Dear Friends,
When I started Scala ten years ago this month, I had no idea how to support today’s creators of beautiful art or music. Today, I’m excited to share the latest commission from Scala: composer and conductor Sir James MacMillan has agreed to compose an original “Way of Beauty” anthem for Scala.
The words for this piece of music will drawing on lines from St. Augustine’s reflections on beauty from The Confessions that start with, “Late have I loved you, o Beauty ever ancient, ever new,” and then conclude with prayer we wrote calling on the Holy Spirit for creative inspiration. Our hope is that once Sir James has set the words to music, this new composition will be recorded, shared across all of Scala’s channels, and sung in churches, homes and schools for years to come.
Informed Patrons of the Arts Silence the Culture Wars
Today, I invite you to be a patron of the arts. You can help silence the culture wars by supporting Scala in its tenth anniversary month. Although he’s one of the most renowned composers in both secular and religious circles, when I learned he is open to our input for ideas of what to compose next, I jumped at the chance to collaborate in this unique way. Your donations will allow us collaborate with Sir James on this new piece of music.
MacMillan has spoken at several of Scala’s public events, and traveled to Princeton to train new young composers in a program Scala helped co-sponsor through the Catholic Sacred Music Project led by Peter Carter. I’ve sung his music at the Aquinas Institute choir that Peter leads. I’ve played his music for my niece who was born disabled and can’t speak. I’ve played again and again last year’s recordings of a choir singing his music during Scala’s conference at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, like this motet, Mitte manum tuam, referring to John 20:27 when Jesus told the doubting Thomas to put his hands in Jesus’s wounds and have faith.
With your support, we can create more beautiful music like this. When it’s released, you can help us spread it. When completed and released, listeners will be directed to enjoy his music as much as I and millions of others already have. His beautiful compositions will drown out the banal, lifting hearts and minds to high ideals and new hope.
Every gift this month of August, including your first month as a monthly patron, is matched dollar for dollar, up to $15,000. Thanks to all of you have already given. If you haven’t yet given, you still have time! New monthly patrons of $100 more will receive a signed copy of my book, When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God.
Sir James has risen to worldwide renown by writing music for the secular world, such as concert halls, opera houses, and theaters. He’s also a devout Catholic from an impoverished area of Scotland who has never left his love of God through the liturgy behind. That combination of faith and artistic creativity once stymied his secular admirers.
From Skeptical to Curious to Fascinated
Listeners have grown tired of hearing banal forms of music that fail to inspire or attract listeners. Thanks to composers Sir James, the tide is shifting. As MacMillan told Scala’s board recently:
“When I was studying music in a largely secular environment, many expected religion to recede in the world of culture and the arts. However, classical music has proved that the search for the sacred did not go away in modernity.”
Sir James described a transformation underway: those who were once skeptical about theology have become curious about the Bible stories and Christian teachings. Rather than mocking the difficult parts of Christian, more and more people are interested in ideas like the message that our salvation comes in part through redemptive suffering.
To illustrate this shift, MacMillan pointed out how last year, the BBC commissioned a six-part series for its popular program on Radio 3, Music Matters, to explore the book of Genesis and the creation story through music. The BBC gave him “carte blanche” to bring in voices of faith for the show, including my own.
Other guests included the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
“Sometimes, for the first time,” Sir James said, “people are fascinated by what we have to bring to the conversation.”
Once begun, the journey from skeptical to curious and then fascinated keeps going.
“All music, in a sense, opens the door onto the numinous,” Sir James said. “In that world, where we share those general tendencies and perceptions, the culture wars go silent, and the believer and the non-believer can engage in a common enthusiasm, a common love, a common journey towards a sense of the numinous in this art form that we love.”
When you give to Scala this month, you are not just supporting an idea. You are commissioning a new work of sacred music into existence, one that thousands of people will hear, sing, and be moved by long after this campaign ends.
Become a monthly patron at $100 or more (or $1,200 annually), and you’ll receive a signed copy of my book When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God — matched dollar for dollar this month.
A one-time gift of any amount will help us make the most of this great opportunity!
This is not the only way Scala is helping to end the culture wars. Soon, I’ll introduce you to Andrew Goldstein of the Vigil Project, who is working with Scala to bring great music back into families and churches. You will also meet Dominic, who, thanks to Scala’s outreach, became an art student at the Stabat Mater Atelier in Texas, and learned to sing the psalms in a group at his art school from my husband David.
Our efforts will surely help find and prepare the next world-renowned artist like a new Sir James MacMillan or even a new Michaelangelo.
But those great artists can’t do it on their own. They need patrons. They need you. By partnering with Scala today, you can contribute to new commissions that will shape culture for generations to come.
With gratitude, Margarita
(pictured here with Sir James MacMillan, who also sends you his gratitude!)
This is a major undertaking with one of the greatest living composers. Congratulations!