Friday Links, November 5, 2021
+ James Matthew Wilson podcast interview at Deep Down Things, the podcast (no, not us)
+ Kerry McCarthy, Early Music singer and biographer of Renaissance composers Byrd and Tallis, is interviewed about the traditional choir schools put down by the Reformation.
+ Word on Fire reminds us that “Momento Mori” is a Catholic thing.
+ In time for Christmas giving, a chance to order artwork by Daniel Mitsui and get a free Momento Mori giclée print you might keep for your own contemplation of the Four Last Things.
Souls or Selves
At the above link, long-time Dappled Things contributor, poet James Matthew Wilson is interviewed at a Deep Down Things podcast (which is not related to this blog by the same name—although the possibility perhaps should be explored). The interview is conducted by Dave Deavel, Editor, and Liz Kelly, Managing Editor of LOGOS: a Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture at University of St. Thomas, St. Paul. The interview’s topic is Wilson’s LOGOS article titled, “Emptying the Tankard: Recovering the Soul in the Age of the Self.”
What is this tankard that needs to be emptied? Here’s a quote from the article.
“Making the Long Retreat in August 1880, the poet, Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins kept a notebook record of his Spiritual Exercises. There he writes of how acute is the ‘taste of myself, of I and me above all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.’ He concludes, ‘Searching nature I taste self at but one tankard, that of my own being.’”
Images: Faith, Hope, and Charity, reverse painted on glass on a gilded silver Tankard, gilded silver, (1649). Designs by Dietrich Mayer. At the Met. Images in the public domain.
The lost world of plainsong, interrupted by the Reformation
Fr. Michael Rennier, DT web editor and contributor, shared the above link. In this interview about her biography of Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis, Kerry McCarthy describes the thriving tradition of plainsong in medieval English choral schools, which was violently put down by the Reformation. You can also read an interview with McCarthy in the Sacred Music Journal of the Church Music Association of America, by me here.
“MEMENTO MORI” CALLS US TO LIVE IN DEATH
Katy Carl, DT editor in chief, recommends the above link. Haley Stewart, a Fellow of the Word on Fire Institute reviews Muriel Spark’s novel Memento Mori so engagingly that now I simply must read it. The review starts with Stewart’s own first memento mori—which happened at an All Souls Day Requiem Mass with a catafalque. What’s a catafalque? I’ll let you read the review to find out. Or see below.
Prayers for the deceased at the catafalque, a box draped with a black pall and surrounded by six unbleached beeswax candlesticks, which stands in for the dead person when the body is not present at a traditional Requiem Mass. From a Requiem Mass at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory, San José, CA, 2006.
The Four Last Things (Momento Mori) by Daniel Mitsui
Until November 30, anyone who places an order for a giclée print or an original drawing through Daniel Mitsui’s website (click the above link to read more) will receive for free a 5" × 7" giclée print of the Four Last Things (Memento Mori).
