Given how much I am going on all the time about singing in the home (for instance, recently on the Ad Fontes podcast), a friend has requested a list of recommendations for children's folk song books that one can purchase. I am a novice in this respect, so perhaps I am...
Quartet for the End of Blogs
John Ahern
Church Music Is Just the Worst (Circa 1330)
Pope John XXII had some specific opinions on church music, which he expressed in his bull Docta sanctorum patrum. But some disciples of a new school, occupying themselves with the measuring of time units, [now] signify with new notes, and prefer to make up their own...
“Bach did not intend to compose musical works”
My title is one of the famous, controversial sentences from a famous (amongst a certain crowd), controversial book, which I heartily commend to you all. The philosopher Lydia Goehr wrote this sentence in her book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the...
Be Ye Perfect
There are always a few books on the shelf in the bathroom that one grabs in those moments of peaceful, if somewhat uncomfortable, solitude. I am careful to select those books. My rule is that they must be books I ought to be plodding through but can only bring myself...
Erasmus on Funding Church Music
In 1500, the churches were full of musicians rather than theologians. And Erasmus was not happy.
Church Music Is Just the Worst (Circa 1530)
In Joseph Herl's excellent Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict, he quotes Luther responding to his congregation in Wittenburg after the introduction of the German Mass. He is, to say the least, a bit underwhelmed at...
A Question of Funding
One of the central hypotheses that this blog will explore, over the long haul, is the following: ever since the Reformation, it has been difficult to find ways of funding those activities which, before the Reformation, tended to be funded by monasteries, the...
Education of Joachim Cureus at Wittenberg
"On July 31, 1554, the degree of master of philosophy was publicly conferred on Cureus by the most illustrious and eminent dean of the philosophical college, Caspar Peucer, (a man justly most famous in church and state to all posterity and never praised enough), who...
Church Music Is Just the Worst (Circa 1840)
I would like to start a series of short blogposts, "Church Music Is Just the Worst (Circa)" focusing on primary sources and first-hand accounts of people in the western church throughout the ages who Can't Even with their church music. They've had it up to here. Or...
Music and Makeup
Perhaps you've seen one of those selfies where the person has used software to impose makeup on themselves. They can make their skin glisten and nose narrow and zits invisible. The app in question is probably Facetune, and I've always found it a fascinating name. The...