Author Description

Real Music by Anthony Esolen (with accompanying CD of 18 hymns recorded by the St. Cecilia Choir of St. John Cantius Church in Chicago) is a comprehensive and delightful guide to the great traditional hymnody of the Church. In an age when sacred hymns of the past have either been "modernized" or utterly rejected as irrelevant, Real Music restores to us to a treasure trove, the vast heritage of glorious sacred music for congregations and choirs. In it, Professor Esolen masterfully illustrates how the traditional hymns combine elegant poetry with sound doctrine and music composed and arranged by great masters. With the Church and Her precepts under assault from all sides, we need now, perhaps more than ever before, to contemplate the beauty and truth that these fine hymns proclaim. With noted literary scholar, poet, and translator Anthony Esolen as your guide and the St. Cecilia Choir as your muse, join the musical renaissance to recover and to restore to our churches the best that has been sung and played and prayed by Christians down through the ages. Real Music is arranged by events in the life of our Lord and the seasons and Sacraments of the Church. Join Professor Esolen on a pilgrimage into the realm of glorious poetry and incomparable music, all written to bring Christians ever closer to the faith of our fathers and to the Author of our faith. Real Music is a book meant to be savored. Whether you read the book and listen to, or perhaps even sing along with, the CD at home in your favorite easy chair, or among friends in an informal class at your parish, Real Music will enrich your spiritual life with magnificent music through which we may all offer praise and honor to God.