Selected Writings

Dr. Kwasniewski has written extensively on sacred music for sites like Rorate Caeli, OnePeterFive, New Liturgical Movement, and several others. Explore them below!

All of Dr. K's Best Writing on Music in a Single Book!

More is at stake in the music we listen to or perform than most people are aware. In this vivacious and challenging work, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski explains why the great classical music of Western civilization is morally and intellectually good for us, as well as why certain other forms of music can actually be harmful.

Kwasniewski then offers a defense of the magnificent treasury of sacred music in the Latin-rite Catholic Church and shows how well-suited it is to divine worship, especially the incomparable art form known as Gregorian chant. Questioned and abandoned in recent tumultuous decades, this outstanding heritage of beauty deserves to be restored for profound theological and spiritual reasons, a restoration our times are at last beginning to see as old prejudices fade away. Kwasniewski issues a poignant crie de cœur in favor of restoring the glorious sacred music of our tradition to every Roman Catholic church on the earth. No genuine liturgical renewal or deep Eucharistic revival can occur until this happens: music is that important.

Finally, Kwasniewski shows how silence is as valuable as—indeed, at times, more valuable than—even the greatest music, precisely because music at its best opens the way to encountering a reality that transcends all we can say or sing.

Written to be accessible to the non-specialist, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life will benefit all Catholics, other Christians, and even aesthetically curious nonbelievers who wish to explore the art of music in general, its role in human life, its effects on morality, and its inspired and inspiring function in religion. Kwasniewski's wide-ranging erudition and sound argumentation provide essential musical guidance for clergy, musicians, teachers, and parents.

Buy from TAN

Gregorian Chant

Gregorian Chant: Perfect Music for the Sacred Liturgy

Rorate Caeli

“Song Befits the Lover”: Understanding the Place of Gregorian Chant in the Mass

OnePeterFive

Why chant will never die, but will rise again as Church recovers sacredness of her worship or tagline

LifeSite

Do We Trust the Church's Judgment - Or Our Own?

NLM

How We Should Sing—And Why People Don’t Sing

OnePeterFive

Pride of Place in the Roman Rite

NLM

Why Gregorian Chant? And Why Sung by the People? tagline

OnePeterFive

Don't Let the Best be the Enemy of the Good

NLM

Theology of Sacred Music

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 1)

NLM

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 2)

NLM

Music for the Eucharistic Sacrifice (Part 3)

NLM

True art affirms the Catholic Faith and pleases God

LifeSite

Ecclesial and Ethical Consequences of Poor Church Music

NLM

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