What more enjoyable evening for a music lover than a house concert? That event formed the heart of a dinner party to which I was invited one evening last weekend. To have heard four young women, students of our next-door neighbor Emily, sing the works of classical composers counted for me as a rare pleasure.

Emily is a mezzo soprano herself and a veteran voice teacher who apparently brings out the best in her students. The four we heard—Anna, Allegra, Olivia, and Caroline—delivered works from Bach to Britten with skill, charm, and aplomb. The variety of song and the range of talents displayed by the singers make it difficult to single out any one rendition. I enjoyed them all.

The house concert format reminds me of the practices of earlier centuries in European homes. There, in the days before recordings were available, musicians, famous and otherwise, would perform for their hosts and their guests. Our Hauskonzert (if I’ve got the Germanic word right) brought me the same delight that I envision those music lovers experienced. I felt sorry for the passers by on our short street who could hear only snatches as they proceeded. (Had I been in their place, I would have not gone further.)

This party was characterized by sheer joy. Another that I had attended in the later afternoon at Boston College was marked by regret and a certain bewilderment. There we were saying farewell to a Jesuit friend, a moral theologian, who was being forced to leave the university. Surely, I thought, in going to the gathering of his friends I could find out why he had to leave his post after many years of effective teaching and scholarship.

However, no one, not even the departer, could tell me what the reason is. That leaves his large army of friends wondering about what ecclesiastical power is being unleashed on our dear friend who, to all appearances, has done nothing wrong. Is the Vatican behind this, pushing him out because of alleged heterodoxy?  Or is it the Jesuit machine, anxious to please that same power, that has done him (and us) in?

We do not know. No one knows. Or, at least, no one is talking.

This does not make for such a good party.