03 April 2007

Another Kretzmann...

It is no accident of time that our age has produced nothing great in the field of religious art... No great painting, no great sculpture, no great music... True, we have one or two great churches, and perhaps a few great interpreters of music of another day, but nothing beyond that... We don't think and feel greatly about our faith... It is still an axiom that a cheap and easy religion likes a cheap and easy art.. This is particularly true of music...

O.P. Kretzmann, meditating on the Bach Mass in B Minor, *The Pilgrim* pp. 87, 88.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It goes far beyond not having any great composers of sacred music. Our generation has almost no greats in ANY field! Where is any great composer today, or even any truly great musician? Where is any Albert Schweitzer or Albert Einstein? Where is any world-renouned poet? Where is a Dostoyevsky or Faulkner or Dickens? Where any statesman? Where any great philanthropist? (Okay, there's one big philanthropist and great businessman: Bill Gates.) There's one great dancer, too, Mikhail Baryshnikov. Where is there a renouned painter or sculptor? It's just hard to name any such people today! We are truly an impoverished generation.

Anastasia