The Sage of Baltimore on Music Sacred and Profane

"From chant and Palestrina to Bach to Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven to Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms, to Igor Stavinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and jazz (all three of which he detested), Mencken covers all the most important composers of the Western canon that existed at the time he was writing, and he does it with erudition and love," says Michael Lawrence of a spectactular find at a used book store — H.L. Mencken on Music.

As an example of the "seeming iconoclastic tendencies of the writer," the reviewer writes, "Today, for instance, people in the main laugh at the ancient Greek notions that music can be dangerous, that its mystical tones can woo us to do good or ill, or just downright tawdry things. Mencken takes up the Hellenic cause, saying that the music a man creates is revelatory of character."

"More interesting gems are contained in Mencken’s writing about church music," notes the reviewer, who later continues, "Perhaps the most surprising essay in the whole collection is the one on Catholic Church music, in which Mencken lauds the efforts of Pope Pius X to resurrect chant and polyphony and shelve the operatic caterwauling that had been fashionable at that time. It’s not the kind of story one would expect to come from an agnostic, but this could perhaps be the result of the writer’s occasional friendly gatherings with clergymen, including the local archbishop."

[link via A conservative blog for peace]