CONCERT FOR PAUL VI
Thanks to Lella, for this account, translated here, from L'Eco di Bergamo, a leading regional newspaper in northern Italy, of the Wednesday night concert at Castel Gandolfo to mark the 110th birthday anniversary of Paul VI.
The concert was presented by the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli International Music Festival of Brescia and Bergamo - a serendipitous pairing of two cities which are the home cities, respectively, of Pope Paul VI and of Pope John XXIII.
This is the only article I have seen that identified the music performed at the concert - although not specific enough. As the last part of this article shows, the program consisted of a Concerto in C minor by Vivaldi, Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor (the only one that is specific enough) and a Piano Concerto in E-flat major by Mozart (who wrote 4 piano concerti in this key - but I'm taking a stab it was the #22, which includes clarinets in its scoring - only because the Pope has said that his favorite Mozart instrumental compositions are the Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet Concerto). Vivaldi wrote so many concerti for strings that without an opus number, I cannot narrow down which one might have been played at CG, because the only Vivaldi Concerto in C minor I can look up online is one for flute and guitar, and I doubt that was the number played, as the only soloists identified were a violinist and a pianist.
A musical evening
at Castel Gandolfo
By Paolo Aresi
The last notes of Mozart faded away in the Swiss Hall at the Apostolic palace in Castel Gandolfo, and at last the public could applaud after virtually holding its breath throughout the performance of a Mozart piano concerto.
Then the Pope rose and took the floor to thank the organizers of the concert to celebrate the 100th birthday anniversary of Pope Paul VI, the orchestra and its conductor Agostino Orizio, the soloists and the other guests at the concert.
Among the guests were the Bishop of Bergamo, Mons. Roberto Amadei, with his secretary, Mons. Alessandro Locatelli, and mayor of Bergamo, Roberto Bruni; and representing Brescia, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops; the auxiliary bishop of Brescia, Mons. Francesco Beschi; Mayor Paolo Corsini; Mino Martinazzoli, honorary president of the International Festival; its president, Andrea Gibellini; and the orchestra conductor himself, Agostino Orizio, whose association with Paul VI started when he was a boy and Giovanni Battista Montini was a young priest in Brescia.
The Pope said, "Thank you all for this evocative musical evening, for having perofrmed for us these well-known pieces which are always capable of rousing emotions, of helping our spirits perceive the intimate harmony in divine beauty."
Benedict XVI was clearly touched by the evening's program, but before going on to discuss the music, he dwelt on the figure of Pope Paul VI, who was born in Concesio, province of Brescia, on September 26, 1897, was elected Pope in June 1963, and died in Castel Gandolfo in August 1978.
Piercarlo Orizio, son of the conductor, told us earlier: "My father had close relations with Paul VI, whom he knew well before he became Pope. One time, Archbishop Montini came to our house. One of our guests was supposed to the Cardinal from Bergamo, Angelo Roncalli, but he was unable to come that night. A few months later, he became Pope."
Benedict XVI called Paul VI "a great Pope who made his mark on the history of the 20th century...with the spirit of evangelical wisdom with which he guided the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council, in times that were not easy and in social conditions characterized by profound cultural and religious changes."
"With prophetic intuition," he said, "he shared the hopes and unease of mankind in his day, and sought to bring out positive experiences to illuminate with the light of truth and Christ's love."
Nevertheless, "The love he had for mankind....(with) its progress, its marvelous discoveries, the achievements and conveniences made possible by science and technology," did not keep him from calling attention to "the contradictions, errors and risks of a scientific-technological progress uncoupled from a firm foundation of ethical and spiritual values," the Pope pointed out.
He recalled Paul VI's call for 'a civilization of love' which would bring authentic universal brotherhood and a just society. Benedict says this teaching "remains very relevant today and constitutes a spring from which we can draw upon", and that is why his successors have carried on the spiritual legacy of the Servant of God Paul VI and following in his footsteps.
Gibellini, president of the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli international piano music festival of Brescia and Bergamo, said of the concert: "It is an important intiative that we are very happy to have carried out. The program was chosen with the Pope's own musical preferences in mind, knowing that he knows his music and plays the piano himself."
[Michelangeli (1920-1995) was born in Brescia and was considered one of the great piano virtuosi of the 20th century, Italy's greatest pianist along with Ferruccio Busoni. Maestro Orizio was a pupil of Michelangeli.]
The mayor of Bergamo noted: "A concert like this fits the efforts of Bergamo to promote itself as a city of culture and music."
The auxiliary bishop of Brescia, Mons. Beschi, opened the evening's program by thanking the Diocese of Brfescia for helping to organize the concert, praising "the inexhaustible capacity of music to evoke the mystery of God."
The program opened with Vivaldi's Concert in C minor, followed by Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor, with violinist Marco Rizzi, and finally, the Mozart Piano Concerto in E-flat minor, with the 23-year-old Ukrainian pianist Alexander Romanovsky, a prodigy who was discovered by Carlo Maria Giulini.
L'Eco di Bergamo, 27 settembre 2007
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'We spoke about Pope John'
Meeting the Pope is always quite an experience. And so it was for Mayor Roberto Bruni of Bergamo, yesterday evening at the concert in Castel Gandolfo.
He had an opportunity to exchange some words with Pope Benedict XVI after the concert.
"He is very affable. As soon as I was introduced as the mayor of Bergamo, his first thought was for Blessed John XXIII. I reminded him that next year will be the 50th anniversary of his election as Pope. He smiled and he said to be sure that Bergamo will put on a grand celebration for our Pope."
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Apropos, here is an article on Pope Benedict and Mozart, referring to the Pope's visit to Austria earlier this month:
BENEDICT'S MOZART:
What the Pope Learned From His Favorite Composer
By Fr. Andreas Kramarz, LC
National Catholic Register
September 23-29, 2007 Issue
Austria’s president honored Pope Benedict on the final day of his visit to the “Alp Republic” Sept. 9 with Mozart music in the Vienna Concert House. After the music, the Holy Father met with Church and civil volunteers in order to honor their service.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg in 1756, but that’s not why his music was played for the Pope. In fact, there have hardly been any cultural events that Pope Benedict has attended in which a piece of Mozart has not been performed.
That’s because it is well known that Mozart is the Pope’s favorite composer.
Consider what Pope Benedict contributed last year to a book collecting 58 testimonies for the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth:
When in our home parish of Traunstein on feast days a Mass by Mozart resounded, for me, a little country boy, it seemed as if heaven stood open. In the front, in the sanctuary, columns of incense had formed in which the sunlight was broken; at the altar the sacred action took place of which we knew that heaven opened for us. And from the choir sounded music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God. …
I have to say that something like this happens to me still when I listen to Mozart. Mozart is pure inspiration — or at least I feel it so. Each tone is correct and could not be different. The message is simply present. …
The joy that Mozart gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.”
Music for the Pope is much more than mere entertainment. He possesses a profound sense of aesthetics.
Influenced by the great theological aesthete Hans Urs von Balthasar, in many of his essays the Holy Father has reflected upon the importance of beauty and harmony for the faith and, especially, for expressing faith in liturgy.
“The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes, so that later, from this experience, we take the criteria for judgment and can correctly evaluate the arguments,” he wrote in August 2002 in a remarkable message, dedicated to the “contemplation of beauty” and directed to a meeting of the Communion and Liberation Movement in Rimini, Italy.
In the same text, he recalls an experience he had after listening to a Bach concert conducted in Munich by Leonard Bernstein.
After the last tone had faded away, he looked spontaneously at the person next to him “and right then we said: ‘Anyone who has heard this knows that the faith is true.’ The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration.”
Since his childhood, the Holy Father had learned to appreciate music that “had a bigger and bigger role in our family life,” as he recounts in the 1997 book-length interview “Salt of the Earth.”
For 30 years, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, the Pope’s brother, was the director of Regensburger Domspatzen (The Cathedral Sparrows of Regensburg), perhaps Germany’s most prestigious boys choir. And even as Pope Benedict, Joseph Ratzinger continues to play the piano in some free moments he may find in the midst of his heavy workload.
Before he became Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that he remembers that Traunstein, where he spent most of his youth, “very much reflects the influence of Salzburg. You might say that there Mozart thoroughly penetrated our souls, and his music still touches me profoundly, because it is so luminous and yet at the same time so deep. His music is by no means just entertainment; it contains the whole tragedy of human existence.”
Pope Benedict’s sensitivity for the beauty in music and art as much as his particular affection for Mozart’s style may well be one of the explanations not only of his well-rounded style, but also of the intellectual architecture of his theological writings, which are characterized by a high degree of perfection, with a rare combination of simplicity, clarity, depth, and both logical and persuasive power.
That’s why Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner calls Pope Benedict the “Mozart of Theology.” Cardinal Meisner developed this further in a homily that he gave on the occasion of the Pope’s 80th birthday in St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin:
“Pope Benedict XVI has the gift of pointing out to people the sanctifying message of the Gospel in its beauty, fascination and harmony, so much so that he is called the ‘Mozart among the theologians.’ His theology is not only true and good, it is also beautiful. His words sound like music in the ears and hearts of people. He manages masterfully to transform the notes of the Gospel into thrilling music. That’s why the stream of pilgrims that flock to his audiences is growing every month.”
The Pope’s appreciation for beauty is by no means blind optimism.
In fact, the Holy Father has remarked that the “wounds of humanity” don’t justify a flight into irrational aestheticism, closing our eyes before the often difficult reality of life. In his 2002 reflection he said that Christ is recognized by the Church both as the “fairest of men” (see Psalm 45:3) and the disfigured one, during his passion:
“Whoever believes in God, in the God who manifested himself, precisely in the altered appearance of Christ crucified as love ‘to the end’ (John 13:1), knows that beauty is truth and truth beauty; but in the suffering Christ he also learns that the beauty of truth also embraces offense, pain, and even the dark mystery of death, and that this can only be found in accepting suffering, not in ignoring it.”
And he continues: “The icon of the crucified Christ, however … imposes a condition: that we let ourselves be wounded by him, and that we believe in the Love who can risk setting aside his external beauty to proclaim, in this way, the truth of the beautiful.”
So it is that the Holy Father’s words in praise of the volunteers in the concert hall on Sept. 9 could just as well be applied to the music that preceded it: “The value of human beings cannot be judged by purely economic criteria. Without volunteers, then, no state can be built up.”
And not without music, either.
Legionary Father Andreas Kramarz is a professor and music director at the Legionaries’ Novitiate and College of Humanities in Cheshire, Connecticut