By Richard Knox We live in a secular society -- who can deny it? We’re marked by our relentless focus on materialism and preoccupation with what established religions call “worldly” concerns. Recent statistics bear this out. In the early-1950s nearly half of all Americans went to church regularly. Today fewer than a third do. And yet, lately the nation has been seeing a rise in the proportion of Americans who identify as “spiritual but not religious.” About seven in ten people Americans...

By Richard Knox   The concert begins in the personal voice of a Romantic poem set as a German Lied, or art-song. Such choral Lieder make...

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”                                           --- Henry David Thoreau   By Richard Knox   OK,...