A Happy Birthday to My Most "Love-Hate-est" Composer

What a deplorable post title.

This fellow is ridiculous. His music is extremely hard to play, and when you do finally figure out how to play him correctly, the output doesn't even sound difficult and impressive, and that doesn't do too well with pretentious show-offs, of whom I am the foremost.

Anyhow, I must greet him: happy 258th birthday, Herr Mozart.

(I only call him "Herr" because of Amadeus.)

Leithart and Humble Reading

"To read well, we must become as little children." Thus says Peter Leithart in his sublime essay Authors, Authority, and the Humble Reader, in which he presents a theory of authorship and readership based on authority and humility.

Leithart begins by proclaiming the "death of the author" in postmodernism. He argues that postmodern theorists are "challenging the 'authority' of the 'author'." He points us back to a time when "literary theory centered on the concepts of auctor [author] and auctoritas [authority]." To be called an author was "an accolade".

This being in mind, "reading could not be anything but an act of humility -- homage to the auctoritas of an auctor". Leithart argues (and he laments that truisms have to be argued in the postmodern age) that "simply by picking up a book, opening it, and following the words someone else has written, the reader is subjecting himself to the author". Reading fiction and reading it intelligently "requires a humble acceptance of the world of the novel". Leithart calls the "suspension of disbelief" an act of humility. Chesterton wrote that "humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak." It makes everything around us large and magnificent. The humility Leithart speaks of is not mere "let's pretend", but "paying attention to what the author thinks is important".  We have to submit to the rules that the writer sets, and we play by the rules because he is an auctor with auctoritas. Not every writer deserves the accolade of auctor, and Leithart argues that we have a responsibility "to judge literature ethically.... Though fiction creates its own world, the book also is an objective presence in our world; the world becomes flesh and dwells among us, and the question must be asked whether this incarnate word is doing mischief or good." There are consequences of reading, and we surely do prefer that they be profitable.

At the essay's end, Leithart assures that, "having humbled himself before the author, the reader shall, quite properly, be exalted."

Myth

Perfection hounds us remorselessly. - Thomas Howard (Myth: Flight to Reality)

 Myths have fascinated me since childhood. (I can't remember the first myths I read, although I'm pretty sure I first read about general mythology in an old 1980-something edition of the World Book Encyclopedia.) I read stories about gods, demigods, heroes, monsters, dragons, and cows, and these tales shaped my imagination positively.
Now, some people are adverse to myths -- and fairy tales, for that matter. These people may be well-meaning Christian parents who want to shield their children from "satanic influences" in myths; the atheist who, very properly, scoffs at the notion of a god or something which has not been proven by almighty Science; feminists who attack the unfair sexism of Fairyland, but they all miss the point. Myths have served many roles in human lives, but they were never meant to convert children to Satanism, or to impose theism or deism on atheists, or to convince people to be sexist. Myths might be read -- and are often read -- with no particular purpose other than pleasure, just as children in their blissful ignorance do -- "listen like a three years' child," Coleridge said. I'm thankful that my parents didn't despair over my mythology-reading. The myths I read never made me want to convert to Zeus-ism or join the Church of Odin. G.K. Chesterton writes:

... he who has most most sympathy with myths will most fully realise that they are not and never were a religion, in the sense that Christianity or even Islam is a religion.... though they provide a man with a calendar they do not provide him with a creed. A man did not stand up and say, "I believe in Jupiter and Juno and Neptune," etc., as he stands up and says "I believe in God the Father Almighty".... (The Everlasting Man)

Another purpose -- if it may be called that -- of the myth is to satisfy man's longing for perfection. Here enters Thomas Howard, Catholic author and brother of Elisabeth Eliott. He says in his essay Myth: Flight to Reality:

The whole poetic or artistic or mythic phenomenon that we find when we look at the history of human imagination represents, I think the search for perfection.... We all have imaginings of it (some poets would urge that we have memories of it). Perfection hounds us remorselessly. It stands over against every experience we have of nostalgia, frustration, and desire....

Politics, medicine, ecology, and jurisprudence are our efforts to repair the damage.... When we've been allowed to take time from our plowing and fighting and brushing our teeth, we have tried to say something about perfection and our experience of the discrepancy that we feel between ourselves and perfection.... 

... We are driven by who knows what -- maybe it's the Holy Ghost -- to complain about this discrepancy, to oppose it, and to transcend it.... Myth is one version of this effort.

Howard argues for myth's high place in the realm of narrative, saying that "[in] it you will find more or less perfectly manifested what is implicit in all art". He then writes an apologetic for the disengagement of the myth world from our own.

... if we move the world of myth away from the immediate... out of our calendar completely, we disengage it from the fuss of our world, and by thus setting it free from our time, we set ourselves free with respect to it. For time may be the tragic dimension of human experience... the agent and vehicle of change and decay and death. This why poetry and the promise of paradise are so attractive to us.  They all offer an escape from time....

We don't want the stuff of myths and fairy stories happening in our particular world, Howard says. We don't want storms instantly happening or volcanoes suddenly erupting because the gods are fighting over who gets the remote. Tolkien expresses this, "I in my timid body did not wish to have [dragons] in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world ("On Fairy Stories")." Yes, in a sense, myths do happen in this world, but no one really believes that the Titans were first born about 150,000 B.C., or that on the morning of June 17, 1967 the sky-god Horus couldn't let the sun rise yet because the storm-god Set was still having fun flooding Alabama. Erik Christian Haugaard writes:

"Once upon a time" is no time.... In reality... it means "at all times, in all places." ("Portrait of a Poet: Hans Christian Andersen and His Fairy Tales")

Even the story like A Tale of Two Cities did not happen in this world. London and Paris exist on Earth, but quite a few of the Tale's characters never lived and breathed on our planet, and for that reason, the world that Dickens created is different from ours.
However, Howard is not defending the myth against those who would merge fantasy and our world; he's defending myth's -- for lack of a better term -- escapism, which he calls "an escape from the unreal, the transitory and evanescent, to the solid and immutable, that is, the real". Howard even makes a good case that most readers, perhaps even avid realism fans, don't actually want stories to be too real, in the sense of worldly tangibility. If a story begins with an all too real description, complete with the exact time, date, address, characters and actions which simply must exist in this world, the imagination feels imprisoned, Howard argues. "The trouble is we know that room," Howard writes. "It's too defenseless against the postman and plumber and electrician, and we don't want them in our midst."

Howard laments that storytellers today are able only "to make their images out of what their world is made of. There has to be some identity of substance between what they make and what we know, so that we can recognize it." However, the stuff of our world can't create high myth; we can't really "get anything huge and wonderful and breathtaking and beautiful", he argues. The world that produced high myths, "those huge worlds of story that are remote from us but terrifyingly close", has disappeared.

... we have decided (sometime in the Renaissance it was and we finished the job in the eighteenth century) to recreate the world. It's a very small one now, limited as it is by microscopes and telescopes and computers, and asphalts parking lots at MacDonald's hamburger stands. And it's a horror. It is, above all, boring, for mystery has fled from it. We have announced to anyone who cares to listen -- and somehow one imagines that angels and elves aren't that enthralled by the information -- that we can explain everything....

By the eighteenth century the myth became sovereign that the analytic and rational capacity is absolutely adequate for unscrambling the mystery of the universe. Somewhere in the process the gods fled. The irony is that in the very effort of modern art to disentangle human experience from the transcendent, human experience turned to ashes. 

 (I have never seen a MacDonald's hamburger stand, but this was the twentieth century.) Howard, just as a good Catholic author should, values mystery and disdains contemporary literary materialism. He does commend authors such as Flannery O'Connor and Tolkien the mythmaker: O'Connor, because, through her striking, grotesque images, has reminded us that things are not the way they're supposed to be and that what we've made from these things haven't been satisfactory; Tolkien, because he has used the "ancient shapes" (because nothing the world had at hand suited his purpose) to create a truer world than what most modern authors have produced. Modern (or postmodern) man has come close to explaining everything they have on hand, but he hasn't found explanations of things which matter. Man still hasn't transcended the mess he's put himself in and, stumbling around in ever-growing darkness, still hasn't a grip even on the shadow of perfection. And until the Perfection incarnate returns and puts the final period this chapter of the story of the world and begins the new and more glorious chapter, man never will taste perfection.

Howard then defends the necessity of myth today. Writers today aren't likely to find in the modern world "an imagery that will suggest the big, real, whole world". He argues that the author would eventually have to retreat to the ancient paths and search for the "heroes and elves and gods".  An author, may he be a realist, a poet, or a creator of fantasy, would do himself a great favor in leaving the realm "cold and lethal myth that holds the whole world in a frosty sovereignty" and visiting the realm of the high myth where he might find "images of glory and mystery and romance and deity and heroism". Mythology, whether pagan or the "true" myths of Tolkien, seeks perfection, restoration -- seeks God. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:

God... sent the human race what I call good dreams. I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has given new life to men.

Therefore, Howard argues at the essay's end, an excursion "into that world [of myth] [is] never a flight away from reality; they are, rather, a flight to reality".
We would do well, nevertheless, to guard ourselves from forgetting what mythology really is. They are shadows or dreams of reality; they are pictures of the same landscape which may be exactly like the landscape in every detail except that they aren't the actual landscape. Chesterton reminds us, "These things were something like the real thing; and to say that they were like is to say that they were different."
Pagan idolatry, Calvin wrote in his Institutes, stemmed from the knowledge of God which is innate in man. The myths they created of creator gods and heroic saviors betrayed a sorrowful longing for restoration to how things should be. The Word Incarnate -- though embodying everything that a myth should be, everything that mythmakers could only write about -- was surprisingly not myth, and through that Word all the good dreams that God sent man became reality.

The Gospel and the Fairy Tale

For Christmas I received a book entitled The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing, an anthology of essays and reflections compiled by Leland Ryken, professor of English at Wheaton College. This has been one of the best gifts I have ever received. I have not finished it, but it has already enhanced my appreciation for literature and taught me new things about reading and writing. (And it might just convince me that realism is on par with fantasy, which is why I avoid the realism section. The first essay on the topic was already good, and I am scared of what follows it.)

The book is divided into ten parts; each part features essays on a particular subject. I am and have been since childhood an unabashed fantasy fan, so I flipped straight to Part 8: Myth and Fantasy. To my delight, the first selection came from Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth: The Gospel As Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. This particular excerpt was (obviously) the Gospel As Fairy Tale. (I had read about Buechner from Gene Edward Veith, Jr.'s Reading Between the Lines, which is responsible for getting me hyped up about literature in general [I even read the poetry section, despite my dislike of poetry. {Except for Shelley's Ozymandias. Seriously, that poem is good -- and understandable}]. Veith recommended quite a few of Buechner's books, one of which was Telling the Truth. Hence, my excitement.) The Gospel As Fairy Tale begins with a topic familiar to me, (again, due to Veith) the universality, timelessness, and appeal of the fairy tale. Buechner includes a beautiful quote from Tolkien about the fairy tale:

...[the fairy tale] does not deny the existence of... sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of the deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat..., giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of the good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the "turn" comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen that given by any form of literary art.

Buechner continues to write of the Joy of the "happily ever after", not as portrayed in spotless Disney Land but that which happens in a dark world akin to ours -- the happily ever after which gives "a fleeting glimpse of Joy... beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief" which can bring tears to our eyes.

Tolkien's "turn" mentioned in the quote above deserves more explanation, because it is one of his most brilliant concepts. This "turn" is what he calls eucatastrophe, the "good turn", which he believes to be the opposite of tragedy. Tolkien writes in his essay "On Fairy-Stories" that the "eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function". He continues to write of the Gospel as fairy tale, a notion that both he and Buechner share:

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels... and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy.

 Buechner writing on the same point is a vivid storyteller:

Like the fairy-tale world, the world of the Gospel is a world of darkness, and many of the great scenes take place at night. The child is born at night. He had his first meal in the dark at his mother's breast, and he had his last meal in the dark too.... In the garden he could hardly see the face that leaned forward to kiss him, and from the sixth hour to the ninth hour the sun went out like a match so he died in the same darkness that he was born in and rose in it....

In  the world of the fairy tale, the wicked sisters are dressed as if for a Palm Beach wedding, and in the world of the Gospel it is the killjoys, the phonies, the nitpickers, the holier-than-thous, the loveless and cheerless and irrelevant.... It is the ravening wolves who wear sheep's clothing.... When Jesus is asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven, he reaches into the crown and pulls out a child with a cheek full of bubble gum and eyes full of whatever a child's eyes are full of and says unless you can become like that, don't bother to ask.

And as for the king of the kingdom himself, whoever would recognize him? He has no form or comeliness. His clothes are what he picked up at a rummage sale. He hasn't shaved for weeks. He smells of mortality. We have romanticized his raggedness so long that we can catch echoes only of the way it must have scandalized his time in the horrified question of the Baptist's disciples, "Are you he who is to come?"; in Pilate's "Are you the king of the Jews?"... in the black comedy of the sign they nailed over his head where the joke was written out in three languages so nobody would miss the laugh.

But the whole point of the fairy tale of the Gospel, is of course, that he is the king in spite of everything. The frog turns out to be the prince, the ugly duckling the swan.... There is no less danger and darkness in the Gospel than there is in the Brothers Grimm, but beyond and above all there is the joy of it, the tale of a light breaking into the world that not even the darkness can overcome.

Returning to Tolkien:

But in God's kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the "happy ending". 

These two essays have heightened my appreciation of the Gospels and the story of the Bible as a whole as narrative. They have portrayed the Gospel in a wonderful way -- freshly wonderful. Tolkien's eucatastrophe has altered how I see Christ's first coming in history, and Buechner has beautifully portrayed Christ's work as a fairy story -- or, as Tolkien wrote, a larger kind of story "which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories". Indeed, the fairy tale that is the Gospel is larger and better than all other fairy tales, greater than the legends which it has hallowed, simply because this "tale of a light breaking into the world that not even the darkness can overcome" happened not in a land far, far away, but in our very time-space, and this fairy tale gives us not only glimpses but tastes of that "Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief". Tolkien writes:

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would fell, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be "primarily" true, its narrative to be history.... The Christian joy, the Gloria, is... pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous.

I still have more to blog about, especially on fantasy, and simply need more bursts of diligence to do so. These two essays are a mere 16 pages in this 465-page book, and there is much more to be gleaned. (Although I am not too excited about realism and poetry.)

Happy Birthday, Ludwig

It's Ludwig van Beethoven's birthday.
He should be about 243 today. Except that he's dead.
What a pity.

I do believe he's trying to smile.

This fellow is one of the greatest composers who ever lived. He is the favorite composer of many music enthusiasts and musicians, such as violinist Itzhak Perlman. Oh, and Schroeder. How could I forget Schroeder? (Beethoven isn't my favorite, but he's a close second.)
Ludwig composed symphonies (Ode to Joy from the ninth symphony is one of his best known melodies), piano sonatas (the Moonlight is perhaps the most famous -- and my least favorite, solely on account of its ubiquity), string quartets, concertos, and lots more. He is a towering and influential figure in music, helping to usher musical Romanticism into the vogue.

Actually, we aren't sure of his actual birth date. We do, however, have record of his christening, which happened on December 17. Since it was tradition to christen a baby the day after his birth, December 16 is the safest time to celebrate Ludwig's birthday. His family and friends appear to have celebrated his birthday on this date as well. (I don't recall reading of Ludwig celebrating his own birthday; I'm not surprised.)

Bach and His Consequences

Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach is perhaps the most respected and influential composer in the history of music and the composer I love the most (for now, at least). His mastery of contrapuntal harmony, familiarity with and innovation in musical styles and forms, and sheer musical genius have secured this honor. Interestingly, during his day he was not nearly as popular  as other composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel. He was a master organist and was most famous for being one while he lived, although never reaching the status that Telemann or Handel enjoyed. While occupying different jobs over the years and in different places in Germany, Bach wrote a staggering amount of music, most of which were left unpublished during his lifetime. Here, since I enjoy quotes, I shall insert some quotes (presumably) by J.S. Bach:

“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.”

“I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”  

“The final aim and reason of all music is nothing other than the glorification of God and the refreshment of the spirit.” 

“There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.” 

“What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.” 

“If I decide to be an idiot, then I’ll be an idiot on my own accord.”

 Bach is also famous for writing J.J. (Jesu Juva -- Jesus, help) and S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria -- Glory to God alone) over his musical works.

Bach died at the age of 65, presumably of a stroke, following two botched eye surgeries. Bach and his "old-fashioned" music fell into obscurity for some time as the new Classical musical style took the place of thethBaroque.
(I admit that I haven't read too much about Bach's life. I do have a biography, which I have not read entirely, and a copy of Bach's obituary, which I have finished. In light of Bach's greatness and the regard that many have for him, I don't think that I've made him sound as cool as this:)

Not that this is anywhere near Bach's actual coolness

However, Bach's influence survived. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were all familiar with some of Bach's works and sometimes dabbled with contrapuntal music (the stuff that Bach did in his sleep). Then, along came Felix Mendelssohn, one of the greatest prodigies ever. Mendelssohn was responsible for the revival of Bach's music, and Bach eventually became more famous than he ever was during his lifetime. As a result of this Bach revival, more than 1000 of Bach's works are now cataloged and published, and Bach is now known as one the greatest composers of all time (although his organ-, harpsichord-, violin-, viola-, and I-don't-know-what-else-playing has been forgotten -- perhaps if people only listened to his recordings more; he was such a thrilling performer).

His Consequences

Bach's genius is rightly appreciated today and is influential to countless of musicians, composers, and listeners. We have beautiful compositions by those who tried to imitate his style, amazing interpretations of Bach's works by performers, and classical-music converts who changed their minds about that weird old music that guys in wigs play (Classical music is tight yo). Just to show how much he is appreciated (or, in some terrible cases, worshiped), here are some more quotes:

"Not Brook but Ocean should be his name."
   - Ludwig Van Beethoven ("Bach" is the German word for "brook")

 Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. 

- Karl Barth 

Bach is Bach, as God is God.

   - Hector Berlioz  

To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

   - Pablo Casals (cellist)

 ..the greatest Christian music in the world...if life had taken hope and faith from me, this single chorus would restore all.

   - Felix Mendelssohn  

Bach is the beginning and end of all music.

   - Max Reger 

 I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.

   - Niccolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Bach is ... a terminal point. Nothing comes from him; everything merely leads to him.

   - Albert Schweitzer (not surprising)

Study Bach. There you will find everything.

   - Johannes Brahms 

Bach's influence on composers following Mozart is undeniable. We have Mendelssohn's fugues (which stemmed from his study of Bach), Chopin's preludes (some of which explicitly remind the listener of Bach), Max Reger's organ works (which draw from Bach's vast ocean of organ compositions), Dmitri Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues (patterned after Bach's Well-tempered Clavier), and Eugene Ysaye's 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin (which follows the 6 Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin archetype), for example. Bach himself seems to have anticipated musical Romanticism; some of his preludes sound like Chopin nocturnes; and the slow movement from Bach's double violin concerto almost sounds like Brahms (or, perhaps, Brahms sounds like Bach).
However, some things that the revival of Bach has (unintentionally) spawned are not exactly "refreshing to the spirit" for some people. These are all 20th century music figures, and, unsurprisingly, are met with polarized reactions. If you are used to Bach as he is usually played (the dry, dull, and *gasp* orthodox way) or if you are used to the Bach-Beethoven-Brahms harmony and pleasing-to-the-ear-ness, these guys are probably not your cup of tea.
For instance:

This guy:

The piano is uncomfortable.

The pianist Glenn Gould. He plays Bach more than any other composer. In fact, Bach is his desert-island composer. He does all kinds of stuff with Bach: pick out melodies that aren't even supposed to be there, hit the keys so that every note gets justice, and add little stuff to Bach's works that no one else (except maybe another strange fellow, Friedrich Gulda) would dare to do. He turns his torso around while playing, as exemplified in the video below. He hums Bach (I don't know how) while playing and is notorious for doing so.

I love this guy. I even try to imitate him sometimes, which makes my mother and sister shake their heads. Here's why:

Weird fellow. If you don't exactly like him, you're in good company. Gould has many "haters". He is unorthodox with his interpretations (whatever that means) and has earned the fury of many purists. I have loved Gould's music since I first heard him, but my opinion is not objective. 

And then we have another strange spawn of Bach:

Bela Bartok's Solo Violin Sonata

I apologize if Bach's influence isn't obvious. I mentioned before that Bach wrote a set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and this set (or finished up) the foundation for all solo violin repertoire that would follow.

The video above is the fugue from the Bartok sonata. It isn't easy listening, but I eventually grew to like Bartok's music. If you dislike Bartok (as my sister does), that's fine. Do try to listen to his piano repertoire, though; you might find it a bit more palatable.

(If you want to find a Bach equivalent of the video above, here's an example of a Bach fugue for solo violin:

I still find it amazing that Bach wrote a multi-voice fugue on an inherently monophonic instrument. That makes me wanna scream like a fangirl.

You didn't read that last sentence.)

And we have this guy:

Paul Hindemith

Yes, it's Gould again, this time playing Paul Hindemith, a German composer who followed Bach's contrapuntal footsteps. Hindemith was criticized by Nazi Germany for being an "atonal noisemaker", and you might be inclined to say the same. (Atonality is basically the lack of a musical key, which makes for very dissonant music.) His piano composition Ludus Tonalis was intended to be the Well-tempered Clavier of the 20th century. 
You might be scratching your head now and wondering where Bach's influence is. It's right there, but I can't pinpoint it, ignorant teenager that I am (never mind); I can pinpoint it now after listening to the video (I confess: I just picked out this video of Hindemith because Gould was playing). It has all the elements of a good Baroque fugue, sans the typical pre-20th century harmony.
This is as close to Bach as anybody in the 20th century can get while staying within the bounds of 20th century classical music.

These are just part of the torrent of musical ideas that was released because Johann Sebastian decided to write music. Bach certainly would never had anticipated the consequences of doing this. I'm sure he would be reluctant to receive all the praise directed at him. 
Nobody would dare say that the world would be better of without Bach or his influence, but some would say that the musical world might be better off without some things that were influenced by him. To some extent, I agree. Not everything written by composers, especially from the 20th century onward, were masterpieces or fit with Bach's final aim of music. (Not even everything that Bach wrote was -- dare-I-say-it? -- a masterpiece, but I agree with violinist Nigel Kennedy that he did not right one single inferior piece of music.) Not every interpretation of Bach's music is good -- the legendary and notorious Glenn Gould not exempted. Nonetheless, these composers and performers are out there, and-- believe it or not -- they  have one common denominator with Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and the more "orthodox" performers out there: the once-obscure composer-musician turned musical giant, J.S. Bach.

G.K. Chesterton

So begins my first blog post. I have thought of creating one for some time now but have only brought that idea into fruition today on a whim. I simply want an outlet for the thoughts that crowd my head and take up most of my day. I take full responsibility for whatever errors I make in this blog.

This is a blog intended for whatever I wish to blog about, and I can think of no one better (or, really, no one else) to blog about first than one of my favorite authors: Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the prince of paradox.

Theodore Roosevelt

Mr. Chesterton is perhaps most famously known for his Father Brown stories, but my admiration for his works did not start with these. A year or so ago, I had been reading Gene Edward Veith's Reading Between the Lines, one of my favorite books on literature and the philosophies which accompany it (sparking in me an interest in philosophy). In the list of authors he recommended (which included Flannery O'Connor, about whom I would love to write in the future) I found the name of Chesterton and looked for one of his works.

I first read The Man Who was Thursday, which, like nearly all of his fiction, contains his wit, paradox, social commentary, and Christian symbolism. It read like a very intelligent thriller -- or, perhaps, a proto-thriller. His style contained nearly everything I looked for in an author, and I looked for other books of his on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). I went on to read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which is absurd but not nihilistically so, The Club of Queer Trades, a series of stories about men who practice unique professions, Manalive, which is one of my favorite works of fiction ever, and The Ball and the Cross, which portrays the quarrel and eventual friendship of an atheist and a Catholic. These novels are brimming with wit, humor, sarcasm, and profundity which I rarely find all bunched together in the works of other authors. 

Of course, I read the Father Brown detective stories and found them to be a perfect complement to the Sherlock Holmes stories I had been reading. Brown, opposite to Holmes, relies more on insight than intellect and generally makes for a more satisfying read. (Of course, Chesterton was a brilliant author, while Doyle was not really an author to begin with.) 

I have not read enough of his non-fiction. I began What's Wrong With the World and found much that I am sure he would still say about the society today, but there seems to be too wide a temporal gap between him and us. I also began Orthodoxy and Heretics, both of which I have yet to finish. I hope to read The Everlasting Man, which "baptized" C.S. Lewis' intellect, just as George MacDonald "baptized" his imagination.

Here are some of my favorite quotes and passages from some of the books I mentioned:

"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction. For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it." The Club of Queer Trades

"I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet." Manalive 

"The intellectuals among whom I moved were not even alive enough to fear death. They hadn't enough blood in them to be cowards. Until a pistol barrel was poked under their very noses they never even knew they had been born." Manalive

"... we were all in exile, and ... no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest." Manalive

"I have called this book 'What is Wrong with the World?' and the usphot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right." What's Wrong With the World

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions... journalism cannot be reasonably expected... to insist upon permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters. 'Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,' or 'Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.' They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the fork that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority." The Ball and the Cross

 "Nothing is plainer from real history than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who cares now exactly what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only to things that we know for certain about it the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came before him, and something quite useless to [an atheist], the heretic who comes after." The Ball and the Cross

"The cross cannot be defeated, for it is Defeat." The Ball and the Cross

"The father believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They never of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness." The Ball and the Cross

"... it was your Jesus Christ who started all this bosh about being God." 

"No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said he was God." 

"Then, what... is the difference between Christ and Satan?"             

"It is quite simple... Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it."   

"Does it make much odds?" 

"It makes all the odds... One of them wanted to go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a devil can only be humbled."  The Ball and the Cross

"Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on." The Ball and the Cross

"He was not 'a thinking machine'; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think." The Innocence of Father Brown

"Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak." The Innocence of Father Brown

"'How do you know all this? Are you a devil?' 

'I am a man,' answered Father Brown gravely; 'and therefore have all devils in my heart.'" The Innocence of Father Brown

"I did try to found an heresy of my own; and I when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy." Orthodoxy

"Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness." Orthodoxy

I had not bothered to underline passages (or, rather, highlight, since I read Chesterton from a Kindle) in certain books, but had I done so, they certainly would have been included in this list. These quotes fail to demonstrate how well Chesterton weaves narratives, although I sometimes wish he would end certain books in different manners. (Apparently, most of this post has just been quotes. If you aren't impressed by his quotes, that is perfectly fine.)
I hope that this will not be the last time I blog about Chesterton. I also hope to add more to this blog.