Gregorian chant comes from...the Jews! This and other surprising facts about early Western music as we discuss the first chapters of Susan Treacy’s 2021 book The Music of Christendom: A History.

Is music just getting worse and worse—or better? Listen to Fr. Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce debate the meaning of tradition in art, with the help of Susan Treacy’s Music of Christendom.

What Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance choral music have in common. Fr. Joseph Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce talk about chapters 5 to 7 of Susan Treacy’s The Music of Christendom.

From Palestrina (and St. Philip Neri) in Italy to underground Catholic composers in England to the birth of opera in France. Fr. Joseph Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce discuss chapters 8 to 11 of Susan Treacy’s book The Music of Christendom.

Why the world forgot Bach for one hundred years. We span from Vivaldi to Bach to Handel to Haydn this week in our reading of The Music of Christendom by Susan Treacy. Join Fr. Joseph Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce.

The birth of genius: Mozart, Beethoven, and the Romantic period. We discuss chapters 16 to 18 of Susan Treacy’s The Music of Christendom.

Complicated Catholic composers: Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Chopin, Liszt, Bruckner, Dvorak. And one pagan: Wagner. We continue our walk through the maze of nineteenth-century music with Susan Treacy’s The Music of Christendom.

Music in the age of revolutions: Russia and France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Also: why aren’t there more famous women composers? This and more as we move our way through “The Music of Christendom” by Susan Treacy.

The twentieth century, from Ralph Vaughan-Williams to George Gershwin to David Bowie. Tastes diverge. Listen to Fr. Fessio, Vivian Dudro, and Joseph Pearce debate the beauty and ugliness of modern music in our last discussion of Susan Treacy’s “The Music of Christendom.”