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COM 201/202, Public Speaking, offered within the Department of Humanities at St. Mary’s College, is a year-long course designed to introduce students to elements and strategies for developing public speaking techniques based on understanding of classical rhetoric, and contemporary models. Beyond considering the mechanical mastery of communication, however, students now more than ever must be aware of the perilous moral and rhetorical climate in which we live. Throughout the year, discussions will take place considering serious societal issues involving issues of morality and natural law. Students will practice the effective communication of thought and emotion in public speaking through the development of skills in listening, analysis, organization, and delivery. Verbal communication underpins human interactions in an immediate and powerful way. Modern apologetics requires a proper sense of communicative mastery: in an age of ever-decreasing attention spans, one must command the attention to access the ear. An unheard truth makes no impact. The course will consider Classical Rhetoric, and the mechanics of modern oratory, what, how, and why of communication; students will learn how to overcome natural fears of public speaking, as well as choosing topics, preparation, organization, and delivery of effective presentations.
In the fall semester, all students will develop outlining and interviewing skills, deliver ceremonial speeches of introduction, and researched informational speeches. In the spring semester, students will deliver persuasive speeches, and will present a 15-20-minute public oration as a final project subject to faculty panel review.
MUS 101 and MUS 102, courses offered within the Department of Humanities at St. Mary’s College, comprise the two halves of a yearlong study of ideas and artistic expression of history in music. Through lecture, reading, and listening—centered on the developmental schema set forth in A History of Western Music—students will gain in-depth familiarity with a specific core literature of masterworks; become familiar with analytical methods; develop critical listening skills and the capacity to make qualitative distinctions, the ability to contextualize historical and philosophical events and trends, the tools and confidence to defend Catholic ideals from the attacks of debased cultural modernism, and the perceptive ability to recognize Catholic principles underlying varying styles and types of secular works.
Culture provides running commentary on history; factual events which occur in time inspire artists of all media to reflect and create. Artistic depictions of events and eras often supply insights specifically useful for contextualization, whether political or ideological. Music in particular depicts the emotional essence of a given epoch, allowing the listener spontaneous and vital access to history not as an abstract intellectual exercise, but as pertinent reality: by understanding the expressive historical context of thoughts and actions, students better arm themselves against the sentimentally appealing but potentially morally dangerous allurements of worldly and superficial popular culture.
MUS 101 will consider the thought, and musical development and styles of Ancient Greece and Rome; Gregorian Chant and the development of Liturgical Music in the early Church; the development of polyphonic techniques in Medieval liturgy and the influence of secular polyphonic styles, as well as the development of specific national tendencies; music of the early, middle, and late Renaissance; the importance of music in the success of the Protestant revolt, and the music of the Counter-Reformation; finally, music of the early Baroque, the technical and ideological shift from modality to tonality, and the birth of Opera.
MUS 102 will begin with consideration of the music of the late Baroque, and the expansion of large-scale and solo instrumental forms and opera in the early classical period; the music of Haydn and Mozart; the symphonies and chamber music of Beethoven and Schubert, and the rise of Romanticism; the German Lied; 19th century Italian opera; the industrial revolution and the music of Brahms, Bruckner, and Wagner; national and international trends at the turn of the 20th century; modernism, dissolution of traditional form and the fabrication of modern techniques; and lastly, the emergence of the popular idiom and the near-total debasement of musical expression.
The Catholic must embrace true culture as a right of inheritance. Though the world may at times portray high culture as elitist or prideful, the properly cultured person possesses the facility to distinguish and contextualize all forms of art as they relate to absolute truth for the specifically Catholic ends of Love of God and the edification of neighbor. Ignorance and denial provide no absolute protection from scandal—in fact they leave one more susceptible to it, just as a lack of exposure to any contagion impedes the development of necessary immunities. As Catholic men and women striving to restore the nobility of Christendom in an increasingly vulgar world, we must not shrink from the challenge to understand and assess culture in the realistic historical and ideological context of past eras, and by such understanding, to accept the challenge to lead the world toward a Christianized and properly cultured future.
Dr. Andrew Childs serves currently as Administrative Dean, Humanities Chair, and Professor of Music and Communications at St. Mary’s College, and an Assistant to the SSPX Director of Education for the United States District. He earned his Bachelor of Music Degree from the University of California, Irvine, and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Washington where he published his dissertation on the music of Charles Ives.