In the mid-90s, London’s Sunday Times produced a cheap CD series that managed to be both eclectic and excellent. In the ‘Classical’ branch of that series, High Romantics appeared, presenting tuneful offerings from Glinka, Arensky, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Grieg, Delibes, and Tchaikovsky.
It all adds up to 43 minutes of fine listening, by about minute 22 of which one begins to wonder why we ever moved on from the Romantic period.
Posted in reseña | Tagged Arensky, Camille Saint-Saëns, classical music, Delibes, Franz Liszt, Glinka, Grieg, Johannes Brahms, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection, Tchaikovsky | Leave a Comment »
Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.
I kid you not, there is a market for gentle, Christmas instrumental music that preserves the religious nature of the holiday and does not overpower the motley collection of family, friends, and hangers-on that gather at such times.
This Maranatha two-disk album meets the need. You won’t remember any of these arrangements by February, but that’s not the point anyway. What you want is a little musical Christmas cheer. Continue Reading »
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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.
Jim Croce’s music, the art of a master storyteller, lives decades after the fact and after the passing of this musician himself because of its profound and accessible human-ness. Continue Reading »
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Sobriety is in the little New Testament book of Titus a response to penultimacy. Continue Reading »
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It would be difficult to uncover a biblical passage more densely constructed with the elements of hope than the ‘new covenant’ chapters of the book of Jeremiah. With good reason chapters 30-33 are sometimes styled the ‘book of comfort’. With less justification did classic 20th-century biblical criticism separate this section from the work of the historical prophet by virtue of the alleged incompatibility of their persistent hopefulness with the rather more curmudgeonly material that was understood to derive more directly from the ‘weeping prophet’ himself. Continue Reading »
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Two or three years ago, my eldest son and longest arrow began to obsess on getting a motorcyle. It seemed to his mother and me a very bad idea.
Then, in a crystalline moment of letting go, of grace, of letting life happen, it occured to me that there was a better way than resisting the river’s flow. Why not join him and make it a male-bonding hobby?
Thus did I begin to obsess on getting a motorcyle. Continue Reading »
Posted in paterfamilias | Tagged motorcycles | Leave a Comment »
Simplicity is the path to the deepest treasures.
Religious technique is brushed to the margins when essential virtues are in play. Take peace, for example. Though we blunder about in search of it at many levels, Paul directs words of iconic simplicity to that peace which places the individual human heart at rest:
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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Arguably the most astonishing feature of the biblical meta-narrative is YHWH’s penchant for employing unqualified agents in the execution of his finest work.
Some texts articulate this as the means of assuring that YHWH alone receives the glory of the outcome, a matter that causes no embarrassment to biblical aesthetics. Others simply record the fact, allowing the reader to configure the motive. Continue Reading »
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A strong habit of mind suggests that you cannot command love and you cannot command joy. One enjoys no mandate over one’s feelings. What one feels, according to this usually unquestioned view, simply is what it is.
To attempt control over the nature and course of one’s emotions is to spit into the wind. Worse, it is a genuine betrayal of the self-evident authenticity of feeling. Continue Reading »
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Canter Bridge 