¹ A Holy Tradition of Working: Passages from the writings of Eric Gill (West Stockbridge, Mass. : Lindisfarne Press, c. 1983), p. 79Google Scholar. Originally from Work and Property, 1937.

² Cum enim gratia non tollat naturam… . Summa Theologiae, I q. 1, a. 8, ad 2.

³ Et si talis dispositio habet secum adjunctum aliquem defectum, artifex non curat; sicut artifex qui facit serram ad secandum, facit eam ex ferro, ut sit idonea ad secandum; nec curat eam facere ex vitro, quae est pulchrior materia, quia talis pulchritudo esset impedimentum finis. I q. 91, a. 3.

⁴ Summa Theologiae I-II q. 57. In article three Thomas states that “ars nihil aliud est quam ‘ratio recta aliquorum operum faciendorum,’” and in article four “ars est ‘recta ratio factibilium.’” This latter wording is repeated elsewhere including in the Prologus or Prooemium to the Secunda Secundae and in the Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. I, cap. 93.

⁵ In this respect Gill seems to me to follow St. Thomas more closely than an acknowledged Thomist and philosopher, Jacques Maritain, in his Art and Scholasticism. Although Maritain begins by rightly remarking (p. 21) that “the ancients did not give a separate place to what we call the fine arts” and notes the entire dependence of all the arts on their basic meaning as recta ratio factibilium, nevertheless he seems to forget this and in the rest of his book to treat the fine arts as having a direct relationship with beauty, seemingly different in kind from that of the other arts. In any case, he does not stress the basic unity of all the arts and what follows from such a unified conception of art. Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

⁶ A Holy Tradition of Working, pp. 89–90. Originally from Work and Property, 1937.

⁷ Ibid., pp. 93–94. Originally from Sacred and Secular, 1940.

⁸ In the fine arts the artist works toward the same generic end as in the other arts, a certain use enhanced with appropriate beauty. How then do the fine arts differ? It would appear that in the accomplishment of that end, the fine arts allow for greater freedom because their end is less determined. For example, while there is comparatively little difference in the way that a saw can be made if it is to be useful, a composer of music for the liturgy or for a dance has greater freedom with regard to accomplishing his end, and thus more opportunity for greater and more direct engagement with beauty.

⁹ Einstein, Alfred, “Early Concert Life” in Essays on Music (New York: Norton, 1956), p. 28Google Scholar.

¹⁰ “Art in England Now…As It Seems to Me” in It All Goes Together: Selected Essays (New York: Devin-Adair, 1944), p. 91Google Scholar

¹¹ Greenberg, Clement, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” in Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, c. 1961), pp. 16–17Google Scholar. Cf. Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, pp. 158–60, note 43.

¹² Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” pp. 6–7.

¹³ In fact, the modern conception of art turns on its head the classical meaning of the term, which had subordinated the form of the thing made to its use. For example, “…we have often observed that the composer of art music is at liberty to choose from a wider variety of solutions to a particular problem than the composer of practical music. Indeed, it might be said that art imposes freedom upon the composer—freedom to determine for himself the limitations of the system within which he shall construct a design… He need not take into consideration any extrinsic determinants that might confine his imagination… .” Mussulman, Joseph Agee, The Uses of Music: an Introduction to Music in Contemporary American Life (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, c. 1974), p. 159.Google Scholar (Emphasis in original.)

¹⁴ Film making, however, although it likewise does not fulfil a social role as I am using that term, nevertheless has obtained a wide popularity. But it does so (with few exceptions) as part of mass culture.

¹⁵ Kirby-Smith's, H. T. book, The Celestial Twins: Poetry and Music Through the Ages, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, c. 1999)Google Scholar, which I follow here, provides a masterful account of the relations between poetry and music from antiquity until the present.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 9.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 62.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 61.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 17.

²⁰ Beowulf, translated by Kennedy, Charles W. (New York: Oxford University Press, c. 1940), p. 35Google Scholar.

²¹ The influence of popular culture on high culture is well-known and has continued even into our own time. Less widely realized is the existence of an influence in the opposite direction. “We also know little about the age of the various styles of folk music in Europe. Still, we are sure that for centuries there has been a close relationship between the art music of the continent and its folk music… .” and “The ballad was developed in Europe in the Middle Ages - first, presumably, by song composers of city and court - and evidently passed into oral tradition and the repertories of folk cultures thereafter.” Nettl, Bruno, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2d ed., 1973), pp. 38 and 52Google Scholar.

²² Although apparently there was originally some uneasiness about this on the part of artists. “Beethoven was the first example, and a dangerous one, of the ‘free artist’ who obeys his so-called inner compulsion and follows only his genius. A hundred years before, this attitude of the composer toward his art and toward the world was quite unheard of; in the case of J.S. Bach it appears that he was afraid to come forward with his most intimate and lonely works, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and later the Well-tempered Clavier and the Art of Fugue, without having some special pretext. Therefore he disguised them as pedagogical examples ‘for the use and profit of the musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.’ Music that did not have a religious or social function still needed some excuse. Even Haydn and Mozart hardly ever wrote music that did not have some such defined purpose.” Alfred Einstein, “Beethoven's Military Style” in Essays on Music, p. 244.

²³ “The concert audience came into existence with the oratorios and concerti grossi and organ concertos of Handel… . In earlier times there was no audience in the modern sense. The church was the only place where a musician was able to reach a fairly large audience - but it cannot be said that the congregation was a real audience with an interest in musical and esthetic values. A church musician serves the church. A churchgoer is there for edification and music is only a means to an end… In the past it was very difficult to listen to music just for enjoyment, as a ‘connoisseur’.” Alfred Einstein, “Early Concert Life” in Essays on Music, pp. 26–7.