Faith Filled Friday: The Re-Opening of Notre-Dame de Paris

Last week on December 6^th, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was reopened after it was restored from a fire five years ago.  From the Catholic on-line magazine, Aleteia:

 

This weekend Paris was abuzz with the reopening ceremonies and Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral. After an intensive five-year restoration program, most of the scaffolding came down, the boarding disappeared, and the beautiful Gothic structure opened its doors to the world.

That article from Aleteia provides many of the highlights in written form.  But you can watch the highlights in these YouTube videos.  First on the restoration from CBS’s Sunday Morning.

 

If you want just sights and sounds of the celebration, this nice compilation comes from NBC News.

 

I found this CNN news segment broadcast just prior to the reopening interesting, mainly because it outline the cost, which was remarkably on budget and less than one would have thought.

 

This lovely light show with music by Michael Canitrot was well done..

 

Finally, let’s end with this rendition of Mozart’s LAUDATE DOMINUM (translates to “Praise the Lord” I think) performed at the reopening and sung by Julie Fuchs.  It provides breathtaking images of the Cathedral.

 

 

I was in tears five years ago when I saw the Cathedral burning.  I thought it was the image of disappearing Christianity.  Today my heart has been restored as the beautiful Cathedral.

 

 

 

In Memoriam: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Early this morning, as many of you probably know, our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away at the age of 95. Where do I even begin to summarize his epic life?  He lived through almost a hundred years of eventful history, participated in some of it directly, and wrote about the theological implications of most of it.  He wrote 66 books, three Church Encyclicals, four Apostolic Exhortations, and a number of major speeches.  His output was immense.  He was one of the key intellectuals behind the Vatican II Council, and an intellectual guide for the papacy of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.  Through it all, and there were many who demonized him both within and outside the Church, he was a gentle man, a lover of the arts, a man of prayer and spirituality.  One aspect of his character that seems to go unnoticed was his humility.  He was an intellectual giant of the type I deeply respect and have always wanted to emulate.  In short, he was my favorite pope of my lifetime.

From what I gathered surfing around the news world, Pope BXVI (my shorthand for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) will be remembered for being the first pope in almost 600 years to resign the office.  I have seen criticism of it, but he was 85, frail, in not the best health, and trying to perform the duties of the modern era.  He went on to live ten years, but from accounts he did not expect to live a year. 

If you want a general perspective on his life, writings, and thoughts, this article from Aleteia, “Benedict XVI,the pope of surprises” did what seems to be a thorough job.    

There are many theological ideas that Pope Benedict explored and commented on, but he had a way of bringing out their societal implications.  For instance, he first observed how the relativism of faith has had implications on our society, a concept he called “the dictatorship of relativism.” 

 

“Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires,” he said in an address in Rome in 2005. “And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.”

Can you see how gay marriage and what I’ll call the relativism of gender has flowed from what contemporary society has determined to be a lack of fixed truths? 

You can easily find the highlights of his life, so I’m not going to list them.  Instead I’m going to embed a video where Bishop Robert Baron puts Pope Benedict XVI’s life and ideas into context.  It’s just over a half hour. 

 

Finally, BXVI was a great lover of music, and from what I understand an accomplished pianist.  Aleteia  also has an article on BXVI’s favorite musical pieces, and it’s a good deal of Mozart and Bach.  

He seemed to have a special love for Mozart.  From the article:

 

Pope Benedict XVI once described one of his early encounters with the music of Mozart, while attending a Mass penned by the great composer. He described Mozart’s treatment of the Mass as “music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God.” He added:

 

“The joy that Mozart gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.”

The article also goes on to say that the first concert Joseph Ratzinger ever attended was a performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass.  So as a fitting conclusion to this post, I want to conclude this post with three pieces from “The Requiem in D minor, K. 626.”  First the Introit and Kyrie which are here together.

 

The third piece will be the Domine Jesu, an appeal to Christ to save the soul of the dead.  

Here are the lyrics in English.

Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory,

deliver the souls of all the faithful departed

from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit:

deliver them from the lion's mouth,

that hell swallow them not up,

that they fall not into darkness,

but let the standard-bearer holy Michael

lead them into that holy light:

Which Thou didst promise of old to Abraham and to his seed.

That is just so beautiful.  I am certainly saddened by the death of my beloved BXVI.  But given his age, and watching my mother struggle with old age, I can see how it is eventually a blessing.  May Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI continue to bless us from above. 

 

Eternal rest grant unto him,
O Lord, and let perpetual light
shine upon him.

Music Tuesday: “Ode to Joy” by Ludwig van Beethoven

Is Beethoven greater than Mozart?  When you’re dealing with the greatest of the great of any artistic medium, it’s impossible to say one is greater than another.  It becomes a matter of preference.  At the catholic blog, Inebriate Me, Pascal-Immanuel Goby wrote a post titled “Beethoven > Mozart.”    The “>” symbol signifies “greater than.” 

I like Goby’s blog, though it can be more philosophical than my tastes run in reading about Catholicism.  But he’s got an interesting, out of the box, yet still traditional take on things.  I like his perspective on economics and Catholicism.  Most Catholic bloggers don’t understand economics, but Goby does.  I never refer to him in my head as Goby.  From writing literary essays I’m trained to use last names but the way I think of him is by the first half of his name, Pascal.  He seems to share a number of things with the famous Pascal: an intellectual Catholicism and that he’s French.  I know he lives in France, but he does write in English, so if he’s not French, then his parents were certainly Francophiles to name him Pascal.

In “Beethoven > Mozart” Goby wonders bemoans that theologians prefer Mozart as their favorite composer, while Goby clearly believes that Beethoven is the greatest.  Why this this preference for Mozart over Beethoven.  Here’s part of what he wrote:

We need more theologians who love Beethoven. (We need more theologians who love Led Zeppelin!)

I love Mozart. Truly. He had access to the Forms. However…

We have many theologians who love Mozart. Balthasar and Barth connected (in part) on their shared love of Mozart as the greatest composer in history. Ratzinger, as is well known, is a devotee of Mozart. All good.

But, but, but.

No, Mozart is not the greatest. Mozart is not the greatest, because for all his attempts to move beyond, all his pathos, he remains the classical composer par excellence. Mozart is the Parthenon. Mozart represents art understood as submission to, and fulfillment of, form.

No. This is not the full truth of art. The full truth of art must have as its primary impulse the expression of human subjectivity (an expression of subjectivity which only through its embrace of itself can then point to universality), even as it incorporates, uses, and in its fullness, transcends, aesthetic rules. And here we are talking about Beethoven. Mozart expressed the fullness of humanity within the classical rules. Beethoven expressed the fullness of humanity by transcending (through incorporating) the classical rules.

Beethoven is not afraid of being off-balance. Mozart raises the mind to contemplation, Beethoven grabs you by the throat. Mozart is Aquinas, wonderful Aquinas, building angelic cathedrals. Beethoven is Paul, frustratingly unsystematic, cajoling, browbeating, repudiating, pleading, ordering, crying on the page.

The comparison of Aquinas to Mozart, Beethoven to St. Paul is kind of apt.  But I don’t see why that would make Beethoven greater than Mozart.  Here’s my comment to his post.

Mozart is not the greatest because he died too young. Had lived another twenty years he would have been the greatest. I agree it would be great if more theologians loved Beethoven as they do Mozart (I'm surprised they don't) but I think you're being silly with Led Zeppelin. Bach is probably the greatest of them all. Where I disagree is with how you value aesthetics. It's not that Beethoven is greater because he is subjective in his art or because he is off balance. Neither of those makes art greater or lesser. They are just different approaches. Greatness comes from how well you create and how well your vision is represented aesthetically. We are still under the guiding force of Romanticism, so off balance appears to the general person to be of greater aesthetic quality. If and when we return to a neo-classical zeitgeist, Beethoven might appear to be ugly, or I should say uglier. Is Dante's Divine Comedy any lesser because of its balance and interconnectiveness and rational form? I would argue that Dante is closer to Mozart than Beethoven. And then perhaps one could say that Shakespeare might be closer to Beethoven than Mozart, though perhaps that's arguable. Dante and Shakespeare, as Mozart and Beethoven, have different approaches. It's not the approaches that make them greater or lesser.

Goby never replied to my comment; he usually does, but I sense he’s been busy lately.  Another person replied to me and we had an interesting conversation about Led Zeppelin, so you can go over to check that out if you wish.  Goby’s central thesis is that Christian theologians are too neo-classically oriented and lack the passion of Romanticism.  He does end his post with this summation: “We need, in other words, Appasionnata theology, we need Hymn to Joy theology, we need 5th and 6th symphony theology.”  The “Hymn to Joy” allusion is actually a reference to Beethoven’s concluding Ninth Symphony movement where Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” is set in a choral.  I’m sure people here know of it.  

And just a few days after reading the Goby post, I came across in almost divine guided happenstance a post written by Stephen Klugewitz at The Imaginative Conservative, titled “Did Mozart Write the “Ode to Joy”?”  Klugewitz’s claim is that Beethoven took the theme from Mozart.

Only a few pieces of music in the Western canon rival the fame of the “Ode to Joy” theme: the opening chords of Beethoven’s own Fifth Symphony, “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” the first notes of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, to name a few. The “Ode to Joy,” however, seems to stand above these, due to its hymn-like, sublime character and its elevated call to universal brotherhood. It will be forever associated with Beethoven’s name, and alone would ensure his legacy as one of the greatest composers—in the estimation of many, THE greatest composer—who ever lived.

The problem is that the “Ode to Joy” theme is not entirely Beethoven’s. He borrowed the main part of it from none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In 1775, at the age of nineteen, Mozart composed the “Misericordias Domini,” K. 222, a six-minute sacred work that is little recorded and seldom performed today, yet which constitutes a minor masterpiece. Mozart employs what became the germ of the “Ode to Joy” theme three times throughout the work

You can read the rest of Klugewitz’s thoughts there and here Mozart’s “Misericordias Domini” side by side to Beethoven’s fourth movement.  Tell me if they sound similar.  They do to my ear.  What Klugewitz doesn’t show is that Beethoven was aware of this little known Mozart piece.  It’s quite possible that it coincidental.  But after listening side by side I tend to agree; I think Beethoven stole it!  Even the arrangement is similar.

For Music Tuesday I offer Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” section of the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony, here conducted by the late, great Leonard Bernstein.  The actual “Ode to Joy” theme starts at about 3:50; the chorus stats at 7:55.

Music Tuesday: Mozart, Violin Concerto No. 5, 3rd Movement

I love this Violin Concerto. I know there are others that are ranked greater. Mozart composed his violin concertos when he was young, this his last at 19 years old. All five are bright and vivacious and written in a major key. This one does have its own Wikipedia entry.

Its full title is Violin Concerto No. 5, K. 219 "Turkish.”  The nickname “Turkish” comes from the third movement’s deviation from a minuet into an exotic melody associated with Turkish music, though not necessarily truly from Turkey.

I'm not going to post the entire concerto, just the third movement.  That’s where the Turkish excursion takes place.  I think it transforms the entire last movement.  The rondo form is based on a returning melody alternating with a cadenza.  This third movement uses a very stately minuet as its rondo melody, and then at about 3:45 transitions into the Turkish section, and that lasts for two and a quarter minutes, returning da capo to the minuet.

Here’s what the program notes from the Toronto Symphony says about this third movement. 

The finale is an urbane minuet that unfolds, at first, in a perfectly rondo form. But just when the end seems nigh, Mozart interpolates an episode even more astonishing than the Adagio in the first movement: a hundred and thirty bars of the sort of tongue-in-cheek “Turkish” music he used in works like The Abduction from the Seraglio. All of the conventional building-blocks of eighteenth-century “Turkish”music are here: the key of A minor, march-like 2/4 time, drone basses, “gypsy” violin writing, leaping themes, pervasive chromaticism, “exotic” melodic intervals like the augmented second, repeated notes, frequent ornamentation, and grotesque, and percussive scoring. This episode has a handful of melodies of its own, several borrowed from folk music, arranged to form a separate little movement—a rondo within the rondo. When it’s over, the minuet returns to complete its appointed rounds, and like the first movement the finale ends quietly, wittily, with a little arpeggio decorated with grace notes—a wink and a smile.

Programme Note by Kevin Bazzana © 2013

Yes, “rondo within a rondo” is the perfect way to describe it.  Besides the structural peculiarity, what really gets me is the sharp contrast between a reserved 18^th century European classism with an exotic, exuberant, and wild foreignism. 

Here is the third movement with Gideon Kremer (soloist), Nicholas Harnoncourt (conductor), Wiener Philharmoniker orchestra.  Listen for the transition at just after 3:45, and after listening to the entire movement, try to answer this question: Is the "Turkish" excursion integral to the entire piece or does it sound like two separate pieces yoked together?

 

If you go to Youtube you’ll be able to find both the first and second movements.  If you have a half hour, listen to all three movements in succession as meant to be heard.  The recording I own is with ItzhakPerlman (soloist), James Levine (conductor), and also with the Wiener Philharmoniker orchestra and I highly recommend it.

 

So does it sound integral?  I think it does.

Music Tuesday: Introit from Mozart's Requiem Mass

For yesterday's Memorial Day, I want to offer the opening movement of Mazart's Requiem Mass in D Minor.  When I was growing up, Memorial Day was not just the first day of summer activities, but a day to reflect and pay respects to those soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country.  The emphasis was on homage to the dead, not an easy day out of school or off from work, and I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like the emphasis has shifted to the latter.

There are many fine Requiems.  A Requiem is a mass for the dead set to music. and it follows the mass structure.  Of the Requiem's I've listened to, I have to say that despite it not being completed, the Mozart Requiem is the one I favor.  It just sounds most like what a Requiem should sound like. 

In honor of the over 1.25 million Americans (according to my tally from this listing of American casualties) that have perished in service to our land since the Revolutionary War, I offer the Introit to Mozart's Requiem.  The Introit is the opening part of the mass in the traditional Latin Mass, and for masses for the dead, it takes these verses:


Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem.
Exaudi orationem meam;
ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

In English that translates to the following:

 

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
A hymn becomes you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall a vow be repaid in Jerusalem.
Hear my prayer;
to you shall all flesh come.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Eternal rest valiant men and women.