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Whither The Arts?
It isn’t often that stone steps inspire chills, but to walk where centuries of human feet have literally worn down the stone is to simultaneously become part of history and to realize one’s utter insignificance to it. Walking up the steps and into the magnificent structure, the eye is drawn inexorably from the stones below, upward, high beyond the massive columns, up further where the very walls seem to tilt toward each other and meet at dark, dizzying heights. It was 1989, and I was standing inside the massive cathedral in Cologne, Germany.
I had just finished reading a biography of German WWI ace Barron Manfred von Richthofen in which he described his very first airplane ride as a student pilot. As the plane rolled out for takeoff, the prop wash blew Richthofen’s leather helmet off, along with his goggles and scarf. As the plane rose, and his gloves were also lost to the blast of wind from the propellor, his attention turned to that of viewing the landscape from the air for the very first time. And he wrote of his astonishment at seeing the spires of the Cologne Cathedral from a great distance.
That Cathedral had been there over 600 years when The Red Barron’s canvass and wood plane did battle in the First World War. Those old stone steps were as old as the US Constitution by the time Christopher Columbus set sail for the New World. And yet there we stood in 1989, struck dumb it seemed, trying desperately to comprehend the sheer size and endless intricacies of this colossal structure which literally dwarfed everything around it. To view it from the outside is to feel rather like an ant contemplating a redwood. 
To venture inside and see The Shrine of the Three Holy Kings (purported to hold the crowned skulls of the Three Wise Men), or the Gero Cross which dates back to 976, or the legions of statues, is to become virtually intoxicated with the divine devotion that conceived and constructed such a solemn place.
Where is there anything in modernity to compare? Camille Paglia poses just such a question, asking (and answering) the question of why so much of our fine arts have devolved into a “wasteland.” “Painting was the prestige genre in the fine arts from the Renaissance on. But painting was dethroned by the brash multimedia revolution of the 1960s and ’70s,” writes Paglia, who then zeros in on a central point: “What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber.”
It’s a chamber where the avant-garde first yielded to iconoclasm, which in turn has yielded to unimaginative and vulgar conformity. One need look no further than the artist who submerses a crucifix in urine, and then congratulates himself for bravely giving the finger to orthodoxy, all while carefully avoiding a cartoon of Mohammed so as to avoid getting his head chopped off. So much for breaking new ground.
So where do we now turn for art? Snoop Dog? Our smartphones? I use my smartphone constantly. Thanks to technological wizardry, I can have a conversation with the thing (it even says, “Who’s there?” when I say, “Knock knock”), but art it isn’t. Among my personal effects is an old pocket watch that belonged to my great grandfather. A functional piece, it retains just enough ornate decoration to hearken back to another time and place. As long as that old watch is around, I feel grounded somehow, which is a feeling that so much of what passes for art fails to elicit. Now, am I channeling my inner fuddy-duddy, or is society losing something? Where art once celebrated eternal truths, what is its point today? To rail against the culture and system that enables it? Again from Paglia:
Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by the armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time.
“We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, a Jewish nation, or Muslim nation,” said President Obama, adding, “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens.” This ideology that seeks to disconnect an entire people from their heritage and culture is the same ideology that teaches students to ridicule and scorn the very system that has afforded them a standard of living and a wealth of knowledge that previous generations could never have imagined. To defeat that ideology is to make possible the day when abiding truths are celebrated and the arts again, as in the past, lift the human spirit up, up toward the Author of all that is truly beautiful.
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I’ve met people who’ve been moved to conversion via an experience at a traditional cathedral. I’ve yet to hear of one in a modernist cathedral. The admirers all seem to be on the outside looking in. ·39 minutes ago
Are you keeping a tally?
My father converted during WWII shortly after the submarine he was on was depth charged by the Japanese as they sat on the ocean’s bottom. Are churches designed specifically for conversion? My guess is that conversion occurs in many of the most desperate and extreme locations and situations – fox holes, trenches, tanks, battleships, submarines, aircraft carriers, bombers, jets, during episodes of torture and utter cruelty in prison camps. Perhaps these venues are closer to God, whatever He/It is, than the most beautifully designed cathedrals whether classic or modern. What do you think? Perhaps as magnificent as these edifices are, and they are magnificent, their majesty is nothing compared to the power of the human mind.
Antigua Gautemala ……
Churches have been called Catechisms in Stone for a reason. As discussed in the Member Post I made a few moments ago.
Churches are designed for worship, for prayer, for sacrifice. They mediate through the material world something immaterial. Conversion is ongoing. The turgid musical dreck and stone temple pilot architecture let loose in North America and Europe during the era of the late 60’s and early 70’s (and beyond) didn’t merely coincide with the internal collapse of belief: it animated and accelerated the collapse.
Churches are designed for worship, for prayer, for sacrifice. They mediate through the material world something immaterial. Conversion is ongoing. The turgid musical dreck and stone temple pilot architecture let loose in North America and Europe during the era of the late 60’s and early 70’s (and beyond) didn’t merely coincide with the internal collapse of belief: it animated and accelerated the collapse. ·0 minutes ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
I think you’re placing undue influence on the loss of faith to modern architecture. I don’t argue that the Church’s embrace of the folk/rock mass and the urge to be hip during the 60s and 70s cost it dearly and the effects of which it is still grappling. Of course, another more abhorrent scandal has probably cost the Church even more in recent years though I don’t think it appropriate to explore that on this thread suffice to say that it has nothing to do with architecture.
ndue influence on the loss of faith to modern architecture. I don’t argue that the Church’s embrace of the folk/rock mass and the urge to be hip during the 60s and 70s cost it dearly and the effects of which it is still grappling. Of course, another more abhorrent scandal has probably cost the Church even more in recent years though I don’t think it appropriate to explore that on this thread suffice to say that it has nothing to do with architecture. ·0 minutes ago
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Transcendent music, architecture and continence rely on a clear sighted apprehension of the role of asceticism in a fallen world increasingly obsessed with the puerile and carnal. And that role relies on a telos, an end, an eschatology: a theology of the last things to preserve the permanent things.
India
Ozarks Mo.
Moran State Park, Orcas Island
ndue influence on the loss of faith to modern architecture. I don’t argue that the Church’s embrace of the folk/rock mass and the urge to be hip during the 60s and 70s cost it dearly and the effects of which it is still grappling. Of course, another more abhorrent scandal has probably cost the Church even more in recent years though I don’t think it appropriate to explore that on this thread suffice to say that it has nothing to do with architecture. ·0 minutes ago
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Would love to read that post if and when you write it. All the best.
For all intents and purposes little more than a glorified chapel. It’s been said that this amazing space would comfortably fit within one the piers at St. Peter’s. Yet, from the first time my eyes saw a tiny picture of its dome in architectural history class, I’ve been fascinated with this building. Suffice it to say that I’ve been working on a digital recreation of the building for going on two years and every day spent on figuring it out yields a new gem.
“The work of an architect chess-master. Pure and austere. Just brick and stucco. Mind blowing design worked out from a higher geometry. The heavenly order of shapes and numbers.” – Simon Schama
Ambon Indonesia
ndue influence on the loss of faith to modern architecture. I don’t argue that the Church’s embrace of the folk/rock mass and the urge to be hip during the 60s and 70s cost it dearly and the effects of which it is still grappling. Of course, another more abhorrent scandal has probably cost the Church even more in recent years though I don’t think it appropriate to explore that on this thread suffice to say that it has nothing to do with architecture. ·0 minutes ago
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Would love to read that post if and when you write it. All the best. ·0 minutes ago
Consider it moving to the top of my pile this week. Thanks for the push.
“up toward the Author of all that is truly beautiful”
Well said Mr. Carter
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Transcendent music, architecture and continence rely on a clear sighted apprehension of the role of asceticism in a fallen world increasingly obsessed with the puerile and carnal. And that role relies on a telos, an end, an eschatology: a theology of the last things to preserve the permanent things. ·0 minutes ago
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music. There’s a tension between “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,” …and your garden variety 7/11 song (same seven words sung eleven times). When the tremendous sound of a grand pipe organ is replaced by a guy who is dressed for the mall, standing there strumming his guitar,… well, for another time, perhaps.
ndue influence on the loss of faith to modern architecture. I don’t argue that the Church’s embrace of the folk/rock mass and the urge to be hip during the 60s and 70s cost it dearly and the effects of which it is still grappling. Of course, another more abhorrent scandal has probably cost the Church even more in recent years though I don’t think it appropriate to explore that on this thread suffice to say that it has nothing to do with architecture. ·0 minutes ago
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Would love to read that post if and when you write it. All the best. ·0 minutes ago
Consider it moving to the top of my pile this week. Thanks for the push. ·0 minutes ago
Just trying to keep you busy. (Since you can’t vote in our election.) :-)
As Pope Benedict XVI argued in The Spirit of the Liturgy, music and architecture are intertwined. And the scandal that you refer to has its root in exactly the same ideology, though tieing all three together is the work of a much longer post.
Transcendent music, architecture and continence rely on a clear sighted apprehension of the role of asceticism in a fallen world increasingly obsessed with the puerile and carnal. And that role relies on a telos, an end, an eschatology: a theology of the last things to preserve the permanent things. ·0 minutes ago
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music. There’s a tension between “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,” …and your garden variety 7/11 song (same seven words sung eleven times). When the tremendous sound of a grand pipe organ is replaced by a guy who is dressed for the mall, standing there strumming his guitar,… well, for another time, perhaps.
I’d read that, too. Of course, I read everything you write.
The Church’s embrace of modern architecture wasn’t a cause of decline, but I do believe it was a very visible symptom of that decline. Modern architecture, was meant to be empty and devoid of meaning, stripping all old values away for pure, cold, utilitarianism. Such places look like boxes for a reason. Boxes, after all, have no beauty and are purely for storage. “German worker housing” indeed, as was earlier quoted. If a church is supposed to embody devotion to God, down to its very plumbing and rafters, then is it not almost a form of sacrilege to choose to build a church that in its very form is “devoid of meaning”? I will never, ever understand the churches that chose brutalist architects, and built churches that looked like Stalinist prisons.
Look at St. Peter’s Seminary in the UK. It looks like a Fuhrerbunker.
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music.
If you ever do, I’ll be putting up my dukes, ready to go at it. :)
I mean, sort of. I love sacred music as much as I love sacred art and architecture, but, having come alive, spiritually, partly through the guitar music of the charismatic renewal, I’m ready to defend it.
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music.
I work with a man of Polish descent, who grew up in West Pennsylvania, where most of his neighbors still spoke in some Polish in everyday conversation, and the Catholic Church was at the very center of their existence. They planned everything from high school football games to block parties around the church. A Priest was always present and involved. Very, very traditional community. And one thing that really chaps this fellow’s hide is how the church went from traditional music to “some guy in a leisure suit strumming a guitar” in the seventies. I’ve heard him say “Gimme a big ole’ pipe organ, musical notes reverberating outside the building like jet engines. THAT chases the Devil out and terrifies him. Not some guy doing Jesus Christ Superstar on his acoustic guitar”.
You will if you read the late Henri de Lubac’s The Drama of Atheist Humanism. Liberation Theology, marxist inspired architecture, and victimist ideology masquerading as social justice all have a common tap root.
Mark Steyn is a fan of the book and the late Cardinal de Lubac had a head wound suffered in Verdun during World War I. I believe it resulted in a steel plate.
Never heard it put that way. But I like it!
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music.
If you ever do, I’ll be putting up my dukes, ready to go at it. :)
I mean, sort of. I love sacred music as much as I love sacred art and architecture, but, having come alive, spiritually, partly through the guitar music of the charismatic renewal, I’m ready to defend it. ·3 minutes ago
I got Katie’s back on this
It’s not the guitars that annoy me as much as the insipid lyrics that instead of talking to God have us speaking as if we were God. We become a congregation singing to ourselves about ourselves.
Compare these two songs with the same theme, but vastly different tones.
“I the Lord of sea and sky/I have heard my people cry/All who dwell in deepest sin/my hand will save./I who made the stars of night/I will make their darkness light/ Who will bear my light to them/Whom shall I send?
I will go Lord./ Is it I Lord?/ I have heard you calling in the night./I will go Lord/ If you need me/ I will hold your people in my heart.”
The tempo is slow and plodding and the melody sounds like mush, particularly when sung by a full congregation. After putting words in the mouth of God, the singer is questioning God, asking do they really have to go — like a teenager saying “Do I really have to do my chores?”
(continued)
Cornelius – I suppose we may have to differ. Many cathedrals on the outside, for all their majesty and dominance of a landscape, seem to be slight derivations of one another….
They are indeed impressive. Just arid, in my opinion. The sense is one of disconnection, rather than connection. Of reduction, rather than expansion of the sense of being an organic part of a larger order with purpose. Not to diminish the astounding technical accomplishment in the least. But I think PseudoD’s post with the video on form and Katie’s on beauty connect profoundly with what has largely been lost. I’d never seen St. Mary’s in SF. It does indeed look like an amazing structural feat, especially the roof/ceiling there near the altar. But aesthetically to me it looks like something from the set of Stargate.
I think that one day, when I feel like really stirring things up, I’ll try to start a conversation on the [d]evolution of church music.
If you ever do, I’ll be putting up my dukes, ready to go at it. :)
I mean, sort of. I love sacred music as much as I love sacred art and architecture, but, having come alive, spiritually, partly through the guitar music of the charismatic renewal, I’m ready to defend it. ·3 minutes ago
I got Katie’s back on this ·8 minutes ago
I really don’t get that type of music, seemingly so stuck in the 70s and 80s but my husband and I grew worried at church yesterday when talking to our 3-year-old. A trumpet was accompanying the organ and I told her that such a combo was my favorite. She said “guitars and drums are my favorite church music.” Mark says it’s because they’d gone to two guitar/drum stores the previous day.
We’re taking it seriously either way, putting the Bach on early this morning.
Contrast it with this 100 year old hymn:
“Send me forth O Blessed Master, there are souls in sorrow bowed/ Send me forth to homes of want and homes of care/ And with joy I will obey the call and in thy blessed name/Let me take the blessed hope of the gospel there.
Call me forth to active service/ and my prompt response shall be “Hear am I, send me!”/ I am ready to report for orders, Master, summon me./ And I’ll go on any errand of love for thee.”
Here, the speaker is requesting God for the privilege of serving. They are identifying the needs, not just waiting for God to notice that the world is messed up. Instead of making passive aggressive conditional statements — “if you need me” — the speaker says I will obey “with joy!” And while it doesn’t come across in just the lyrics, the tempo is upbeat — I’ve actually led this as an song with fun gestures at church campfires.
Yes, give me 484 out of Hymns of the Saints over that pop sap.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was mixing it up with you all on Ricochet, in the background was my husband practicing the bass section of Hassler’s Dixit Maria for the motet choir, and my heart was sprouting interior cathedrals.
That’s pretty ugly.
I have played acoustic guitar for worship (but don’t currently) and I like it when I do because I feel I am contributing something good with what meager aptitude I have in this regard. I agree with Amy that some of the lyrics are awful. I don’t claim that it compares to High Church and, had I the option, I would probably choose full Latin / Gregorian masses. Striking the balance between sense of sacred, spiritual vitality, and simply well written music is a real needle threading. Most parishes have much room for improvement. It can definitely devolve the sense of numinousity quickly, especially when you find yourself among the “We are the Church” Vatican II crowd….