Dante’s Global Vision: Seeing and Being Seen in the “Divine Comedy”
“The things of friends are common.” —Greek proverb (quoted by Socrates in the Phaedrus) It is a pleasure to be with you today, to visit Belmont University…
“The things of friends are common.” —Greek proverb (quoted by Socrates in the Phaedrus) It is a pleasure to be with you today, to visit Belmont University…
Feelings are ‘vectors’; for they feel what is there and transform it into a here. — Alfred North Whitehead Let me begin by saying to our alumni: Welcome home!…
“For the singer, words acquire a very special plenitude and depth of meaning. Something that remains silent in words merely spoken begins to flow, to vibrate; the…
Music transcends the classroom, the concert stage, and professional recordings. It pervades life. Mankind has long used music in all sorts of ways, to celebrate, to lament,…
Another World of Longing I end my musical-cosmological reflection with a piece of music that depicts the world as a certain kind of music, polyphony. It is…
From Divine Circles to the Wheel of Ixion: Music in a World of Woe The first and main volume of The World as Will and Representation is…
“Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol This lecture explores the differences between two perspectives on music: one ancient, one modern. The texts I…
Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. Robert R. Reilly, Washington, DC: Morley Books, 2002. In his generous and beautifully written…
They who were two and divided now became one and united.” —Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde I come before you this evening not as a…
St. John’s College and the Great Books Program here at Mercer University have much in common. Both programs revolve around a set of great works of Western…