movement. Scherbakov's Ninth is scintillating. Liszt wrung his hands over his transcription of the Ninth Symphony for good reason: the fourth movement with its choral sections presents a huge challenge to any transcriber. Scherbakov allows the movement to flow liquid from his fingers, giving the difficult piece a fluid continuity and integration. Scherbakov's Liszt/Beethoven is the set to beat both in price and talent.

Ludwig van Beethoven / Franz Liszt
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Transcribed for Two Pianos by Liszt)
Leon McCawley, Ashley Wass
Naxos
2008

McCawley and Wass' two-piano performance of the Ninth Symphony offers an intriguing comparison to Scherbakov's single piano version. Together they highlight Liszt's genius, both musically and in the arena of public relations. Two pianos not only solve Liszt's problem with the choral fourth movement but also augment the more difficult portions of the first and second movements.

It was obvious that Liszt fretted about this symphony as this two piano version predates the single instrument one by 15 years. This two piano performance is full and satisfying. The listener can readily hear the ideas the composer would incorporate in his final interpretation of the Ninth.

This review was first published in ]]> tag:kultur.cmichaelbailey.com,2008-04-26:d48f82f9-b84d-4adc-be99-c9e2ace64bd5 liberationtheology 2008-04-27T20:30:37Z 2008-04-26T06:33:00Z Germany has made many cultural contributions. Perhaps the greatest was Ludwig van Beethoven. The revolutionary from Bonn threw the doors open from the Classical era into the Romantic era. He did this almost singlehandedly with his Ninth Symphony. Since its premiere in May 7, 1824, the Ninth Symphony has served as the soundtrack for military regimes and as a celebration of freedom. It is more event than performance, something to be seen as well as heard.

Recently made available are two history performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, recorded 30 years apart. The first is the 1977 New Year's Eve Performance by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Herbert von Karajan. This was the same years Karajan recorded the second of his three cycles. This performance is notable for being released as part of the Karajan Centenary celebrating the conductor's 100th birthday, April 5, 2008.

The second DVD release showcasing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has the work as part of a concert in honor of Pope Benedict XVI. This is documentation of a papal concert held in the Paul VI Performance Hall at the Vatican October 27, 2007. The concert was presented by the Bavarian Radio Choir and Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons. Both DVDs show that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is as much an event to be experienced as a piece of music heard.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven Symphony No. 9
Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
EuroArts
2008

Audio and video technologies have evolved at light speed since the late 1970s when this concert was captured. In spite of this evolution (or because of it) this video cleaned up nicely. The picture is analog-to-digital sharp and the sound is close and powerful. Add to this a performance by the foremost orchestra in the world, The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by the most famous living conductor, Herbert von Karajan, and this release seamlessly glides into the essential category.

Herbert von Karajan (1908 – 1989) conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for 35 years, succeeding the equally famous Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1955 where he was named artistic director for life. Karajan (along with American Leonard Bernstein) looked like the proper conductor: lithe, virile, shock of magnificent grey hair flying as he conducted in his overtly callisthenic style.

It is obvious the maestro took seriously his conducting when driving the Ninth Symphony bus. There is a certain star-alignment that occurs when a German Orchestra performs the greatest piece of music by a German composer and the performance is directed by a conductor with that shared experience. That alignment exists in this video performance from New Year's Eve, 1977.

The symphony performance can best be described as a controlled hurricane, executed with Teutonic precision. Karajan physically drives the orchestra in the performance, which is crisp and sharp. The sonics are captured and reproduced in such a way that the listener feels as if he or she is among the instruments. The opening tremolo in the first movement is so well defined that the listener can readily hear the un poco maestoso that accompanies the Allegro ma non troppo marking.

the second and third movements are dramatic, particularly in the low stings and horns. Beethoven's dear oboes are very evident here. The finale, surrounding Schiller's An die Freude is powerful and well performed by soloist and chorus. It is grand to listen to this music but it is grander to see it performed. To see it performed by an orchestra founded on the music and directed by a conductor dedicated to it, argues positively for owning this DVD. This is what Beethoven looks and sounds like.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Giovanni Palestrina
Concert in Honour of Pope Benedict XVI
Synphonieorchestrer und Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Maris Jasons
Arthaus Musik
2007

Concert in Honor of Pope Benedict XVI is notable for two things: a crack orchestra and conductor perform and the Holy Father himself requested one of the two pieces performed. Add to this that Joesph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI is the first German pope since Pope Adrian VI was elevated in 1523 and that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is on the slate and the listen can only expect good things.

The concert opens with the Holy Father entering the Paul VI Performance Hall in a manner not unlike the President of the United States entering the Congressional Chamber for the State of the Union address. Once the pope was seated, his holiness is addressed by the current Archbishop of Munich and Freising and the director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The DVD contains an address by the Holy Father and a short documentary, "Götterfunken für den Papst" ("Divine Spark for the Pope").

The music begins with the papal request of Palestrina's "Tu es Petrus", Motet for 6 Voices, sung by the Bavarian Radio Choir under the direction of Maris Jansons. Janson reveals himself as a capable choral conduction, leading the choir through Palestrina's setting of Matthew 16:18-19:

Maestro Jansons immediately take the podium for the symphony. The engineering and sonics are quite outstanding. Impressive as the sound of the Karajan is, Jansons' Ninth Symphony is one for the audiophile ages. His conducted performance is purely organic. The opening tremolo is so clean and clear the listener can hear both the modulating note figure and the scratch of the horsehair on the strings.

Jansons' dynamics are near perfect in this dramatic and exciting performance. The soloists, particularly baritone Michael Volle, are excellent. Where the Karajan performance is a beautiful archival restoration offering the listener an example of the "proper" Beethoven performance, the Jansons' pulls out all the dramatic stops, propelling the work ahead with such a momentum that one expects the orchestra to spin out of control. Jansons keeps the orchestra upright and with the tension of such a high-wire performance produces a superb work of art.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger replaced the Holy Father John Paul II as pope April 19, 2005 as Benedict XVI. Ratzinger is the first German pope to be elected since Pope Adrian VI in 1523. Ratzinger served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith formerly known as the Holy Office, the historical Inquisition, in his capacity as such censored progressive Catholic theologians Karl Jung and Charles Curran and looks to promise no change from the current anachronistic positions of The Roman Catholic Church on matters including celibacy, birth control, women in the priesthood and homosexuality. A well respected, conservative theologian, Benedict XVI is considered a "bridge" pope between the wildly popular John Paul II and what conservative Vatican members hope will be a more conservative pope from Africa or South America.

One would not expect Benedict XVI to pay any more attention to the priest pedophile scandal than did his predecessor, who did so at the loss of an otherwise exceptional papacy.  Benedict XVI ensured that John Paul II's bruised eye would become a full blown shiner when, during his recent trip to the United States (the first of his new papacy) he met with the survivors of clerical sexual abuse.  The survivors were apparently impressed by the Holy Father.  I, for one, am eating a pound of crow over his Holiness as I have never been a big fan because of his draconian treatment of Kung and Curran.  But Benedict XVI did within three years what John Paul II failed to do in his nearly 30 years, and that was face the music.

I suspect that it will be too much to hope that Benedict XVI would kick Bernard Cardinal Law's fat ass out of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore where he currently serves as the archpriest. That he is not in jail is a travesty.

Sonic Rebellion: Alternative Classical Collection (Naxos 8570760) showcases the label's efforts in documenting the works of living composers. Needless to say, this is not your parents' classical music. Included on this disc are Krszystof Penderecki, Terry Riley, Hans Werner Henze; George Crumb, John Cage, Arvo Pärt, and Philip Glass.

Naxos has chosen these last two composers for box sets of their available recordings. They are indeed giants in modern classical music. Added to the boxes is the aforementioned Sonic Rebellion to whet the appetite of would-be modern classical enthusiasts. While this is not music for the faint of heart, it is music not to be missed and these two reasonable priced boxes are splendid introductions to Pärt and Glass, two of the most accessible composers living.

Arvo Pärt
The Silence of Being: The Music of Arvo Part
Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, Tamas Benedek; Ulster Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa; Tonus Peregrinus, Antony Pitts; Elora Festival Singers and Orchestra, Noel Edison
Naxos
2008

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935), with Englishman Sir John Tavener (b. 1944), is widely considered the foremost composer of Eastern Orthodox choral and liturgical music. To label Part merely a choral composer is to sell him short. His instrumental music is essential and compelling.

Pärt's early compositions revealed a stolid neo-classical style influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Bartók. Pärt went on to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism, ultimately being censored by the Soviet establishment. During this period, Pärt studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries. It was this study that would lead to Pärt's transformation into the unique composer he was to become.

This early European polyphony infused Pärt's composition. He carefully studies early music, particularly the roots of western music. Pärt's paid closest attention to the evolution plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the ultimate emergence of Renaissance polyphony. The music that resulted employed Pärt's compositional method employing tintinnabuli. Resulting compositions included Fratres, Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa, all of which are represented in the Naxos box collection of Pärt's work, The Silence of Being: The Music of Arvo Pärt.

Technically, tintinnabular (from the Latin tinnabulae, of bells) music is characterized by the simultaneous expression of two harmonic voices, the first, called the "tintinnabular voice," arpeggiates the tonic triad (three notes making up a chord, the tonic, the third, and the fifth notes) with the second moving diatonically in stepwise motion. Pärt's tintinnabular compositions develop slowly with a meditative tempo, characterizing a minimalist approach in both notation and performance.

Pärt's Naxos box contains all of the compositions recorded for the label to date. These includes the composer's set of Fratres, a compositional form used by Pärt as a vehicle for different instrumentations. The Fratres structurally consists of nine chord sequences, separated by a recurring percussion motif. These chord sequences follow a clear, thoughtful archetype. This method of composition is unique in that while the progressive chords fill a richly painted harmonic space, as a series they appear to have been generated by simple mathematical calculation.

Simply, this is not melodious music but harmonious music. Pärt relies on the relationship of note between one another in a vertical harmonic sense rather than the sum of notes in sequence in the melodic sense. This makes for an ethereal instrumental sound best heard in the Fratres for Strings and Percussion and Fratres for Strings.

Pärt's choral music is something else altogether. It may be richly plush as in Berliner Messe and Triodione or starkly bare as in Passio. "I am the True Vine" finds a compromise between the two visions that unites in this beautiful expression of hope and being.

Selections: Fratres (8553750); Tabula Rasa / Symphony No. 3 / Collage (8554591); Passio Domini Nostri Jeus Christi Secundum Joannem (8555860); Berliner Messe / Magnificat / Summa (8557299); Triodione / Ode VII / I Am The True Vine / Dopo La Vittoria (8570239).

Philip Glass
Of Beauty and Light: The Music of Philip Glass
Adele Anthony; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop; Ulster Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa
Naxos
2008

Composer Philip Glass (b. 1937) was born in Baltimore and studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the University of Chicago and finally, the Juilliard School of Music and Paris with composition teacher Nadia Boulanger with whom he analyzed scores by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Glass was drawn to the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman and worked closely with Ravi Shankar in his pre-Woodstock / Concert for Bangladesh days.

Glass developed a distinctive composing style arising from his work with Shankar where Glass solidified his perception of rhythm and tempo in Indian music as being summary. When Glass returned home from France he began writing pieces based on repetitive structures and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett, whose work he encountered when he was composing pieces for the experimental theater, the first being for a production of Beckett's Comédie (Play, 1963) in 1965 for two soprano saxophones; another was a string quartet (No.1, 1966).

While Glass has lately tried to distance himself from the minimalist description, his composing, nevertheless has focused on repetitive structures and an elastic sense of time. Glass does describe his compositions through Music in Twelve Parts (1971-1974) as minimalist.

The present Naxos Collection, Of Beauty and Light: The Music of Philip Glass, begins in Glass' post minimalist period beginning with his Violin Concerto (1987) through is Third Symphony (1995). This period is adequately represented on Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 (8559202) and Violin Concerto / The Company / Prelude from Akhnaten(8559056).

While post minimalist, Glass still retains a tightly structured use of modulation and short, repetitive phrases splashed with chromatic flourishes and consonant peril. Symphony No. 2 is an anxious affair that incorporates many of Glass' movie soundtrack techniques in phrasing and arrangement. The music, while consonant and agreeable to the ear, is disquieting for the listener because of its suspense-laden drama.

Symphony No. 3 is decidedly sunnier, with a more pronounced use of brass and properly dramatic finale's. The symphonies are among the most assessable and enjoyable of Glass' orchestral work. His Violin Concerto is a triumph of simplicity and virtuosity. Symphony No. 4 and the tone poem The Light show Glass' evolution into more complex forms while still retaining his innate rhythmic simplicity.

Philip Glass is perhaps best know for his movie soundtracks, beginning with Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line. Most recently Glass has been heard in the Academy Award winning The Hours, the Candyman Duet, the new soundtrack for Dracula (1931), and The Illusionist. Should listeners find these soundtracks appealing, they will also enjoy this superb box of Glass music.
 
These two box sets represent a mutual fiscal and artistic effort to bring attention to the classical composers that still walk among us. Not all modern classical music is atonal and incomprehensible as is demonstrated here.

Selections: Symphony No. 4 ("Heroes") / The Light (8559325); Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 (8559202); Violin Concerto / The Company / Prelude from Akhnaten (8559056).

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

The piece Master Johnstone sand was the Pie Jesu from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem. 

Pie Jesu is the final couplet of the Dies Irae normally a part of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass.  The text is:

What is all the hubbub about Barak Obama being an elitist?  There is something oxymoronic about this thought.  Here is what Obama said in San Francisco, April 6 that apparently caused Hillary Clinton to call him elitist:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Should one ask me, I would say that Mr. Obama is correct.  It has always been the American people's practice that once threatened, be it militarily, economically, or hypothetically to close in on themselves and become, well, more American, more nationalistic.  Germany, of course, perfected this strategy in the early to mid-20th Century with mixed results.  Regarding religion, Obama is right on the mark.  The past twenty years have seen an increase in the number of people turning to faith for the comfort in the certainty it provides...and that is truly ironic.  These are not elitist observations, they are empirical observations.

Hillary Clinton calling Barak Obama elitist is laughable.  Here is what Ms. Clinton said:

"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who face hard times are bitter," Clinton said during a campaign event in Philadelphia. "Well that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania. I meet people who are resilient, optimist positive who are rolling up their sleeves."

"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights hard for your future, your jobs, your families."

Canticum Canticorum is a brilliant artistic-marketing tipple point by the Canadian period ensemble Les Voix Baroques. Canticum Canticorum is Latin for Song of Songs or The Song of Solomon, a slim and unusual book found in the Hebrew Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament. Reputedly written by King Solomon or an agent, the Song of Songs is thought to have been authored between 200 and 100 BCE.

The Song of Songs is a singular book in both Hebrew and Christian Scripture. Clerics promote the songs as an allegorical representation of the relationship of God and Israel as husband and wife. When read out of context, the songs reveal an erotic, if not singularly carnal collection of love poetry. This dichotomy of the sacred and carnal has made the Song of Songs a favorite among composers since the Renaissance.

Les Voix Baroques, under the direction of founder Matthew White, has collected 16 settings of the Songs that span from John Dunstable and the 15th Century to Sir William Walton and the 20th Century, spanning late Medieval England, Renaissance Italy, Baroque Germany and France, and 20th Century Canada and England. The group nimbly dispatches each of the tectonic periods of choral music with a period instrument and performance flair. Interestingly, the most striking settings are those of the Canadian Willan and Walton. These most recent additions to the canon stand up well with those of the Alte Musik warhorse composers.

The sonics of this ATMA Classique recording are pristine and crystalline. The entire set possesses a Renaissance oil portrait patina, even in the more recent compositions. But this is not a dusty or dank patina. It is vibrant and colorful, sensual and pious. This may be the "classical" recording of the year.

Selections: Motet Veni in hortum meum, Lassus (1532-1594); Motet Osculetur me osculo oris sui, Palestrina; Concerto Anima mea liquefacta est SWV 263, Schütz (1585-1672); Concerto Adjuro vos SWV 264, Schütz; Dialogo della cantica, Mazzocchi (1592-1665); Motet Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One, Willan (1880-1968); Motet I Beheld Her, Beautiful as a Dove; Willan; Motet Set Me as a Seal upon Thine Heart, Walton (1902-1983); Verse anthem My Beloved Spake, Tomkins (1572-1656); Motet Ego dormio SWV 63, Schütz; Motet Vulnerasti cor meum SWV 64, Schütz; Petit motet Dilecti mi H. 436, Charpentier (1643-1704); Passacaille, Marais; Antienne Pulchra es et decora H. 52, Charpentier Motet Quam pulchra es, Dunstable (1390-1453); Verse anthem My Beloved Spake Z. 28, Purcell (1659-1695).

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

Concert music (what we are going to call "modern classical music" for this article) is alive and well in the United States and abroad. This is largely because of the efforts of Klaus Heymann and Naxos Records, who have created a new paradigm for marketing concert music, one that has left the big names (EMI, BMG) reeling. Naxos' two prong attack is based on one, providing affordable compact discs of the standard repertoire recorded by smaller orchestras, ensembles and lesser known solo musicians. The second prong is the label's branching out into the lesser represented repertoire not typically addressed by the larger labels.

The People United Will never Be Defeated! / Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by Frederic Rzewski is an example of the latter marketing prong of attack. Frederic Rzewski is a living American composer known for his dazzling piano technique, his militant composing, and his left-wing politics. The People United Will never Be Defeated! (1975) is an hour long set of 36 variations on the melody of El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido by Chilean composer Sergio Ortega (1938-2003), a likewise leftist fixture in South America. "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" is the fourth in four pieces composed by Rzewski under the title, Four North American Ballads (1979).

The pianist for this unusual recital is the Amsterdam trained Ralph van Raat. The pianist also provides the liner notes for this release. The pianist opens the notes with the long acknowledged observation about modern classical music:

"If there has been a general opinion that musical modernism of the twentieth century has led a priori to inaccessibility of its compositions for a wide audience, then it is the composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski who has provided one of the strongest testimonies against this belief. A landmark in American piano literature, and perhaps one of the most important variation sets ever written, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! has a strong programmatic thread which is able to carry the listener through some very complex music in a natural way."

Ralph van Raat goes on to prove both his stated point and his implied expertise in Rzewski's music. The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is a mammoth piece. It begins with strongly emotive melody and harmonic progression upon which the composer elaborated in a manner exploring all of piano performance history.

The variations are presented in such a way that an untrained ear can recognise that these are variations on a theme even when the cognitive going gets tough. Think of J.S. Bach composing Goldberg Variations as a member of the Shining Path (el Sendero Luminosa). Pianist van Raat navigates the desperate variations expertly, steering from tonal to atonal, from assembly to disassembly, from acceleration to deceleration. The People United… offers just enough challenge to the listener to amply reward him or her in the end.

"Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" is even more accessible if not more disturbing, taking its time to develop from a simple rocking two note figure into a low-register-driven juggernaut that might make the listener think of 19th Century logging or coal mining. A nervous pastoral interlude begins after a manically industrial section that could make the argument that it represents a weekend's rest after work. However, all is not restful as the pastoral melodies become more dissonant.

Should the listener be bored with another Well-tempered Clavier or Hammerklavier Sonata, he or she need look no further than The People United Will never Be Defeated!. Selections: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!; Four North American Ballads: No. 4 Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post Bop
Jeremy Yudkin
Trade Paperback; 161 pages

It would not be too far fetched to claim that Miles Davis was and remains the single most important figure in jazz history. While not saying as much, music educator and author Jeremy Yudkin, supports such conjecture in his book Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post Bop. Davis' recording career spanned the almost 50 years between his first recordings in April 1945 with the Herbie Field's Band (First Miles, Savoy, 2003) and his final recorded dates with his sextet at the Hollywood Bowl August 1991 (Miles Davis Live Around the World, Warner Brothers, 1996).

The period during which Davis lived had the trumpeter at least on hand for, if not instrumental in, the births of be bop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal, post bop, and fusion. Davis recordings are cited as among the first recorded in each sub-genera.

Approaching his subject, Yudkin, provides background information beginning with the 1949 – '50 Birth of the Cool dates with an emphasis and analysis of the Miles Davis composed, Gil Evens arranged "Boplicity." Yudkin then passes through the April 1954 recordings of "Blue n' Boogie" and "Walkin'" before introducing the Christmas Eve 1954 recording of "Bags Groove," which is addressed at length and considered by Yudkin to be among the first, if not the first, hard bop recording.

The author discusses the first quintet (Red Garland, Paul Chambers, John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones) and its expansion from 'Round About Midnight (1955, Columbia) to the sextet with Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on Milestones (1958, Columbia). Discussed in passing is the sextet’s interpretation of Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser” with regards to Davis’ affinity for the blues. The Miles Davis piece "Milestones" (not to be confused with his 1947 recording of the same title) is presented as one of the trumpeter's first experiments in modal composition, a prelude to the 1959 recording of Kind of Blue.

Kind of Blue assumes its necessarily important position in Yudnik's introductory discussion. By March 1959, Davis' group experienced flux with the firing of the heroin-addicted Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones. In the studio, the piano chair was shared by Wynton Kelly and the then newcomer, Bill Evans while the drum chair was occupied by Jimmy Cobb. The sessions that would become Kind of Blue were recorded March 2 and April 6, 1959. Between these dates, Davis and the Gil Evans Orchestra appeared on the 'The Robert Herridge Theater Show, April 2. The show included Kind of Blue's "So What" and "The Duke," "Blues for Pablo," and "New Rhumba" from Miles Ahead (1957, Columbia).

With Kind of Blue, Davis changed direction in composition. However, the change did not occur in a vacuum. From "Milestones" to Miles Ahead, Sketches of Spain, and Porgy and Bess Davis and Gil Evans together experimented with playing over modes and scales as opposed to the fixed harmonic architecture of the 32 bar AABA song form. This experimentation was interwoven in Davis and Evans' big band recordings and Kind of Blue. This experiment manifested in "Freddie Freeloader" and "So What," the first two pieces recorded on March 2nd. "Freddie Freeloader" is a straight 12-bar blues while "So What" is the first fully conceived modal shot across the bow of the hard bop of Davis' first quintet. Yudkin proceeds to analyze in depth the history and sequencing of the original LP release, proposing an elaborate "arc" of album sequencing with Bill Evan's "Blue in Green" as the apex, and the palindromic solo order of "Blue in Green" placing John Coltrane's solo at the apex.

This introduction sets the stage for Davis' second quintet, comprised of pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and Drummer Tony Williams. This flavor of the Miles Davis band is the most stable since the Milestones sextet. Recorded between 1965 and 1968, this new quintet was responsible for six albums that introduce the ill-defined jazz sub-genre post bop:

E.S.P. (1965, Columbia CS 9150)
Miles Smiles (1967, Columbia CS 9401)
Sorcerer (1967, Columbia CS 9532)
Nefertiti (1968, Columbia CS 9594)
Miles in the Sky (1968, Columbia CS 9628)
Files de Kilimanjaro (1969, Columbia CS 9750)

Yudkin chooses the second of these recordings, Miles Smiles as his touchstone for his discussion of post bop. The author addresses each of the album's six pieces, using each to illustrate Davis' deeper exploration of modal performance mated with the brashness of hard bop in the up tempo songs and the Bill Evan's introspective slower pieces. Yudkin argues effectively for the sub-genre post bop with Davis as the creator.

The author describes this music as, "Forms, tempos, and meters are freer, all the compositions are new, and the band members themselves are featured composers...[music] that did not follow the conventions of bop or the apparently formless freedom of the new jazz." Miles Smiles proves to be an exceptional example of this by hosting three pieces (Jimmy Heath's "Gingerbread Boy," Eddie Harris' "Freedom Jazz Dance," and Wayne Shorter's "Footprints") that were previously recorded. The listener can listen to these selections side by side with the originals and hear exactly how well developed is Davis' new vision.

Yudkin closes with a definition of post bop: ..."an approach that is abstract and intense in the extreme, with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer – an approach that incorporated modal and chordal harmonies, flexible form, structured choruses, melodic variation, and free improvisation." That about sums up the sub-genre of jazz that dominates the music since the late 1960s.

The Fifth Symphony was difficult for Beethoven to complete. The first sketches of the piece were made in 1804, following Beethoven's finishing touches on the Third Symphony. Between 1804 and 1808, Beethoven was repeatedly distracted from his work on the Opus 67 to compose other pieces, including the first version of his opera Fidelio, the Appassionata piano sonata, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Fourth Symphony. Completion of the Fifth Symphony took place in late 1807, early 1808 and was conducted contemporaneously with completion of the Sixth Symphony.

The Fifth Symphony premiered on December 22, 1808 at a at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. The concert consisted entirely of Beethoven premieres directed by the composer himself. The performance took more than four hours and included in addition to the Fifth Symphony, the Sixth Symphony, sections from the C Major Mass, the Fourth Piano Concerto, and the Choral Fantasy.

Beethoven has never been out vogue or the concert hall. Recordings of the complete Nine Symphonies abound and of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies in particular. Two notable orchestras and conductors are currently working their respective ways through Beethoven's symphonic canon: Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra (in the first American cycle in decades) on BIS and Philippe Herreweghe and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic on Pentatone.

These two conductors and orchestras approach Beethoven from two unique and well-established directions with two equally unique and fresh interpretations.  Add to this the hybrid SACD capability and these recordings win on all fronts. The nice thing about recording Beethoven Symphony cycles is that the listener is guaranteed nine superb pieces of music.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven Symphonies 4 & 5 [Hybrid SACD]
Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska
BIS
2005

The United States has provided several notable Beethoven Symphony cycles that include Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, George Szell with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and Sir Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  All of these sets are time honored and continue to be well thought of.

These performances are characterized by an expansive portrait sound comparable to a large colorful landscape.  Performance and recording methods render these symphonies as wall-of-sound, two dimension large canvas scale.  Osmo Vanska's inagural recording with the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS records is no exception to this rule.  If anything, Vanska's canvas is supersized, providing a panoramic view of Beethoven in all his splendor.  Symphony No. 5 (coupled with Symphony No.4 here) is as robust as it is plush.

Vanska opts for conservative tempi with a broad and deep sonority.  The BIS engineering places in entire orchestra in the back, with the instruments using equal ground in the sound window.  The percussion is equal to the stirngs are equal to the brass.  Vanska makes no historical perfomance claims outside of his desire to stay faithful to the original score.  As the history of recording has shown, this can mean a lot of things.

Vanska's Fifth (coupled her with the Fourth Symphony) is deliberately and thoughtfully paced.  The transition from the third to fourth movements is seemless and powerful, exuding all of the majesty intended by the composer.  Such conducting consideration typically leads to a darker, more rich interpretation, one that shines its light from the Romantic side of Wagner rather than the Classical side of Haydn.  The result is a full-bodied American performance captured in living color by the crack BIS engineers.  This is warm surround-sound Beethoven.
 
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8 [Hybrid SACD]
Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Philippe Herreweghe
Pentatone
2007

Philippe Herreweghe could not have approached his Fifth Symphony any more differently.  Herreweghe is best know for his period instrument recordings of the Baroque repertorie with his Colligum Vocale.  Like Nikolaus Harnoncourt before him,  Herreweghe takes his period instrument experience and applies it to the modern orchestra, in this case with dazzeling effect.

Herreweghe takes allegro con brio seriously, clicking of the symphony opening at a fast pace.  Sonically this is three dimensional Beethoven the listen can walk around in.  Where Vanska's Fifth is a beautiful painting, Herreweghe's is an interactive landscape where tone fly around the listener as he or she is walking through.  Herreweghe's approach and attack are fresh and clean with little of the romantic excess usually reserved for this piece in the 20th Century.  The engineering ensures discreet separation between insturments and instrument groups.

This is Beethoven at a trot.  While thoughtfully considered, Herreweghe throws this masterpiece off with a fearlessness that never breaks down.  The symphony makes sense.  While not a high wire act, Herreweghe's Fifth is nevertheless a bracing experience for the listener, who will hear this piece and wonder when it will fall apart, but it never does and in fact is executed perfectly.  The 5.1.1 Surround Sound is stunning.  One might expect Herreweghe's Nineth to require a new Holy Day of Obligation.

This article was first published in Blogcritics.

The present election cycle provides fodder for the stock market buy, sell, or hold metaphor. Here are some recommendations based on the recent news:

Hillary Clinton – Hold. HRC's stock should be held because one cannot ever count out a Clinton. Never mind the tawdry way she and the President have acted during this campaign; that can be forgiven. The Clintons campaign uses an outdated paradigm, covert character assassination. It is tried and true and remains effective but the power couple still has no idea how to steer the new waters of race politics, one that sports an African-American candidate.

Barack Obama – Buy. Despite Rush Limbaugh's opinion to the contrary, Obama did give the most important speech on race in the last 40 years. However, that was easy, because the last speaker with such eloquence on the subject was murdered in April 4, 1968. Obama may indeed lack experience, but so does Madame Hillary. Taken at face value (a dangerous political practice at best) Obama presents himself as a more sensitive and effective consensus builder, some thing the United States needs in the International arena. Obama has already proven a capable administrator in the administrators he has chosen to run his campaign.

John McCain – Buy. John McCain's clear advantage lies in the close to 30% each of Clinton and Obama supporters who will vote for McCain rather than their Democratic rival. The revival of the Reagan Democrat (or in this case, the McCain Democrat) is already in progress. McCain's biggest liability is no domestic agenda.

Elliott Spitzer – Sell, at a loss, what a dumb-ass. If you are going to have you cake and eat it to, don't get caught. It is subterfuge to say, as the press has, that the Republican political machine had Spitzer in its cross-hairs and that said machine was responsible for Spitzer's train wreck. No, the fact is that the New York Governor handed the opportunity to the GOP on a platter with a note saying come and get me…if you can. And they did.

The Democratic Party – Sell. The Democratic Party wanted to punish Florida and Michigan for moving their respective primaries up in the season by disenfranchising their delegates. Because of HRC's weaker grasp in delegates, she wants the Democratic Party to make nice and go ahead and have primaries, at the expense of the states. Democrats decried the theft of the 2000 election because the GOP did not follow the rules. No the Democrats want to do the same thing…have their cake and eat it too…see Elliott Spitzer above. If the certain can be screwed up, the Democrats will do it. With such weak Democratic congressional leadership, the this Democratic National Convention will make Chicago '68 pale in comparison.

The Republican Party – Sell, use stock certificate as toilet paper. The GOP is an amoral institution. It should die a horrible but quick death and be reborn from its ashes as something better than what the American people have now in either party.

Author Thomas Cahill is one of our most eloquent spokespersons for Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular. He is the author of the popular "Hinges of History" series of books addressing the crucial role that both Christianity and the Catholic Church have played in the history of Western Civilization. These books include How the Irish Saved Civilization (1996), The Gifts of the Jews (1999), Desire of the Everlasting Hills (2001), and Sailing the Wine Dark Sea (2004).

This series provide our country's increasing fractious evangelical versus secular cultures a carefully considered and easily readable history of Western Culture from the vantage point of the Judeo-Christian tradition with and emphasis on Roman Catholicism's important role in shaping our civilization over the past two millennia. Cahill shows a knack for being able to reduce the rich history of the Church and its secular effects to its most distilled and most important essences.

As detailed in Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy - What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't Americans, for being such a religious and pious nation, are woefully ignorant of our personal religious history, not to mention the religious history of religions other than our own. At least in the respect of the former, the American Christian understanding of Christianity and its beginnings, Cahill succeeds splendidly in his educational efforts to inform an increasingly splintered Christian paradigm.

In what Cahill calls the "Introductory Volume" (How the Irish Saved Civilization) to his "Hinges of History" series, he details Ireland's role in saving the corporate memory (books) of Classical Rome and Greece from complete destruction by the invading unwashed that poured into civilized Europe in the late Fifth Century. With this as a historical backdrop, Cahill juxtaposes the two greatest Christian minds of the period, Sts. Patrick of Ireland and Augustine of Hippo.

No two figures on the same side of the religious fence could have been more different. Patrick was an English deacon's son captured by the Irish and sold into slavery. Returning home six years later, Patrick returned home and entered church life where he distinguished himself as a missionary to Ireland and beyond. While Patrick was spreading the Love of God, the Classically Greek-educated Augustine was establishing the Catholic Dogma and wrecking human sexuality for the foreseeable future. Cahill, while showing each saint the necessary respect, takes Augustine to task for his less than prudent positions of sex within marriage and the dispensing of souls after death.

Following his "Introductory Volume," Cahill inaugurates what he terms, "The Making of the Ancient World" with The Gifts of the Jews. In this volume, the author addresses the development of the people who would become known as Israel. Cahill uses Abraham and Sarah as his springboard in his discussion to the assembly of "The People of the Book." Cahill depicts Abraham not as a hapless old man brought face to face with "I am." Abraham comes off as a savvy landowner and tribal chief in full command of his facilities sans the romance contained in Genesis.

The Gifts of the Jews to modernity include a monotheistic theology, a community built on a nurtured by this theology in such a way that it is woven into the fabric of the community's history. These fibers are ultimately spun with the philosophy of Socrates and Plato into the newer thread of Christianity further woven by the divine tent maker, Paul, himself a citizen of both Roman and Hebraic worlds, Greek educated and tempered on the road to Damascus.

Again from the Holy Land, Cahill provides his second volume from "The Making of the Ancient World" with Desire of the Everlasting Hills. This book deals with the world before and after Jesus Christ. The author considers Christ from the point of view of where he came from and those who knew him. Cahill carefully navigates through each gospel and the image of Christ that emanates from them. Cahill's sympathetic depiction of St. Paul is a must read for those critics intent on criticizing the evangelist as viewed through modern lenses.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills is a beautiful and enduring look at a historical figure who transcend (and should transcend) topical modern criticism. Christ is presented as very human with more in common with us than not. When reading this book, I often wonder if the Blessed Virgin busted Jesus' divine fanny for at 12 years old, stealing away from his family to meet with teachers in the Temple. I am sure Cahill secretly thinks so.

Cahill defines the importance of the Greeks in Sailing the Wine Dark Sea (2004). The title is derived from Homer’s Iliad, one of the two large figures looming in the book. The second is the short-lived specter of Alexander the Great and his tremendous impact on the formation of Western Europe. Alexander can easily be considered the pagan Constantine had the latter not remained pagan until his death bed.

All of what can be considered philosophy as applied to Christian thought came from the Greeks. Oregin and Augustine were patently Platonic while Thomas Aquinas was Aristotelian. The evangelist Paul was Greek educated as was Luke. Greek was the first non-Hebrew language that Holy Scripture was first translated. Hellenism was one of the greatest things to happen to Christian thought, jettisoning it forward by a millennium.

These books comprise the series “Introduction” and “The Making of the Ancient World,” respectively. Cahill’s newest book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe (2006) represents the first of three volumes to address “The Making of the Modern World.”

Cahill readily reduces the Middle Ages into readily understandable and assimilatable motifs. He begins in Alexandria at the close of the Classic era prior to the long yawn of the Dark Ages. Cahill again juxtaposes characters as he did with Patrick and Augustine in How The Irish Saved Civilization, Cahill provides profiles of the Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard von Bingen, and Dante (whom Cahill compares to no one).

Cahill offers special homage to Francis, homage not seen since his writing on Patrick. The author's organic descriptions of these saints can make the reader proud of being the same genus and species as Francis and Patrick. In Mysteries of the Middle Ages Cahill completes his homage to Francis thusly,

“At the end he asked to be stripped of everything, even the bed on which he lay, and to be laid naked on the floor. ‘I have done what is mine,’ were his last whispered words to his companions. ‘May Christ teach you what is yours to do.’ Larks sang and flew in circles above the house where he died. As Francis had always noticed, they are the birds who ‘are friends of the light.’

And that is how romance became prayer.”

Mysteries differs from the previous volumes in being more fully integrated with references to the previous volumes. It also contains heat in Cahill’s defense of Catholic thought where there once was almost fatherly apology.

In his chapter, “How the Roman’s Became Italians,” Cahill addresses the recent spate of Catholic intrigue thrillers by closing a discussion on Constantine thusly,

”The depiction of Christianity in the popular thriller The Da Vinci Code as a fraud perpetrated by Constantine not only is preposterous to any reader with a modicum of historical knowledge but rests on melodramatically anti-Christian Assumptions. The book’s further premise that the Catholic Church sends out Opus Dei hit men to murder anyone who has stumbled on the truth is straight anti-Catholic libel…”

To be sure, this is not Cahill singing the praises of a misunderstood epistle writer in the face of similar assessment. Cahill is certainly passionate enough to take up the sword to slay anti-Christian and anti-Catholic sentiment, real and unreal. In doing so, he runs the risk of overstating his position. However, it may be time to do just that.

"Love in the Ruins, a Dantesque Reflection" finds Cahill departing further from his typical fatherly pedantic into a well-justified organic polemic. In no previous volume of "The Hinges of History" does Cahill so often address the present as in Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

Where Cahill readily defends the Catholic Church's important place in history while readily acknowledging its warts; the author opens the floodgates with respect to the late 20th century "priestly pedophile" scandals. Cahill obviously loves the Mother Church but hates what it has been turned into by an almost Byzantine clerical hierarchy, what he refers to as "surely imposters."

The author bemoans the Church's Soviet-style cover up of the scandal and the Vatican's constant effort to shift the blame first to homosexual priests (clouding the waters as sexual orientation has nothing to do with pedophilia), prompting Cahill to observe that,

"This would be comical to anyone who knows a variety of Catholic priests and bishops (since so many are homosexual in orientation, if not in intergenital activity)..."

Another place Cahill cites the Vatican shifting the blame is his noting that cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos suggests that this is a problem of the English speaking world. Cahill allows this because,

"The truth of the matter is that the English-speaking world has a tradition of truth-telling in public that is not replicated elsewhere, especially not in Italy, where an admission of forced buggery (like the admission of rape by a woman victim in a Muslim country) would be such opprobrium on the male victim that he could never hold up his head again but could well expect to be further brutalized"

and Italy is a seat of "Civilization?"

Cahill's most brutally eloquent argument is reserved for his reconnection with Dante in the final chapters of Mysteries of the Middle Ages,

"Dante bewailed the selling of church offices, describing this practice as 'Christ's [being] bought and sold the whole day long' in the Rome of Pope Boniface VIII. That was, however a far less depraved situation than the current one, where Dante would be forced to conclude, the twelve-year-old Christ, who conversed with the doctors of the law in the Temple of Jerusalem (in Luke 2:41-52), is made to give blow jobs and rammed up the ass the whole day long by the doctors of the law of the New Jerusalem, while the high priests of the Temple stand guard at the entrance lest any uninitiated outsiders should discover what is going on.

Cahill's final sword thrust clearly scrapes with wide margins,

"However shocking these words may sound to some ears, there can be no doubt that this is what clerical dissemblers have done to the Jesus they claim to care so much about. For 'Whatever you do to the least of these...you have done to me' (Matthew 25:40)

Cahill hold little hope for the Western Catholic church opining,

"The Catholic Church in the United States may be doomed in any case, unless the episcopate as a whole resigns, divesting itself of its gorgeous robes and walking off the world's stage in sackcloth and ashes. The bishops who now hold office are surely imposters."

Cahill makes these observations with obvious profound sadness and anger. He is like many other Catholics who continue to attend mass and observe Holy Days of obligation, honoring the Church as community and not hierarchy. But for a good many more Catholics (including this one cum Methodist), the Church's credibility is so profoundly damaged that the circumstances cast doubt on 2000 years of doctrine and dogma.

Not to pick on Catholicism alone, evangelical Christians are equally misguided in their narrow portrayal of the Christ Who is supposed to belong to all of us. Evangelical Christians do not build bridges, they build pedestals, installing themselves atop them as the greatest tradition of the "My shit don't stink Christians." Forget the Church (universally), it is beyond help and will eventually evolve as nature takes its course. Today, Jesus Christ requires rehabilitation. Not for anything He has done, but for what we have made him. Indeed, Francis' closing words to us should sound loudly,

"May Christ teach you what is yours to do."

Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe
Thomas Cahill
Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, New York
2006

Thomas Cahill inaugurated his “Hinges of History” with the popular How The Irish Saved Civilization in 1996. I am unsure if the author at the time had envisioned a series with this volume, but it did provide him an excellent jumping off point for the consideration of Western Civilization from the vantage point of a positive, consensus building progress as opposed to a negative, destructive devolution.

Cahill’s approach provides an increasingly secular culture an intelligently distilled story of how Judeo-Christian Religion in general and Roman Catholicism in particular has made Western Civilization what it is today. So often the two “histories” are told independently of one another, when in fact they are inseparable. How The Irish Saved Civilization tells the story of how Irish Monks preserved many writings of the Classic age of Rome and Greece that would have otherwise been lost in the Barbarian onslaught at the beginning of the Dark Ages.

The author uses the juxtaposition of Sts. Patrick and Augustine to illustrate the practical versus the pedantic application of religion, philosophy, spirituality and theology. In The Gifts of the Jews (1999), the author brings Abraham and Sarah to life, in situ, exposing Abraham as the politically powerful individual he was and how he molded a community out of nothing to ultimately become the most potent thought direction in history.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills (2001) tells the story of the world before and after Jesus Christ. Like he did in The Gifts of the Jews, Cahill sympathetically breathes life into those who came before Jesus, those who knew Him best and those who carried His message. Of note is Cahill’s powerful support of the Gospel of Luke and his near-dismissal of John’s account. Cahill’s introduction to the evangelist St. Paul is a revelation, shining a warm bright light on this important and often misunderstood figure.

Cahill addresses the importance of the Greeks in Sailing the Wine Dark Sea (2004). The title is derived from Homer’s Iliad, one of the two large figures looming in the book. The second is the short-lived specter of Alexander the Great and his tremendous impact on the formation of Western Europe.

These books comprise the series “Introduction” and “The Making of the Ancient World,” respectively. Cahill’s newest book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe (2006) represents the first of three volumes to address “The Making of the Modern World.”

Cahill readily reduces the Middle Ages into readily understandable and assimilatable bites. He begins in Alexandria at the close of the Classic era prior to the long yawn of the Dark Ages. Cahill likes to smash historic personalities into one another. As he did with Patrick and Augustine in How The Irish Saved Civilization, Cahill provides shave biopsy profiles of the antipodal pagan philosopher Plotinus and Clement of Alexandria, parsing the latter’s laughable etiquette for pious Catholics in the context of the Classically-trained Clement answering the more laughable positions adopted by the apocalyptic Encratites and smug Gnostics. He does the same with Ptolemy and Euclid, and this is just in the introduction.

The book is divided into broad cultural subjects addressing religion, the arts, the sciences, and the geopolitical world of the period. Cahill first discusses the conversion of religious Rome into secular Italy, rubbing Constantine, Gregory, and Augustine of Hippo together is catch fire. Cahill then addresses the advent of feminism as manifest in the life of Hildegard von Bingen and the rising “cult of the Virgin.” Then Cahill turns his attention to, on the surface a much different woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Sandwiched in between these two dominant women is the discussion of the polar opposite Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, the former considered “one of two or three greatest men to have ever lived,” and the latter, not of that rank. Cahill’s portrait of Francis is equally as empathetic and enduring as he assigned Patrick in How The Irish Saved Civilization. Cahill’s organic descriptions of these saints can make the reader proud of being the same genus and species as Francis and Patrick. Cahill completes his homage to Francis thusly,

“At the end he asked to be stripped of everything, even the bed on which he lay, and to be laid naked on the floor. ‘I have done what is mine,’ were his last whispered words to his companions. ‘May Christ teach you what is yours to do.’ Larks sang and flew in circles above the house where he died. As Francis had always noticed, they are the birds who, ‘are friends of the light.’
     And that is how romance became prayer.”

The author never fully leaves Francis, instead rubbing the ascetic, anarchic peasant monk against the Dominican revolution known as Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris. But before addressing Aquinas, Cahill introduces Abelard and his principle muse Aristotle (also Aquinas’) as a balance to Augustine’s Platonism in his earlier book.

From Paris, Cahill takes us to Oxford and Sir Roger Bacon, stopping to sum up the previous portraits:

“We know that Thomas was a fat friar and Francis a bone-thin ascetic, that Hildegard was a sickly nun and Eleanor a radiant queen. Of Roger we have no description at all, and he seems at times in his surviving writings so much a sprite, a will-o’-the wisp, that he would be too quick for anyone’s pen to capture on a page.”

Summing Bacon up, the author notes that he was an alchemist trying to spin gold from lead, while in the process propelling science ahead. Bacon believed in the “essential unity of human knowledge,” an idea not unlike that of Einstein’s grand unification theory.

Bonaventure takes on Giotto in the visual arts and Dante reigns supreme ahead of Milton and Shakespeare in literature. This is Cahill’s finest writing since “Drunk in the Morning Light” from Desire of the Everlasting Hills. He wraps up this excursion through Medieval Europe rebuking Dante’s inclusion of Justinian to Heaven in the Divine Comedy.

Mysteries differs from the previous volumes in being more fully integrated with references to the previous volumes. It also contains heat in Cahill’s defense of Catholic thought where there once was almost fatherly apology.

In his chapter, “How the Roman’s Became Italians,” Cahill addresses the recent spate of Catholic intrigue thrillers by closing a discussion on Constantine thusly,

”The depiction of Christianity in the popular thriller The Da Vinci Code as a fraud perpetrated by Constantine not only is preposterous to any reader with a modicum of historical knowledge but rests on melodramatically anti-Christian Assumptions. The book’s further premise that the Catholic Church sends out Opus Dei hit men to murder anyone who has stumbled on the truth is straight anti-Catholic libel…”

To be sure, this is not Cahill singing the praises of a misunderstood epistle writer in the face of similar assessment. Cahill is certainly passionate enough to take up the sword to slay anti-Christian and anti-Catholic sentiment, real and unreal. In doing so, he runs the risk of overstating his position. However, it may be time to do just that.

This review was first published in Blogcritics.org

In 1986 Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to Moscow for the first time in 60 years to perform in his homeland. This was an event that can only be compared to the debut of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony May 7, 1824 in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna or the riotous premier performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Horowitz approached his repertoire in chronological order, Beginning with this Scarlatti Sonata. Horowitz put Scarlatti on the map with his 1960s piano recordings of a portion of the 555 keyboard pieces by Italian Domenico Scarlatti.