Song:

Cristóbal del Morales’s “Circumdederunt me” recorded by Paul McCreesh (1998)

The recording by McCreesh places the polyphony in its plainchant context, and listening to it always has a powerful effect on me. I make a habit of listening to it at least once every Friday.

 

Book:

“Scholia to an Implicit Text” (1977) by Nicolás Gómez Dávila

If you don’t have a giant library and wealth sufficient to support you spending all your time in it collecting wisdom and repackaging it as pithy aphorisms, then reading Gómez Dávila is the next best thing. It’s even better in Spanish.

 

Film:

“The Leopard” (1963) by Luchino Visconti 

A 300-page novel turned into a 3-hour film demonstrates the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two art forms and makes for the only film that I would say equals or even surpasses its literary source. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.