Five Classical Composers Every Catholic Should Know

 Hey-ho! I'm here with something a bit new today. So, the story begins with my two music history classes, wherein one listens to various music from various periods and composers and analyses it and all such stuff. (I have to say, if you ever get the chance to take a music listening course, do it. It's such a wonderful experience. I am taking a general music history one and one on Nonwestern music, and both are utterly fascinating.) 

Anyhow, because of this class and my past love of classical music, I have discovered a few quite wonderful composers, and - more importantly - learned some history behind them. You know, even in a secular, liberal college, it's quite striking how massive a role the Church plays in getting music off to a running start. And that, I suppose, brings me to my point. I love classical music, and, obviously, as a Catholic, I love Catholicism. The cathedral space where they overlap is quite my cup of tea, and we're always told to write what we know, so, thus, this post is born. In short, I'd like to share a few classical composers/works that I think Catholics should know as a part of the rich music history that the Church takes part in. Obviously, if you're a classical aficionado already, you probably know these composers and such, but I will try not to be too mainstream with the ones I talk about - so, no Mozart or Palestrina or anything. (And if you don't like classical music, you... should give it another go. Skip the post, if you will, but, really - give classical music another try.) 

Couldn't find a pic without the wig...

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

(If you like the Piano Guys - like this and this - chances are, you've already heard Vivaldi. He's best known for his four Season concertos, especially Spring and Winter.)

Antonio Vivaldi was deeply interested in the priesthood as a young boy, becoming ordained at only twenty-five years old, despite extreme frailty. In fact, long before people ever called him "composer," people called him "Il Prete Rosso" - Italian for "the Red Priest," referring to his bright orange hair color. 

Vivaldi was a pioneer composer when it came to opera, concertos (instrumental solo works), and oratorios (sung religious texts). He loved to compose, and, while his health sometimes made it impossible for him to write things himself (and eventually killed his ability to say Mass on his own), he was quite devoted to ordering sounds into beauty. His devotion to the Faith never waned either, even once he was too sickly to say Mass. A fellow composer wrote of him, "the [R]osary never left his hand except when he picked up his pen to write an opera." 

I definitely recommend all his operas, but especially Griselda, a beautiful fairy tale about a common woman marrying a king and then proving her fidelity to him. (Here is one aria from it, and here's one of the Seasons, while you're at it.)

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

(Elgar is best known for this gorgeous little instrumental love song to his wife, Salut D'Amour.)

Chesterton, Belloc, and Elgar had something in common, living in England near the turn of the century: an unpopular Faith. In England, the religion of the State had been Anglicanism for years, and Catholics were looked down upon, even highly discriminated against in academic circles, as St. John Henry Newman wrote about in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Defense of His Life). 

Elgar's mother converted to Catholicism just before his birth, and, despite the disapproval of his father and all their friends, Elgar was baptized and raised Catholic from his earliest days. In an Anglican world, it was difficult to be taken seriously as an intellectual or artist of any kind when one was a Catholic. Elgar, however, bulldozed through any suspicion or dislike from his peers, and he quickly became one of England's most honored composers purely through the beauty and genius of his own compositions. In addition to this, he was one of the first composers to consistently record his music, leading to most of it being relatively intact to this day. 

Perhaps Elgar had a bit of a roguish, teasing streak in him. Once he made it big in the Anglican high society of England, he published his magnum opus, a massive musical setting of St. John Henry Newman's poem, The Dream of Gerontius. This very Catholic work was primarily concerned with purgatory, a doctrine which the Anglicans rejected. To be sure, it got a few Anglicans fired up, but the work is now considered Elgar's best. (The overture to The Dream of Gerontius is here.)

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

(Monteverdi is best known for his operas, such as the one this overture is from.) 

Monteverdi is less known these days, but he's a big composer in the classical and the liturgical worlds. Late in life, a Catholic priest and music theory genius, he also founded the genre of opera, writing many of the first and pioneering many techniques in acting and singing, especially techniques in ironic contrast.

One of the most beautiful pieces by Monteverdi is this duet, from his historical opera, The Coronation of Poppea.

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

(Please forgive the incorrect French lettering... My Blogger skills are those of a five year-old, I'm afraid...) 

(Saint-Saens is best known for his Carnival of the Animals. You probably have heard The Swan from it at some point, here. You may also have heard his famous ghost story piece, Danse Macabre, here.)

Okay, so if you know classical music, you might be wondering why I have Saint-Saens on here at all. The man always claimed he wasn't very religious, after all. The truth, I think, is much more complicated than that. Saint-Saens was one of the last bulwarks of a traditional way of composing, making sounds beautiful and intended to awaken and order the emotions and mind rather than, say, this chaos we call contemporary classical (my apologies to anybody who likes contemporary classical). And, as the Church has always held, that's exactly what music is meant to do: raise the emotions to some order using beauty in sound. Because Saint-Saens was composing in the period where music started splitting into camps of beautiful music and jarring music, he became, intentionally or unintentionally, aligned with much more religious forces, becoming a prominent choral and organ composer, and writing many beautiful sacred pieces.

Even more than the camp that Saint-Saens was put in by others, however, Saint-Saens had an interesting fascination for an "unreligious" man: he wrote many of his most beautiful works in dedication to the Blessed Mother. For some reason, throughout his composition career, the idea of the Ave Maria haunted him and pervaded his music. To be sure, it was relatively standard for a great, traditional composer of the time to write at least one Mass or Ave or something like that. It was a way to show off choral and liturgical writing skills, and it was a sort of aging lip service to that old patron of the Arts, the Catholic Church. Writing one Ave was relatively normal. Saint-Saens wrote five. They were all completely original (many composers of the time liked to just recycle melodies when it came to writing their liturgical works), all very beautiful, and all pretty reverent, fitting within the Church's rubrics for music (as opposed to, say, Beethoven, whose Mass has a whole orchestra... very difficult to fit in a choir loft). For a man who specialized in the old, Romantic Age ideals of passion and complexity in music, it's strange that he wrote some of his most moving melodies for Mary, a figure of humility and simplicity. I highly suggest you look up his Ave in A Major, here - it's definitely worth a listen.

Cesar Franck (1822-1890)

(Franck is best known for this sonata for violin and piano, as well as other instrumental works like it.)

Franck was a cradle Catholic, organist, and pianist. Supposedly, the dude had such big hands that his works are very difficult - if not impossible - to play as written. (I wonder if Sergei Rachmaninov ever gave him a run for his money...?) He was a conservatory professor for a time and was known as an eccentric. His students who got into his confidence and could look past his childlike oddities often called him "Papa Franck" due to how amiable a teacher he was.

Franck believed strongly in expressing the virtues through music. Nearly every work he ever wrote, especially his instrumental music, he based on his meditation on the virtues, the Beatitudes, and various Gospel verses. He believed that music was intrinsically good, and if it was at all beautiful, it led the way to God. 

Probably my favorite Franck piece is his beautiful duet, Panis Angelicus, here, which I have been privileged enough to sing many times. (Correction: the version linked is a solo because apparently Youtube has no versions of the duet arrangement with good audio quality.)

Anyhow, that's all for the moment, folks. Sorry if the post is slightly boring... I don't seem to have a non-ramble mode when it comes to music, I'm afraid. Let me know if you like classical music! Who are some of your favorite composers?