Immerse yourself in an evening of exquisite music and join us as we partner with Fairmount Ministries and Coffee and the Wichita Grand Opera for this year’s Concert Series held at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Wichita, KS. The evening begins at 7:30pm with two of Bach’s cantatas. Our guests are invited to stay after for a student art show and a light reception.
The Master is Revealed in Limitation
from the Desk of Headmaster Dan Snyder
In Goethe’s sonnet “Natur und Kunst” (Nature and Art), we deal with one of the great questions of education, and a conclusion that marks a hallmark of the idea of classical education. Goethe was heralded as the father of the German romantic movement but would insist that the child was not his. Romanticism persists in our day in the idea that the pure mind of the child will produce creative wonders if only it is not harnessed to dead rules and procedures.
The entirety of the sonnet begins with the apparent ease with which nature reveals herself to us, and the assumption that it should be easy for the human student to respond naturally. This seems out of reach however when the budding artist reaches out to grasp the beauty of nature. In the pursuit of producing beauty, the young disciple must subject themselves to the drudgery of formal training to once again approach spontaneity, which is a paradox. It is on in the limitation of formal rules that the master of those rules can approach natural freedom as a creative being. This is the essence of education.
Today’s education commonly serves in the role of passing on information but shying away from training. It is as if someone, upon reading a book and attending a lecture about playing the piano, could then be invited to play Rachmaninoff preludes for the enjoyment of all. Obviously, this is not possible. We understand in sports, music, farming, even in reading, that the unformed genius is not able to realize its potential.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City considers its works to be consummated in the year 1967, as the visitor to that gallery will see in the final displays of Jackson Pollock’s work and derivatives approaching the exit of the building. What is understood is that ‘modernist’ art was a project of information that had a solution, which was reached in the ’60’s, and no more was to be said. This is because this form of expression did not express nature through the training of the artists but expressed the limits of human perception confronting stubborn nature. The project ends in brutalist shapes and colors as the significance of an era when students refused to train themselves but insisted on expressing themselves. The results can be infantile and ironic.
This is why Quintilian, educator of the Roman Elite in the first century AD, commented that those who were talented but untrained tended to break what should be opened, to destroy what should be unlocked, to sever what should be untied. At Concordia Academy, our exercises in rhetoric, our work in the art studio, our discipline in prayer and the service of our neighbors are all training that allow us to produce beauty in our neighbor’s lives and in our own.
Tickets available for $10 each. All proceeds will benefit the Concordia Academy Phoenix Shooting Team.
CAW Apparel & Accessories
Now available, tshirts, tote bags, hats and more! Visit the CAW Swag Shop today to make your purchase!
Phoenix Shooting Team Raffle
Thanks to a generous donor, our shooting team has the following items up for grabs for the annual raffle.
GRAND PRIZE – a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 2.0 380 auto with a 10-round and a 12-round mag, 1,000 rounds of ammo, holster, and a magazine loader. Total package valued at $750. Winner MUST be 21 or older
5 Runner Up winners will recieve 2 Timney Trigger gift cards valued at $75 each.
Tickets avialable for sale through November 21. Winners will be drawn on Friday, November 22.
