{"id":4247,"date":"2026-10-21T17:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=4247"},"modified":"2026-10-21T17:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:04:28","slug":"a-maverick-pedagogical-proposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/10\/a-maverick-pedagogical-proposition.html","title":{"rendered":"A Maverick Pedagogical Proposition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s crisis in humanities education takes many forms, and many are the proposed remedies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such is a brave new two-volume, 1,700-page textbook, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western<\/em> Tradition<\/em>. Its authors, Allen Guelzo and James Hankins, are historians who insist on the continued importance of knowing \u201cthe civilization of the West,\u201d specifically including its basis in \u201clanguage and literature.\u201d They privilege the arts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unfashionable emphasis on Western music, literature, and visual art will doubtless pigeon-hole their efforts. The publisher is Encounter Books, which politically nestles on the right. The teachers and students likely to use these volumes will be located at religiously affiliated high schools and colleges.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guelzo, who authored volume two (The Modern and Contemporary West<\/em>), is an eminent specialist in the Civil War with a marked interest in religion and in intellectual history \u2013 and also  in classical music. A sampling:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBrahms could be ponderous and at times even tragic. But his second symphony shines serenely with a balance and ease worthy of a Mozart or a Haydn, and he could sometimes show a puckish sense of humor.\u201d Of Tchaikovsky: \u201cHis long suit remained always the ballet. Even in his operas, it is the dances that stand out (especially the waltz and polonaise in\u00a0Eugene Onegin<\/em>\u00a0and the Russian hopak from\u00a0Mazeppa<\/em>).\u201d The pertinent three-page spread, titled \u201cWagner, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky,\u201d includes a cameo appearance of Dvorak as a \u201cRomantic nationalist\u201d composer provocatively (and knowingly) placed alongside America\u2019s Charles Ives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guelzo, as it happens, is no friend of Wagner. The composer who galvanizes his sustained attention is Johann Sebastian Bach, to whom he dedicates eleven pages. A web of secular and religious  currents produce in Bach heightened forms of secular and religious music. Cross-referencing Italy\u2019s Antonio Vivaldi (himself allotted three pages), Guelzo briefly traces the emergence of Bach\u2019s concertos and of his sonatas and partitas for solo violin \u2013 concert music that still astonishes today. But the religious Bach is Guelzo\u2019s passion. In Bach\u2019s cantatas Guelzo extrapolates \u201ctwo unmistakable Pietest characteristics\u201d \u2013 \u201ca deep awareness of sin\u201d and \u201ca desire for deep personal intimacy with Jesus Christ.\u201d Guelzo\u2019s own intimacy with the cantata \u201cIch habe genug\u201d yields this endorsement: \u201cIn the cantata he wrote for February 2, 1727 . . . Bach set a text of exquisite bliss and resignation, echoing Simeon\u2019s \u2018Lord, now let our servant depart in peace.\u2019\u2019\u2019 And he highlights \u201cone of the most beautiful vocal lines Bach ever wrote, of surpassing tenderness, on the words \u201cSchlummert ein, ihr matten Augen (\u2018Fall asleep, weary eyes\u2019).\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Guelzo volunteers this summation: \u201cIf Monteverdi and Vivaldi transformed Western music from an amateurish performance of servants, Bach transposed it into an art capable of carrying the highest emotional and spiritual messages and vaulted it over painting, sculpture, and architecture as the most potent and portable vehicle for Western personal expression.\u201d   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Guelzo\u2019s treatment of the arts is itself highly personal — and hence prejudiced — is a strength, not a weakness. Still, this is a book that necessarily covers a lot of ground at great velocity: it will be up to teachers to make portions of it stick. Can they do it? Can today\u2019s high school and collegiate History students, coping with ever shorter attention spans, manage to slow down enough to absorb a Bach cantata? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if Allen Guelzo has merely created an opportunity to find out, he will have enhanced the prospects for sustaining Western cultural memory \u2013 a source of ballast as we hurtle ever onward toward a weightless future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s crisis in humanities education takes many forms, and many are the proposed remedies.  One such is a brave new two-volume, 1,700-page textbook, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Its authors, Allen Guelzo and James Hankins, are historians who insist on the continued importance of knowing \u201cthe civilization of the West,\u201d specifically including its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-16v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4251,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions\/4251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}