Quodlibet
Word, Number & Music
by S. M. Hutchens
A person with my blessings has a hard time imagining a home in which children do not hear reading and are not read to, even prenatally. The cadences of ordered meaning should be with them, in them, and growing from their beginnings to a supernal End. The intuition of number, with which all are born, is, by education, not taught so much as recognized, named, and applied. Combine the intuition of number and the cadence of ordered meaning and one has music. A mother singing a melody to her unborn child is fitting him for greater glories, first perhaps of Mozart and Bach, and finally of heaven, whence all this comes and to which it returns.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on family from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Neo-Pagan Family Policies Doom Any Recovery by Allan C. Carlson
33.2—March/April 2020
Encounters with Faith & Forgiveness in Communities of Faith by Nicole M. King
23.1—January/February 2010
It’s Bent on Bringing Down the House on the Family & the Church by Douglas Farrow
more from the online archives
14.1—January/February 2001
A Sociologist Looks at Fatherlessness & Its Causes by David Blankenhorn
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
