# Catholic composers



## Clouds Weep Snowflakes

Mozart and Haydn were practicing Catholics; what about Chopin and Beethoven? Chopin was Polish after all...and Vivaldi? The Church indorsed many forms of art, so could you point out some more?


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## Bwv 1080

Liszt, Messiaen, Penderecki


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## JosefinaHW

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Mozart and Haydn were practicing Catholics; what about Chopin and Beethoven? Chopin was Polish after all...and Vivaldi? The Church indorsed many forms of art, so could you point out some more?


That headpiece in your avatar is stunning!!! Thank you for sharing.

Of course add all those monks and nuns who sang all that pleinchant. Dvorak--gorgeous, emotional sacred music. It would seem that Dvorak's music apart from the symphonies is over-looked too much. Check it out.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes

JosefinaHW said:


> That headpiece in your avatar is stunning!!! Thank you for sharing.
> 
> Of course add all those monks and nuns who sang all that pleinchant. Dvorak--gorgeous, emotional sacred music. It would seem that Dvorak's music apart from the symphonies is over-looked too much. Check it out.


That type of crown is called a diadem, and the term is used in the Apocalypse of St. John, the last book of the Bible; Google that.


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## Taggart

Elgar was a nominal Catholic. James MacMillan is one of the moderns. Don't forget Byrd, Tallis and Peter Phillips.


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## NLAdriaan

Technically, Mahler converted to Catholicism in 1897, as a Jew was not allowed to become Chief of the Wiener Staatsoper

BTW, his wife Alma turned out to be a fanatic anti-Semite.

Maybe this is not quite the example you are looking for...


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## DavidA

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Mozart and Haydn were practicing Catholics; what about Chopin and Beethoven? Chopin was Polish after all...and Vivaldi? The Church indorsed many forms of art, so could you point out some more?


Beethoven was a non-practising Catholic but he certainly believed the text of the Missa Solemnis


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## DavidA

NLAdriaan said:


> Technically, Mahler converted to Catholicism in 1897, as a Jew was not allowed to become Chief of the Wiener Staatsoper
> 
> BTW, his wife Alma turned out to be a fanatic anti-Semite.
> 
> Maybe this is not quite the example you are looking for...


It is pretty certain that Mahler's 'conversion' was one of convenience. Throughout his life his was agnostic.


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## Larkenfield

DavidA said:


> It is pretty certain that Mahler's 'conversion' was one of convenience. Throughout his life his was agnostic.


I seriously doubt that Gustav Mahler was an "agnostic" or "atheist" throughout his life, though he of course was tested and sometimes had his doubts. But as a presumed "agnostic" he writes his _Ressurection_ Symphony? Who does that? The idea of resurrection is spiritual or religious in nature whether he was a practicing Jew, Christian, or not. When Mahler participated in a performance of Symphony No. 2 by Ernst von Schuch in Dresden, he further filled out his religious vision at that time in the program notes:

_"Softly there rings out a chorus of the holy and the heavenly. 'Risen again, yea thou shalt be risen again!' There appears the glory of God! A wonderful gentle light permeates us to our very heart - all is quiet and blissful! - And behold there is no judgement. - There is no sinner, no righteous man - no great and no small-There is no punishment and no reward! An almighty feeling of love illumines us with blessed knowing and being."_

"There appears the glory of God" suggests otherwise that he was not a lifelong agnostic or atheist for those not satisfied with a simple answer to his spiritual convictions. How many agnostics or atheists espouse a stated belief in reincarnation, which could be considered another form of resurrection?-

_"We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation."_

Nor does hearing his music, at least to those who understand him better, suggest anything disconnected with the spiritual forces of nature and life, the energy of agnosticism, such as his 3rd Symphony which suggests Divine Creation from the ground up.

He was not a simple but a complex man who explored many spiritual avenues and cannot be conveniently pigeonholed as being one thing or another. Sometimes one has to ponder and read between the lines... but the problem is that some appear incapable of doing that because they may have no spiritually-based convictions of their own-_they're _the agnostics, skeptics, and atheists-and are unable to recognize those convictions in someone such as Mahler.


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## wkasimer

IIRC, Bruckner was a devout Catholic.


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## Taggart

Don't forget Josquin des Prez, Machaut, Dufay, Taverner. All European composers pre 1500 were Roman Catholic.


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## Vronsky

Messiaen was a devout Catholic and he often emphasized his strong faith. I would also mention Berlioz, even though he was an agnostic, his liturgical music is superb.


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## MusicSybarite

Stravinsky became catholic as far as I know.


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## 1996D

Liszt wanted the priesthood after screwing half the women in Europe:lol:


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## tdc

Monteverdi was a Roman catholic priest.


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## vesteel

Zelenka aka the "Catholic Bach"


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## JosefinaHW

Schnittke converted to Catholicism.


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## nobilmente

By upbringing (in Bavaria) Max Reger was naturally a Catholic. He did however have a deep love of traditional Lutheran chorales which he used in many fine organ works.


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## norman bates

Lili (and Nadia) Boulanger
Nikolai Obukhov

I'm not sure about Galina Ustvolskaya, Sofia Gubaidolina or Arvo Part.


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## Larkenfield

Don’t forget the catholic composers (small c) who love plenty of variety, broad diversity, and worship in no church.


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## Manxfeeder

Don't forget Cherubini. Also, Gounoud wrote some lovely Catholic music. Maybe not top-tier but lovely anyway. And Gabrieli is lots of fun.


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## Manxfeeder

MusicSybarite said:


> Stravinsky became catholic as far as I know.


He was Russian Orthodox.


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## Manxfeeder

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Mozart and Haydn were practicing Catholics . . .


I think it's a shame that right when Mozart figured out how to really write sacred music (the Ave Verum, the priests' chorus in Magic Flute, the requiem), he died. What he could have produced if he had lived would have been amazing.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes

Manxfeeder said:


> I think it's a shame that right when Mozart figured out how to really write sacred music (the Ave Verum, the priests' chorus in Magic Flute, the requiem), he died. What he could have produced if he had lived would have been amazing.


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## Manxfeeder

The Coronation Mass is great, but I can hear in those late pieces that he was about to go somewhere else.


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## Clouds Weep Snowflakes

Manxfeeder said:


> The Coronation Mass is great, but I can hear in those late pieces that he was about to go somewhere else.


Just the thought for dying at 35...yet he achieved so much!


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## Manxfeeder

Clouds Weep Snowflakes said:


> Just the thought for dying at 35...yet he achieved so much!


Seriously! He keeps us all humble.


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## nobilmente

The immortal Franz Schubert was closely associated with the church in a variety of ways in his early years. As with Mozart, what he achieved in the short time given to him leaves one speechless.


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## RICK RIEKERT

MusicSybarite said:


> Stravinsky became catholic as far as I know.


In 1910 Stravinsky left the Russian Orthodox Church into which he was born, He later discovered "the necessity of religious belief" and from 1926 to 1939 Stravinsky attended liturgy regularly at an Orthodox church in Paris that served the Russian émigré population. Stravinsky related that a miraculous healing had played a role in his reconversion. In 1925 when suffering from an abscess in his right finger, he prayed at a church in Nice before a "miraculous" icon for healing. Not long afterwards he gave a concert in Venice, and as he sat down at the piano to play his Piano Sonata and removed the bandage from his finger, he discovered that the abscess was miraculously healed.

After that period his churchgoing began to lapse (the music, he complained, all sounded "like Rachmaninoff" and once in confession the priest had asked him for his autograph). Stravinsky was greatly influenced by his friend, the Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain, who led a Catholic intellectual revival in France between the World Wars. Maritain articulated a neo-Thomistic aesthetics and hailed Stravinsky as a living example of the ideal Christian artist, praising the "discipline," "classical rigor," and "purity" of his more recent music. But however tempted at times by Roman Catholicism, to the end Stravinsky considered himself staunchly Russian Orthodox "for linguistic reasons".


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