Real Music

Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church by Anthony Esolen, 274 pages

It is a truth rarely acknowledged that the Christian liturgy is at the center of the Western artistic tradition.  Both the fine and the practical arts developed as the handmaids of the Mass.  It can be argued that the seemingly undeniable decline of art over the course of the past few centuries is directly connected to the divorce of aesthetics from the sacred, and it is inarguable that this same divorce has impoverished the Church and resulted in much of what is seen, said, and sung being banal and second-rate.  It is under these conditions that Anthony Esolen invites us to consider the great hymns of the past, from the Protestant as well as Catholic tradition, and to appreciate their continuing power.

Esolen is a professor of English and not of music, which is reflected here in his concentration on poetry rather than melody.  Balancing this somewhat, the physical book includes a CD with performances of some relevant hymns by the St Cecilia Choir of Chicago's St John Cantius Church.  Despite the connection to St John Cantius, the book is not primarily a liturgical prescription, and Esolen is generally too preoccupied by the beauty of the hymns he is discussing to spend much time denigrating more recent compositions.  Instead, the book has the character of a devotional, exploring in a surprisingly moving way what these songs tell us about the Divine and our relationship with Him.