Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Pope Benedict: Beauty can be a path to God
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict met artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged them to inject spirituality into their work, saying contemporary beauty was often "illusory and deceitful."
"Beauty ... can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God," Benedict said.
The Pope told them that in a world lacking in hope, with increasing signs of aggression and despair, there was an ever greater need for a return to spirituality in art.
"Too often ... the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful ... it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy," he said.
Against the backdrop of Michelangelo's vast fresco of the Last Judgment, which adorns the chapel's altar wall, Benedict lamented that the once-close cooperation between the Church and the artistic community had weakened.
"Faith takes nothing away from your genius or art," he said. "On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them."
The Pope told the gathering of hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and directors, held beneath the vaulted ceiling of the chapel painted by Michelangelo, that he wanted to "renew the Church's friendship with the world of art."
Full story here...
"Beauty ... can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God," Benedict said.
The Pope told them that in a world lacking in hope, with increasing signs of aggression and despair, there was an ever greater need for a return to spirituality in art.
"Too often ... the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful ... it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy," he said.
Against the backdrop of Michelangelo's vast fresco of the Last Judgment, which adorns the chapel's altar wall, Benedict lamented that the once-close cooperation between the Church and the artistic community had weakened.
"Faith takes nothing away from your genius or art," he said. "On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them."
The Pope told the gathering of hundreds of painters, sculptors, architects, poets and directors, held beneath the vaulted ceiling of the chapel painted by Michelangelo, that he wanted to "renew the Church's friendship with the world of art."
Full story here...
Sunday, November 22, 2009
www.lala.com
If you don't know about this site, check it out! Signup is free and allows streaming listening to TONS of music. There are 9 performances of the Beethoven Elegischer Gesang, and even more of the Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt and Choral Fantasy that we will be performing with Civic Symphony in April.
Lots of Messiah, too. And lots of Poulenc Gloria.
Too good to be true! (Plus any music that streams through your computer can be recorded. But that would be illegal, and I'm not going to tell you how to do it, if you don't know...)
Lots of Messiah, too. And lots of Poulenc Gloria.
Too good to be true! (Plus any music that streams through your computer can be recorded. But that would be illegal, and I'm not going to tell you how to do it, if you don't know...)
Singers of United Lands Repertoire
I am working hard to find choral music of Estonia, Haiti, Oceania, and Venezuala. Suggestions are welcome! Check out this year's SOUL singers at the link below and to the right:
Messiah - the home stretch
Although we will, increasingly, be aiming at making it through all of our Messiah choruses at each rehearsal, I will try to find the right balance of rehearsal for 1) correct pitches and rhythms, 2) performance details, diction, and ensemble, and 3) run-through for continuity.
Assuming the room is available, we will again have sectionals on the Amen, on Let Us Break Their Bonds, and He Trusted in God. We will also continue to work on intonation, bland, balance (and memorization!) for Since by Man and spend some time on Behold and the Surely, Stripes, Sheep choruses.
One of my favorite Handel quotes:
"I should be sorry if I only entertained them, I wish to make them better."
James Beattie, letter of May 25, 1780, published in William Forbes An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D. (1806) p. 331. In reply to Lord Kinnoull, who had complimented him on his Messiah, "the noble entertainment which he had lately given the town". Beattie had this on the authority of Kinnoull himself.
This is, of course, the precise intent and meaning of the term "edification."
Assuming the room is available, we will again have sectionals on the Amen, on Let Us Break Their Bonds, and He Trusted in God. We will also continue to work on intonation, bland, balance (and memorization!) for Since by Man and spend some time on Behold and the Surely, Stripes, Sheep choruses.
One of my favorite Handel quotes:
"I should be sorry if I only entertained them, I wish to make them better."
James Beattie, letter of May 25, 1780, published in William Forbes An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D. (1806) p. 331. In reply to Lord Kinnoull, who had complimented him on his Messiah, "the noble entertainment which he had lately given the town". Beattie had this on the authority of Kinnoull himself.
This is, of course, the precise intent and meaning of the term "edification."
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