A Beautiful Pattern of Prayer - the Path to Heaven is a Triple Helix…

...And it passes through an octagonal portal.  

Liturgy, the formal worship of the Church - the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, the Eucharist at its centre - is the ‘source and summit of Christian life’. We are made by God to be united with him in heaven in a state of perfect and perpetual bliss, a perfect exchange of love. All the saints in heaven are experiencing this and liturgy is what they do. It is what we all are made to do; this how it is the summit of human existence. Our earthly liturgy is a supernatural step into the heavenly liturgy, this unchanging yet dynamic heavenly drama of love between God and the saints; and the node, the point at which all of the cosmos is in contact with the supernatural is Christ, present in the Eucharist. It is more fantastic than anything ever imagined in a sci-fi drama. There is no need to watch Dr Who to see a space-time vortex, when I take communion at Mass (assuming I am in the proper state of grace) I pass through one. And there’s no worry about hostile aliens, that battle is fought and won.

Everything else that the Church offers and that we do is meant to deepen and intensify our participation in this mystery. Through the participation in the liturgy, we pass from the temporal into a domain that is outside time and space. Heaven is a mode of existence where all time, past and future is compressed into single present moment; and all places are present at a single point.

Our participation in this cannot be perfect in this life, bound as we are by the constraints of time and space. We must leave the church building to attend to the everyday needs of life. However, this does not, in principle, mean that we cannot pray continuously. The liturgy is not just the summit of human existence; it is the source of grace by which we reach that summit. In conforming to the patterns and rhythms of the earthly liturgy in our prayer, we receive grace sufficient to sanctify and order all that we do, so that we are led onto the heavenly path and we lead a happy and joyous life. This is also the greatest source of inspiration and creativity we have. We will get thoughts and ideas to help us in choices that we make at every level and which permeate every action we take. Then our mundane lives will be the most productive and fulfilling they can be.

How do we know what these liturgical patterns are? We take our cue from nature, or from scripture. Creation bears the thumbprint of the Creator and through its beauty it directs our praise to God and opens us to His grace. The patterns and symmetry, grasped when we recognize its beauty, are a manifestation of the divine order.

Traditional Christian cosmology is the study of the patterns and rhythms of the planets and the stars with the intention of ordering our work and praise to the work and praise of the saints in heaven. This heavenly praise is referred to as the heavenly liturgy. The liturgy that we participate, which is connected supernaturally to the heavenly liturgy is called the earthly liturgy. The liturgical year of the Church is based upon these natural cycles of the cosmos. By ordering our worship to the cosmos, we order it to heaven. The date of Easter, for example, is calculated according to the phases of the moon. The earthly liturgy, and for that matter all Christian prayer, cannot be understood without grasping its harmony with the heavenly dynamic and the cosmos. In order to help us grasp this idea that we are participating in something much bigger that what we see in the church when we go to Mass, the earthly liturgy should evoke a sense of the non-sensible aspect of the liturgy through its dignity and beauty and especially the beauty and solemnit of the art and music we use with it. All our activities within it: kneeling, praying, standing, should be in accordance with the heavenly standard; the architecture of the church building, and the art and music used should all point us to what lies beyond it and give us a real sense that we are praising God with all of his creation and with the saints and angels in heaven.  When we pray in accordance with these patterns we are opening ourselves up to God’s helping hand at just the moment when it is offered. This is the prayer that places us in directly in beam of the heat lamp of God’s grace.

The harmony and symmetry of the heavenly order can be expressed numerically. For example, because of the seven days of creation in Genesis there are seven days in the week (corresponding also to a half phase of the idealised lunar cycle). The Sunday mass is the summit of the weekly cycle. In the weekly cycle there is in addition day, the so-called eighth ‘day’ of creation, which symbolises the new order ushered in by the incarnation, passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Sunday the day of his resurrection, is simultaneously the eighth and first day of the week (source and summit). Eight, expressed as ‘7 + 1’ is a strong governing factor in the Church’s earthly liturgy. (It is why baptismal fonts and baptistries are constructed in an octagonal shape and why you might have octagonal patterns on a sanctuary floors.)

Without Christ, the passage of time could be represented by a self enclosed weekly cycle sitting in a plane. The eighth day represents a vector shift at 90° to the plane of the circle that operates in combination with the first day of the new week. The result can be thought of as a helix. For every seven steps in the horizontal plane, there is one in the vertical. It demonstrates in earthly terms that a new dimension is accessed through each cycle of our participation temporal liturgical seven-day week.

The 7+1 form operates in the daily cycle of prayer in the Divine Office too. Quoting Psalm 118, St Benedict incorporates into his monastic rule the seven daily Offices of Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; plus an eighth, the night or early-morning Office, Matins.

Prime has since been abolished in the Roman Rite, but usually the 7+1 repetition is maintained by having daily Mass (not common in St Benedict’s time). Eight appears in the liturgy also in the octaves, the eight-day observances, for example of Easter. Easter is the event that causes the equivalent vector shift, much magnified, in the annual cycle. The Easter Octave is eight solemnities – eight consecutive eighth days that starts with Easter Sunday and finishes the following Sunday.

These three helical paths run concurrently, the daily helix sitting on the broader weekly helix which sits on the yet broader annual helix. We are riding on a roller coaster triple corkscrewing its way to heaven. This, however, is a roller coaster that engenders peace.

For those who are not aware of this, more information on this topic and how to conform you're life to this pattern, read The Little Oratory; A Beginner's Guide to Prayer in the Home and especially the section, A Beautiful Pattern of Prayer.

Pictures: The baptismal font, top, is 11th century, from Magdeburg cathedral. The floor patterns are from the cathedral at Monreale, in Sicily and from the 12th century. The building is the 13th century octagonal baptistry in Cremona, Italy.

Free Resource for Teachers: Stimulating the Artistic Sensibilities of Children

Colouring pages from the Sophia Institute Press website. There are two styles: iconographic and 13th century English gothic from the School of St Albans. I am often asked by parents and teachers of young children how we can develop their artistic sensibilities. I always suggest that part of it is exposing the to traditional styles of art as early as possible. Unless you have ready access to big city art galleries, or are able to own your own originals, which most don't, the most simple way is for them to see good reproductions. The task then is to make them interesting. So any book that I buy for my little daughter, I try as far as possible not only to buy books with beautiful illustrations, but also those done in traditional styles. Clearly you can't get obsessive about this...I just do it where I can.

The next step, when they are able to take is copying them. The easiest way to begin is by getting line drawings based on tradition works that you can photocopy and then enourage them first to colour in, and second to copy the lines. This can be the basis of beginner art classes and if the images are of sacred art, there is always a good lesson in faith than can be incorporated too. The new book, The Little Oratory: The Beginner's Guide to Family Prayer contains lots of icons in colour, which can be removed and used to create an icon corner; and also every chapter opens with a facing page that is a line drawing of an icon and pertains to the chapter in question. The intention was that, as well as elucidating the points discussed in the chapter, that leads to greater understand of both text and image,  this could be photocopied and used as a teaching resource for children.

Now Sophia Institute Press have made it even easier and have provided a colouring page on their website, here,  in which these images can be downloaded for free. This means that you can print them off on ordinary print paper, photocopy and give your children or class.

By developing the very first skills of colouring and drawing by copying these images, right from the start the child is learning skill in conformity to the work of another. This engenders a humility that will lead in the long run to a stimulation of the creative imagination and an openness to inspiration (should God choose to provide it). It is consistent with the methods that have always been used to teach art traditionally - where the artist is taught the skill through the study of nature and the works of great Masters.

As well as getting the complete set in the book, you can also buy individual larger high quality giclee prints of the colour plates in the book including St Michael above in the book at my online gallery here.

Medieval Graffiti in English Churches

This is one aspect of art that was just as bad in those days as it is now, perhaps even worse...I bring this curiosity to you courtesy of Deacon Paul Iacono of the Fra Angelico Institute of Sacred Arts. He, in turn, drew on reports that appear in the Guardian newspaper, here. As part of a systematic study of graffiti in Churches in East Anglia they have found some signed by a writer and monk John Lydgate (an admirer and friend of Chaucer). What strikes me about all of these is how timeless the images are. Graffiti, it seems was just a bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) in the 14th century as it is now! To the left you have a bishop in mitre. Below is an inscription found in St Mary's church, Lidgate, Suffolk. The text on the pillar, a few millimetres high, translates from the Latin as 'John Lydgate made this on the day of St Simon and St Jude'. That feast day is 28 October, with the year some time between 1390 and 1450. Underneath that is the church where the inscription was found. Other examples include devils or dragons and even geometric patterns.

Given the great interest in these, it does make one wonder if the past whitewashing of graffiti in the New York subway might be seen as a destructive act of iconoclasm by future commentators!

This looks like a dragon or a devil

Below, a montage of various compass drawn designs:

Cardinal Burke on the value of the liturgy in forming and preserving the faith

In a recently published interview on LifeSiteNews.com, here, Cardinal Burke made the following statement about the value of the liturgy. The question asked by the writer, Izabella Parowicz: how can our worship of God help us stand up in defence of human life? The Cardinal's reply was: 'According to the ancient wisdom of the Church, the law of worship is essentially connected to the law of belief and the law of practice. Christ comes into our midst through the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Sacraments of the Most Holy Eucharist and of Penance, to cleanse our hearts of sin and to inflame our hearts with His own love through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Only when we have a strong sense of the reality of the encounter with Christ in the Sacred Liturgy will we understand the truths of the faith and the moral life, and what they mean for our daily living. This sense is fostered by a manner of celebrating the Sacred Liturgy with our eyes fixed on Christ and not on ourselves. It should not surprise us that the period of post-Conciliar experimentation with the Sacred Liturgy, a period which was marked by so many liturgical abuses, was accompanied by a loss of faith and by moral decline. If the Sacred Liturgy is seen as a purely human activity, an invention of man, it will no longer be true communion with God and, therefore, will no longer nourish the faith and its practice in everyday living.'

This simple explication of what is summed up in the ancient phrase lex orandi, lex credendi - rule of prayer, rule of faith. If we accept what he says, it tells us the when the faith is waning, we must look first at liturgical practice for the answer. Furthermore, given that the contemporary culture is an incarnation of the core priorities and beliefs of society, the greatest weapon we have for the evangelization of the culture is the liturgy. This is how we create a culture of life.

As an aside, this is precisely the principle that Leila Lawler and I had in mind when we wrote our book, The Little Oratory - A Beginners Guide to Prayer in the Home. This is promoting the idea of liturgical piety in the home that is derived from and points to the Mass. The Liturgy of the Hours is an overflowing of the Mass into the day and into our daily lives and the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, therefore, is a supernatural key to the ordering of every aspect of our lives in accordance with a liturgical piety. So as well as focussing on the most important matter of the Mass, we should consider also the Liturgy of the Hours. Accordingly all Catholic devotions should support rather than distract from our liturgical practice. When all of this is harmonised the life prayer is one that makes ordinary living easier and not (as one might believe sometimes) a burden - an ever increasing list of things that I ought to be doing, and feel more and more guilty about when I fail to do them all.

Come Out of the Wilderness and into the Garden

The garden is the symbol of the culture of life

Gardens and farmland are more natural and more beautiful than pristine, untouched wilderness. Or at least they should be.

Of course the wilderness is beautiful. I am not trying to change anyone's view on that. But I am seeking to raise the status of cultivated land relative to it. The assumption of most conservationists today seems to be the opposite. In fact, my experience is that for many if there is an objective standard of beauty, it is nature unaffected by man.

This is consistent with a neo-pagan worldview. Many people even take this idea - that man is inferior to untouched nature - a step further and consider man not to be part of nature at all. The work of mankind is assumed to be unnatural …by nature (if you’ll forgive the phrase, but it does seem to highlight the absurdity of the position). Man's activity is seen as something that necessarily defaces creation. This places wilderness above gardens and farmland in the hierarchy of beauty; and above man in the hierarchy of being.

In the Christian worldview, man is the greatest creature in God’s creation. Man is not only part of creation, but his work can act to perfect it, that is to restore a fallen world to what it ought to be. To the degree that he works in harmony with the divine order (which is a standard higher than anything in the created world) his work is beautiful, productive and in harmony with the common good; and nature flourishes. This is the true ecology.

As soon as one acknowledges the possibility of man perfecting nature, then the route to a ‘green’ world is not the restriction of human activity, but an increase in the right sort of activity.  If one seeks to change the form of human activity so that it is working beautifully, in harmony with the divine order, then the more people there are, the better.

The neo-pagan worldview, on the other hand, cannot conceive of this restorative human interaction with creation. His activity is just more or less destructive. The only solution therefore that it has to propose is the reduction of all human activity. There is only one really effective way to do this – population control.

In some ways, it is not surprising that this secular, neo-pagan world view predominates. Many would look at man’s work, especially of the last 100 years, and see destruction and ugliness. This is, it seems to me, just another reflection of modern culture, along with the art, the music, architecture and so on. And the solution is the same. The via pulchritudinis is as much the answer to the culture of death as it is the culture of ugliness.

 I believe that when man cultivates the land and farms beautifully, then it is in harmony with the natural world and everything including wildlife flourishes in those parts that are left; the food produced is of a greater variety, healthier and tastier and it is produced in abundance. A discussion of farming methods is ultimately one about economics. This should be no surprise. Economics and business are a reflection of the culture as much as high art. However, this is beyond the scope of this short article. I have included, though, a picture of myself out for a walk in the Shropshire countryside in England. This landscape was formed by centuries of sympathetic farming (although one wonders how much longer it will be maintained). I could have as easily picked out a photograph of Tuscany , Provence, Granada or any small farm in New Hampshire (although these are disappearing fast).

This article is in praise of gardening. Unlike farming, there is no need to discuss economics. Anyone with the smallest plot of land can create a beautiful garden as anyone who has visited England will know (England is a land of beautiful gardens). when I talk of gardens, I am talking here of the cultivation of land for beauty, rather than for food. If farming is the Martha of man’s relationship with nature, gardening is the Mary. Adam was the first gardener in Eden. I would love to see the adoption of beautiful gardens as a modern symbol of a true ecology where man works with nature to restore Eden!

The traditional European model of the garden is geometric in form. I always imagine that the cloistered pathway into the church, should look onto the cloistered garden which is a re-creation Eden and a preparation for entering the church, which should evoke heaven. It should be the place in which man elevates the natural world, through God’s grace, into the highest and most beautiful form he is capable of producing. The picture shown above is of a cloistered garden, not in a monastery but in a stately home in Wales. Although simple (I had hoped to find something more ornate, but couldn't) it is still beautiful I think.

The English tradition of the landscaped garden arose in the 17^th century in imitation of paintings by the baroque masters of rural idylls in the neo-classical tradition. So for example we see a painting by the 17^th-century French landscape painter Claude Lorrain and a garden designed by Capability Brown at Stourhead in Wiltshire, England. There is even a ‘folly’ (a building that has no utility other than its place in the view) which mimics the Roman Pantheon.

My parents were avid gardeners who cultivated the back garden in the tradition of the English cottage garden. They are now retired and live in southern Spain (along with a host of British ex-pat retirees). Many English people recreate this style in the gardens of their villas in Malaga region. It is a year-round watering job just to keep the lawn, the tulips and petunias alive. My mum and dad, on the other hand, decided to use a similar design to their English garden, based upon foliage colours of shrubs and perennials, but by making use of indigenous species. Consequently, it thrives with a fraction of the watering. Mention this just to make the point that wherever you are, there plants that grow well and which can be ordered in a beautiful way. So you can plant your monastic cloistered cactus garden in Arizona, starting today!

New book for prayer in the home that will 'transform the family and society'

My book, co-authored with Leila Lawler, is now out and can be ordered from the publisher Sophia Institute Press. It is called The Little Oratory - A Beginner's Guide to Praying in the Home. The claim in the title about the impact it will have, incidentally, is not my own but is taken from a review by Scott Hahn, which I give in full below (although I do hope his assessment is correct!) It is a practical program in mystagogy - the teaching of the mysteries of the Faith - that promotes a cultural renewal through a liturgical piety in the family and parish. It explains how to build a prayer corner - a 'little oratory' - as the centre of family prayer and has eight color detachable icons in standard sizes for framing, to get you started. The paintings you see in this article are from the book.

It addresses the crisis of fatherhood by explaining crucial role of fathers in family prayer. By encouraging fathers (as well as mothers!) to be an example in prayer it will help to encourage vocations for it will teach boys that prayer and worship are masculine activities as well as feminine.

As such it is a family centered, practical manual for the New Evangelisation that could be promoted by parishes or cultural centres. It explains how family prayer can be the basis for building up communities beyond the family in parishes, for example, and even the workplace.

Here is what Scott Hahn wrote about it:

'This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. How I wish I'd had it when I first became a Catholic, not just for myself, as a husband and father, but for my family, too. It's a commonplace of Christian tradition to call the home a sanctuary or "domestic church," but before a home can be a church, it must become an oratory -- a place of prayer. The authors of this book know that there are many obstacles, and they show us how to overcome them. This book is inspiring yet practical, realistic yet revolutionary. If one book has the potential to transform the Catholic family (and society), this is it.'

It adapts for the family the traditional spirituality of artists that forms the person in humility so that they are open to inspiration and it engenders creativity. In addition it describes the practical aspects of an education in beauty based upon the traditional education of artists and how this can be applied at any level. It could be introduced, for example, into homeschooling groups, at a college level (I have been doing this in my Way of Beauty class) or even the basis of an MFA. The Sophia Institute Press site here [] includes downloadable high resolution prints of the icons in the book and numerous line drawings for coloring and for copying to help teach children how to draw (scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll find the link). This really is useful at all levels - I teach adults in my classes using these same images.

In addition it explains: • Why the Liturgy of the Hours is important and how it can make your family holy • How to sing your prayers even if you think you're tone deaf or timid • How to pray the Rosary with children—and keep the rowdiest of them calm and reverent • The active role children can play in the prayer life of the family and how to raise the cultural sensibilities of your children so they are more sensitive to divine beauty. • What to do when only one parent takes the spiritual life seriously • How to overcome the feeling that you’re too busy to pray • Practical ways to extend the liturgical life into your workplace

It has been well received so far and is endorsed also, by figures such as Joseph Pearce, Christopher West and Tom Howard. It is with the words of well-known Catholic writer Tom Howard that I finish: 'It is difficult indeed to refrain from superlatives when speaking of this book. It's all here. One would like to shout from the housetops, "Drop everything and start using this!" Here we find virtually all that could possibly be wanted for true Catholic household prayer. The liturgy, the Church year, the Hours, music, chant, icons, the Rosary, lots of "how to" helps, even tips on Catholic household décor. And the great thing is that it is all presented in clear, strong, sane, modest, unembellished prose. The helpful commentaries turn out to be luminous meditations actually. The book is a rare treasure.'

Buy the Little Oratory - A Beginner's Guide to Prayer in the Home from the Sophia Institute Press site, here.

 

Why All Christian Artists Must Learn to Draw - And Where You Can Learn To Do It Well

Summer Drawing Classes in the Academic Method at the Ingbretson Studios, Manchester NH All figurative Christian art, and especially sacred art, is a balance between natural appearances and idealisation. Idealisation is the controlled distortion from natural appearances that enables the artist to communicate invisible truths.

Some people assume that working in a style such as the gothic or iconographic is easier than in more naturalistic styles, but in fact to be able to work in a style well is takes great skill. The artist must be aware of span the divide between the two worlds he is representing. If there is too great an emphasis on natural appearances, then it lacks mystery. If the distortion so too great, then we lose a sense of the material. Artists should be aware too, that in sacred art the degree of naturalism should be less than in mundane art - for example landscapes and portraits.

Pius XII spoke of this in Mediator Dei (195) he refers to this balance (he uses the word 'realism' for my naturalism; and 'symbolism' for my idealism): 'Modern art should be given free scope in the due and reverent service of the church and the sacred rites, provided that they preserve a correct balance between styles tending neither to extreme realism nor to excessive "symbolism," and that the needs of the Christian community are taken into consideration rather than the particular taste or talent of the individual artist.'

The first step in getting this right is  studying the tradition to develop a sense of where the balance lies. Even so, different artists will have a different sense of exactly where this balance lies, but even recognition of the fact that there can be excessive naturalism and excessive abstraction and that he should seek the temperate mean goes a long way to getting it right.

The second step is getting the skill to represent precisely both the naturalistic and the idealistic (by reflecting accurately the idea of the mind in the artist). The artist who cannot draw well from nature cannot do this, for no matter how well conceived his ideas may be he cannot represent them accurately if he cannot draw well. Therefore learning to draw well is an essential part of the training of any artist. Regardless of the style in which he ultimately intends to paint in, I would recommend everyone to learn to draw rigorously. The best drawing training that I know is the academic method. I spent a year learning this in the Florence atelier of Charles H Cecil with the blessing of my icon painting teacher even though the style is very different. As a result the quality of my icon painting went up by orders of magnitude. A danger of learning the academic technique is that of being so dazzled by how ones drawing improves that one forgets that technique is only the means to an end and not the end. The artist must realise that he cannot succeed on technique alone and so should not neglect the development of his understanding tradition and how to direct those skills in the service of God.

Those who wish to learn this technique can come along to the Thomas More College summer school art program. This is done in conjunction with the world reknowned Ingbretson Studio, featured here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbtBW2T50p0 In this class a day spent in the studio is supplemented by a series of lectures explaining the basis of the tradition and placing the use of it within the context of Catholic sacred art so that you always control the technique in the service of the Church.

Just to illustrate the level of drawing skill achieved by the academic method. Here is work from the Russian 19th century Master Vasiliy Polenov. He is highly skilled. You can see a couple of examples of his drawings including one of a bibilical scene - the raising of the daughter of Jairus. I have also included a couple of his landscapes.

In my personal judgement, he was a superb draughtsman and has dazzling technical skill. This works wonderfully in the landscapes. However, it is not sufficiently abstracted or symbolic for sacred art and so his bibilical scenes look more like what we used to seeing as color plates in children's bibles than devotional art. It is interesting to note that in Russia in the 19th century, this is how art for churches was painted and part of process of reestablishing the Russian iconographic tradition, which happened in the 20th century as reaction to this by figures at the turn of the last century such as Fr Pavel Florensky. His analysis was then picked up by painters such as Ouspensky and Kroug in the mid-20th century.

The purpose of this not to argue against the validity of the academic training. In fact it is the opposite, I would argue that it has great value; but if one is to use it in the services of sacred art, one must be aware of how to direct that skill towards the right balance of naturalism and idealism. This is the special element, expressed in an explicitly Catholic way, is included in the classes I have described above, and which is absent from nearly all others.

Below: first, the raising of Jairus' daughter in full, then a drawing - portrait of an art critic; a superb landscape of a Russian rural scene; then two bibilical scenes - 'he who is without sin' and the boy Jesus found in the temple teaching the teachers. By way of contrast I show Duccio's version of the same subject that has a much more abstracted style.

       

And here is a poster for the summer drawing class run by TMC and the Ingbretson Studios

Stations of the Cross - Some New Images in the Gothic Style

On Good Friday, here are some images for the season. A reader has directed my attention to the paintings of this London based Catholic painter. She bases here style on the 14th century Italian gothic style. I am encouraged that she is developing so well a voice, so to speak, that is characteristic of the Western tradition. I am reminded of the Florentine painter Lorenzo Monaco, whose paintings I used to see regularly in the National Gallery in London when I lived there. The link for the full set on her website is here; and to her notes on the commission here.

These new Stations were blessed by the Bishop of Norwich at Wymondham Abbey on Laetare Sunday.

There is one point of consideration here and that is the choice of painting the buildings in the style of 14th century Italy and some of the figures dressed in clothes contemporary to that period (we see that in the 5th station particularly. When painted, these were echoes of what the world around them looked like at that time. One might argue that today, if we were to adopt the same principle, we would be showing modern buildings and modern clothes painted in a gothic style. It is difficult to imagine, but it is the job of the artist to imagine for us. This is the talking point that I brought up recently in connection with my own work in the style of the English School of St Albans. I painted a pious knight in chainmail and wondered if I should have been painting a pious Wall Street trader in pinstripe suit as a modern equivalent!

On the other hand it might be argued that although not historically accurate representation of Palestine of 2000 years ago is nevertheless convincing to the modern viewer in regard to sacred art. We are not concerned with strict historical representation provided the principles that we do wish to convey are communicated, and the style is certainly the right balance of naturalism and abstraction that one would want to see. One could argue therefore, that it evokes another age sufficiently for us to acknowledge that this event took place historically in the past and then we move past that and on to the spiritual lessons.

Christ meets his mother

Christ's Second Fall

Christ is nailed to the cross

12th century Christian geometric art

Some readers will already be aware of the Christian tradition of geometric and patterned art (see longer articles in the section Liturgy, Number, Proportion on the archive site). This was an adaptation of the patterned geometric art that we see in the pre-Christian classical period. TMC is, in a small way. The Way of Beauty class, students reproduce some of the patterns seen at the Romanesque Cappella Palatina in Sicily.The principles behind this geometric design echo the patterns and harmonies that are the basis of proportion and compositional design in traditional architecture and art (and they are surprisingly simple to learn – you do not need special artistic ability). Although all artists would benefit from this knowledge, this is not simply an artistic pursuit. It relates to the study of the traditional education called the ‘quadrivium’.

The quadrivium, four of the seven liberal arts (geometry, music, number and cosmology), is concerned with the study of cosmic order as a principle of beauty, and which is expressed mathematically. The patterns and rhythms of the liturgy of the Church reflect this order too. Christian geometric art is an abstract (in the sense of non-figurative visual representation) manifestation of Christian number symbolism. This aspect of traditional education came from the ancients too. Pope Benedict XVI, again in one of his weekly papal addresses, described how St Boethius worked to bring this aspect of Greco-Roman culture into a Christian form of education, by writing manuals on each of these disciplines. In the medieval university, he seven liberal arts were the basis of qualification of the Bachelor of Arts (the Trivium), the Master of Arts (for the Quadrivium) and these then were the preparation for further study in the higher subjects of Theology or Philosophy, for which one could receive a Doctorate.

Geometry is not now, to my knowledge, a living tradition as a Christian art form. By the time of the Enlightenment the acceptance of number symbolism had fallen away and it died out.

I recently taught an undergraduate class about Islamic geometric patterned art at Thomas More College. This tradition, an example from a tile at the the Alhambra in Granada is shown right, is derived from the Byzantine patterned art of the lands they conquered (and of course the classical mosaics and other patterned art that preceded them). Because Islam was forbidden completely, in its strictest interpretation, from any figurative art, their focus on abstract art forms was intensified. Islamic craftsmen took what they had taken from the Byzantine craftsmen and developed it into something more complex than had previously existed.

The question I asked that first class was: can we safely take it back?  That is, in order to reestablish this as a Christian form, can we look to the Islamic art form and re-form it into Christian tradition again?

I was pleased that in response my class said, yes. (Teachers are always pleased when their class agrees with them!) They understood further that while we can adopt some of the forms, we don’t have to adopt the Islamic numerical symbolism as well. Islamic number symbolism is similar, but crucially different from the Christian symbolism. (The number three and the Trinity come to mind immediately.) That is, it is always important to make sure that due proportion is used – that the number symbolism contained within the symmetry of the pattern is appropriate to the place where it is used, when understood in Christian terms.

For the final project of the semester I suggested to them that they consider how to incorporate some of the patterns they are learning to draw one that could be used in the floor of the sanctuary of a church. (The class in the Way of Beauty summer program will be doing something similar.)

The day after introducing the topic to the TMC students, I stumbled across this website, www.thejoyofshards.co.uk which is a great resource of images of mosaics and opus sectile work. Its gallery ranges from the floors in the offices of a Victorian architect in Norwich to Roman villas and the great churches of the world. The section on Sicilian mosaics has 80 photographs of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo. This revealed that precisely what my class was proposing had been done by the Norman king, Roger II of Sicily when he built his private chapel in the 12^th century. He employed not only Christian mosaicists and Cosmati pavement specialists who produced geometric art in the Christian tradition, but also Islamic craftsmen.  He instructed them to produce patterns obviously derived from those that can be seen in mosques and adapted for Christian use.  This a model that would be well worth further study and I hope any architects reading this might consider commissioning something like this. I have included some photographs below of the chapel, and one pattern from a mosque for comparison; and you can see more at joyofshards.co.uk.

Below are examples of opus sectile (cut work) from the Palatina)

Is Easy Listening the Modern Day Equivalent of the Music of the Jongleurs and the Troubadors?

Can elevator music be elevating...or is it just superficial fluff peculiar to our age? What makes easy listening at once so popular and yet so reviled by ever self-respecting and serious music fan? I thought about this recently when my wife, who is Venezuelan, put on a CD in the car by a Mexican artist called Rocio Durcal (you can hear her at the bottom of this article). I had never heard of her or the music before (she was a Mexican singer) but enjoyed it, and it struck me that at one time I would never have admitted it, for with its gushing strings and romantic themes this was definitely, dare I say it....easy listening.

When I was 18 and took music seriously, and I mean really seriously, you defined the sort of person you were by the music you liked. This was in the days of large vinyl LPs with brightly coloured covers and so I always made sure that I would be seen carrying the socially acceptable record covers around the school campus. I was a serious 'progressive' rock fan branching out into jazz rock/fusion and used to love quoting band names that I thought you hadn't heard of such as Brand x (Phil Collins's part-time jazz rock band), Bruford (the former Yes drummer's jazz rock band) and Return to Forever featuring Chic Corea on keyboards, Stanley Clarke on bass and Al Dimeola on guitar.

I had long hair (or as long as I could have it without getting into trouble at school), flared jeans and embroidered motifs of my favorite band on my denim jacket. If you had no clue who the people I referred to were, or had never heard the music, that was great. Half the attraction was that they didn't have mass appeal - or only appealed to the right sort of person. We were teenage musical gnostics with elite sensibilities and eclectic tastes that we though only the adolescent cogniscienti would understand.

If any artist was too popular or popular with anyone other than the right sort, I would like them less. I remember taking delight in the BBC using instrumental sections from Genesis's The Musical Box as background music for a news magazine feature on Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland in 1979. What made it perfect for me was that while the BBC producers obviously knew this music, very few watching the TV program would know what they were listening to. Here was validation of my tastes from the culturati of the country.

For the curious, here's And So to F... by Brand X featuring Phil Collins on drums. He is playing some obscure rhythm...the comments in YouTube tell me nine beats in a bar. Collins played with this band while with Genesis, but before he made it as a solo star:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOLmTsZ0YSw

At my high school, an all boys school, we were divided into two musical camps. I was with those who liked the sort of rock music that had pretensions to being the classical music of its day. The other followed the newly arrived punk scene which claimed to signify rebellion and anarchy which, so it was said, was 'what rock'n'roll was meant to do'. I remember one dissenter, Bill Bland, who used to listen to soul, jazz and reggae - Isaac Hayes, Miles Davis and Steel Pulse (UB40 were too mainstream!). Rest of us didn't know what to make of him.

For the fact that we argued about the merits of the Sex Pistols and Stranglers, both camps were clear on one thing, easy listening was the lowest of the low. Saying you liked Andrew Lloyd Webber or Julio Iglesias was just about social suicide in anybody's book. The greatest put downs for any music were to brand it as Easy Listening and, even worse, West Coast (Californians who thought they were cool and knew how to rock but didn't really know their stuff).

Sometime in the early 1980s I heard an interview with Phil Collins. He was saying that one of his favourite artists was a singer called Stephen Bishop. I had never heard of him and immediately ran out to buy an album. I bought Careless. The cover was a little off-putting - a fuzzy focus photo pretty man with a bouffant hair style. On listening to it, I just couldn't believe it. It was a load of soppy sentimental love songs. I felt betrayed. Here was a serious rock musician, a virtuoso drummer like Phil Collins who could play jazz and fusion recommending something that, dare I say it, my mum might even listen to. What was worse, he was from San Diego, so he was both Easy Listening and West Coast.

Here is a tune by Bishop, called Looking for the Right One see what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=croQAwuEhnU

After initially rejecting him, I caught myself humming the tunes one day. So I played it more  and more and though I wasn't telling anyone at this stage, gradually I collected every record he had ever released. When Phil Collins started to sell his solo records, I was initially disdainful, and then realised that there was much of Stephen Bishop in what he was doing. He even appeared on later Bishop albums, from which the following is taken:

Stephen Bishop, Parked Cars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF82ya4b924&feature=kp Furthermore, later once I had overcome that barrier of pride and could acknowledge that I liked it, I found myself buying and listening to others, Burt Bacharach and Herb Alpert are two examples given here below.

So what is the place in a culture of beauty for such music. In the context of pop music it is musically sophisticated and created skillfully to appeal to have an immediate impact on a broad range of people with little effort on the part of the listener...hence the name. It is melodic, well crafted and well performed and I can't help liking it.

I still play it and sing along when I'm on my own in the car. But is it bad for me? Has Stephen Bishop beguiled me and corrupted my sensibilities? Is it detrimental to the soul? Am I, to quote the title of a song by Australian rock band AC/DC, on a 'highway to hell' as I sit behind the steering wheel of my Toyota Corolla singing along to what my ishuffle feeds the audio system?

I suggest that musically, while not the most complex or profound and even at its best it is unlikely ever to cause a dramatic conversion to the Faith. This is a genre that is not intrinsically bad. Having said that, if this was the sum total of my listening, then it might be problematic, but having an occasional sing-along in the car is fun every now and again. The light-hearted and romantic have their place provided that they sit happily within a broad range of music. I have a feeling that this will horrify the every-went-downhill-after-Bach school of musical appreciation, but I don't think I can spend the whole time on just chant and polyphone, even though I would support the idea strongly that this is the highest form of music.

As with all popular forms of music, I think that the Christian must look at it and think about what makes it popular. At its root it must be something good. No matter how noble and accessible the music of the liturgy or serious classical music or whatever its High Culture equivalent of the time, there will always be a place, I suggest, in the mass culture for something that is less demanding. In the middle ages there was folk music and the romantic, sometimes more serious, chivalric poetry, the songs of the jongleurs and the troubadors. Some of this was high culture, but not all. If we don't create good easy listening, then bad easy listening will dominate

As for anything that is so enduringly popular, the question is not one of replacing something we deem to be less than perfect, but rather one of asking how we can add to it - modifying and improving, even enobling. Yes the superficial can be noble. It can be the form that stimulates gently the desire for the good and leads us to something greater. It may only be  skin deep, but the perfect body has perfect skin too!

The sentiments expressed in the words of our modern form are not always morally sound and I would prefer that it was better in this respect (this was true of the medieval counterparts also, I understand). The poetry of the lyrics could be improved but let this be a challenge to Christian song writers. Musically, the form should be considered too - does it open the door to higher musical forms or distract from them? I can envisage the day when a new Barry Manilow attracts adoring housewives and men who listen but won't admit it publicly (like me) to the world of Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

This creates another litmus text for the establishment of a true Christian culture. We aim for the time when even the elevator music is elevating.

Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, Walk on By

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0wCuwUneSM

Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass epitomises the Latin easy listening style for me. I was shocked to discover recently that he is ethnically Ukrainian, not Hispanic. In fact none of his band were hispanic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_KDPUTyDyQ

And here's the tune that started the whole reflection, Rocio Durcal sings Amor Eterno:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWaxCIwz_M