Neo-Gothic Chapel

I have arrived at my new home, TAC New England. pic.twitter.com/D5ITPOfPaQ

— Taylor Patrick O'Neill (@thomaesplendor) July 22, 2021

Lord Have Mercy

My father, Thomas Gordon Smith, passed away yesterday. Please keep him and our family in your prayers. His obituary is linked below: https://t.co/WuLD7hGeqx pic.twitter.com/jXLaTC2x0i

— Innocent Smith, op (@InnocentOP) June 24, 2021

The Aesthetic Sense

Baroque Roman Catholic Churches first sparked my interest in historic Christianity. That led me to Orthodoxy eventually, as the ugliness of modern RC churches was soul crushing. https://t.co/T9osRSq1cl

— Orthodox Reflections (@OrthodoxReflec1) February 18, 2021

Men and clerics without chests, a form of worship that is counter to logike, and the absence of beauty: all indicative of severe structural and doctrinal problems in Latin Christianity.

Change in Design for the New SSPX Church?

Largest Church in Kansas to be Built in Romanesque Style https://t.co/G3s30T6xDq pic.twitter.com/qqkbGpBWe5

— NLM (@NLMblog) December 8, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery Breaks Ground

Holy Cross Monastery West Virginia breaks ground on new churchhttps://t.co/xthl56Eifw

The church was designed by the renowned Orthodox architect Andrew Gould, combining traditional Orthodox styles with a local West Virginia flavor. The lower level of the church will also hav... pic.twitter.com/u6jpRWJOcX

— Orthodox Christianity (@Orthodoxy2019) November 18, 2020

St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish

"By expressing beauty, permanence, and transcendence, a church building can teach all who see it what it means to be Catholic.” @AleteiaEN https://t.co/AUOluvsWEf

— Dominican Friars (@opeast) October 20, 2020

parish website

Catholic Hoos at UVa

NCReg: Bishop of Richmond Dedicates New Church at University of Virginia and University of Virginia is Getting a Church That Looks Like a Church

$10.6 million for a bare church, though the architecture is more traditional than Latin modernist monstrosities. They could have set aside $1 or $2 million for some proper iconography?

This is a Typical Latin Temple

Congratulations to the friars, students, and faculty of @CatholicHoos on the dedication of their new church, celebrated last night by Bishop Knestout. "The Lord is in his holy temple." https://t.co/CCFzG7Ye3b pic.twitter.com/fgBQtUDlkx

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) September 21, 2020

For a Byzantine Christian this would be considered incomplete, given the lack of iconography to cover up those white walls. (The small one in the back is not enough.) There should be iconography covering every surface (if one goes with the Slavic fashion), or at least most of it (in the American Greek fashion, preferably with mosaics, apparently). This looks bare and frankly, not alive but dead. "Cistercian simplicity" and all that, perhaps.

Vladimir Grygorenko's Murals at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

OAJ

St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in Perrysville, Ohio
New World Byzantine

The New Russian Cathedral

Archaeofuturism in Russia. Mesmerising video, almost like a glimpse of an alien civilisation. pic.twitter.com/QsYDBK6e1m

— Aris Roussinos (@arisroussinos) June 15, 2020

Steve Sailer post on the cathedral.





Drone footage

An Explanation for the "Western" Sound?

I have been critical of the sound of Gregorian chant and possibly other forms of Western sacred music. This article at OAJ may explain the reason for the sound of Western sacred music leaning more towards higher voices.



Is the following true of the architectural styles that succeeded the Gothic?

In contrast, Gothic architecture has a distinct acoustic difference. The majority of the wall surface in a large Gothic church is leaded glass. These big expanses of glass are smooth and hard, but they are not unyielding. High-pitched sounds will reflect off them readily, but low-pitched sounds will actually shake them, and this shaking motion absorbs the energy out of the sound. Furthermore, many of the big north-European churches that were famous centers of musicianship had wood, rather than stone, vaulting, and the thin wood ceiling paneling was likewise shakable and absorbent to low pitches. Acoustic measurements show that large Gothic churches have a notable drop off in reverberance in the bass range.

Has this "typical" sound influenced the way schola and choir directors have recruited and organized the voices for their groups, so that this is the sound they wish to mimic or present?

This is significant for the development of western church music. The great composers of the baroque period were mostly employed at huge Gothic churches, and they wrote music tailored to those spaces. The continuous modulation and contrapuntal bass lines in the music of J.S. Bach, for instance, depends upon an acoustic in which the bass decays rapidly. Those bass lines are played on immensely loud organ pipes, and were they to reverberate for several seconds, the music would become muddy and the harmonic modulation would be irritating. The long reverberation in the high frequencies is not a problem, however, because high harmonics are consonant with all notes of a scale. A ringing bell-like descant of high reverberance gives a pleasing sparkle to baroque music without muddying the forward motion.

Would Western chant and singing sound "better" in an Orthodox temple or in the oldest Roman churches, as the lower male voices can be heard more clearly? There are East European temples that are built of wood rather than stone--do these preserve the "Byzantine" sound, and how are they able to do so, in a way that the bass is not preserved in Western temples that have wood? (Is it merely the lack of large [stained-glass] windows?)

It would seem that there should be rules of architecture and building composition so that the bass is preserved, so that there is the presence of masculine voices during the liturgy is emphasized; otherwise there may be consequences on the participation of men during the liturgy, even if they happen at a subconscious level. (And for the West, we should also remember that the actual participation of the majority of the laity in the liturgy was limited as they did not understand Latin.)

Kyrie "In Resurrectione Domini" - Old Roman Chant (Home Edition)

Which Saint Sophia?

The early female saint or Holy Wisdom?

World's largest Orthodox church in the works (via Byz TX)

Eh?

Which Orthdox church gave permission for their building to be used? The Korean Orthodox one in Seoul?

Lake Elmo Carmelites

Three Holy Hierarchs Romanian Orthodox Church

unofficial FB - check out the photos

St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Virignia

Who is the architecture responsible for the final design of the SSPX American seminary? (Cram and Ferguson had been commissioned but the firm resigned from the commission and I can't find any information on who took over subsequently.) It looks very similar to the design for Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, as both are Romanesque. Curious that neither order went with a Gothic design -- a more classical look for the United States? How is the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary assimilating to the locals?





Ordinations:


Video: Inside tour

Related:
website for fundraising
Announcement of the new seminary project

For Pugin Fans

Inside Pugin’s dream church by Roderick O Donnell

Catedral de Justo

To Be in a Temple

With the People of God...

Sacred Architecture: Building for the Senses: A Resurgence of Sacred Architecture in China by Anthony E. Clark and Amanda C. Roth Clark

Nice Chapel, Needs More Icons