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Why an oratorio concert.
When Philip Neri created that community made
up of prayer, singing, pilgrimage and lots of fun in the Roman
basilicas he wanted to call it "Oratory", ie a place
of prayer. In fact St. Philip came up with something even
bigger and more complex, culturally and religiously capable
of influencing not only his contemporaries but also the future.
In fact we call "oratory" even the kind of sacred
composition, that started from Philip Neri, in which the music
coment and “tells” in it’s own way, the
great biblical stories or the lives of saints. Many masterpieces
were written from this insight and lots of music has comforted,
inflamed, made pray and move the hearts of men.
This composition wants to be in line with the intuition of
Philip. From the stories of the extraordinary witnesses of
those adventure that tell us anecdotes of his life, I wanted
to do a musical tribute to the light, that light spiritual
experience and at the same time offer a serene and joyful
reading of life, as well as San Phillip has lived it. In a
time of crisis and pessimism is good to look to the sky, the
sun behind the clouds, the innocent child that is often hidden
within us and that we have forgotten in some remote room of
our soul. It will be a witness to those events to tell a child
now grown up and that perhaps the years, the sufferings, mishaps
and turmoil of life, have made it more disillusioned and pessimistic.
But it's nice for him to remember and find that joy, that
lightness, that desire to fly and smile and be able to tell
that innocence that gave him so much peace.
Each story is counterpointed by a piece of music in which
the protagonists are the joy and smile, in which you feel
strongly the smell and atmosphere of Rome, its popular and
noble soul, light-hearted and poetic: the City that Philip
adopted with much love, he who was born in Florence, and turned
with his smile making it "sing" with his faith and
his love of light. I wanted to use a musical language extremely
simple and transparent, trying to express the soul "naive"
of Philip, and also the listener to draw a smile today, so
jaded and "adult", raising up from a bit 'of sadness
that sometimes obscures our horizon.
There is a word that occurs frequently in this composition:
Paradise. I think it is good to repeat it, even for a non-believer,
even for those who think they live their own private "hell",
even for those who believe that there can not be such a place,
but also for those who wish, for those who would like to find
the lost child in the depths of their hearts. For one night
we smile and look towards Philip’s sky.
Monsignor Marco Frisina
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