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Featured
Haec Dies by William Byrd and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
A festive, rousing motet for this Christmas Day - or twelve days - by William Byrd, composed in 1591, here performed by the incomparable Voces8.
Haec dies quam fecit Dominus: exultemus et laetemur in ea,...
Nota in Brevis
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens' novella A Christmas Carol was first published on December 19, 1843, and it has been a much beloved classic ever since. Sure, it has some Protestant undertones - why was Scrooge, presumably...
Reviews
Bach and the Fourth Sunday of Advent
J.S. Bach composed Cantatas for many Sundays and feasts (over 200!)- in the Lutheran liturgical calendar, to be sure, but one which remained close to its Catholic origins. Here is the one for the...
Articles
Sunday Musical Offering: Three Emmanuels
In these last days of Advent, here are three versions of the ancient Advent hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, dating back 1200 years to monastic traditions in the 8th or 9th century. The...
Nota in Brevis
Stop Hiring Humans?
So says the provocative advertisement - but without my added question mark - on billboards in San Francisco - where else? Other head lines say that AI employees 'never come to work hungover', and...
Nota in Brevis
Saint Nicholas and the Silence of Saint Thomas
It was on this day 751 years ago that Saint Thomas Aquinas stopped writing. Or, more properly, dictating - for he had scribes write down his rapid thoughts, at times, I have heard, three...
Nota in Brevis
Tolle, Lege!
Ironic, perhaps, that I suggest the following article for our readers, on this medium. For Ed Simon exhorts in strong language for a return to the printed page, to immerse ourselves in books, in...
Nota in Brevis
Novena to the Immaculate Conception
Here is a worthy and beneficial novena to the Immaculate Conception, whose intercession is much needed in our world - she is the patroness of the United States - and very beneficial to our...
