Famous last words
WILLIAM SPINNENWEBER FINE ARTS COLUMNIST At 4:30 p.m. on March 17, I was going about my usual business, which is not much during that time of day. My phone vibrated with the text message notifying me that classes went online for the remainder of the semester. I saw this decision coming, but my foresight did not make the reality […]
Franciscan’s sacred music schola featured in composition’s world premiere
WILLIAM SPINNENWEBER FINE ARTS COLUMNIST A standing room-only audience, emitting much anticipation and excitement, filled the pews and gallery of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh on Friday, Feb. 28. These patrons could have spent this 28-degree night bundled on their couches. Instead, a musical world premiere called them forth. Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Schola Cantorum Franciscana collaborated with the St. Vincent Camerata […]
Fine Arts Column: Art of the Requiem
WILLIAM SPINNENWEBER FINE ARTS COLUMNIST I am always spellbound by the Requiem Mass. The timeless prayers and eerie chants are like unto a sacred drama, evoking the various images of the last day: earth and heaven burning in ashes; humanity uttering pleas for souls to be saved from the abyss of Tartarus; a soul’s cry to […]
Travel Log: Medieval Spain, a lesson in all beauty
WILLIAM SPINNENWEBER FINE ARTS COLUMNIST Sir Roger Scruton’s recent and untimely death inspired my new philosophical hunt into matters of aesthetics and beauty. After all, real beauty is a fine art unto itself. Scruton said once, “Beauty has fallen into disrepute … There has been a huge cultural shift, an almost deliberate attempt to expel beauty from the place in […]
Fine Arts Column: Beauty and the human person – Palestrina in Rome
WILLIAM SPINNENWEBBER FINE ARTS COLUMNIST True art is an expression of the beauty of God, and man, who is created in his image and likeness, participates in this divine economy through his custody of the created world. Without arts – especially literature, poetry, and music – man loses vital mediums to portray his miseries and joys. “Gaudium et Spes,” the Vatican II document on the Church in […]