Friday, June 17, 2011

Maestro Advocates Return to Rigour and Gregorian Chant

Interview with the director of the choir of the Roman Philharmonic, Msgr Pablo Colino. By Orazio la Rocca/ La Republica, Rome.

(kath.net/as) "Dramatic, despairing, meaningless". Maestro Don Pablo Colino isn't reading from a script when he describes the health of today's repetoir of ecclesiastical music - – even if he can be pressed to specify that "there is still a possiblity, to exponentiate a return from this dangerous tendency from below, in which one departs with Gregorian Chant, the study of musica sacra, and liturgical music." Msgr. Colino is known world wide as a musician and orchestra Director. With years of service in the Vatican he is directing the choir of the Roman Philharmonic at the present. He has an authority then about what religious music entails, which he has worked for years to "clean" of the film, which according to his lights, has endangered it.


"Pope Benedict XVI is the first who asked us about and believed in this task," he said. "Many times, the Pope encourged me to continue there the universal heritage of the musica sacra rooted in the truest liturgical tradition.

Maestro Colino, why is the musica sacra and the liturgy in a crisis?

Msgr. Colino: everything has been backwards since the 2nd Vatican Council, connected to a superficial flood of pseudo-renewals, which in almost all of our churches has done so much damage. It is enough at some liturgical celebrations to hear fearful guitar picking, deafening electrical organs, and uninspiring choirs. And the whole thing led by unqualified music directors. Even when there is an absence of encouraging exceptions, which - can be nurtured - there is a shimmer of hope for the future forming.

Would you name a couple of examples?

Msgr. Colino: recently in Terni, an interesting event in sacred music took place, and there are a lot of young choirs and many artistic groups specializing in liturgical music. It was beautiful and interesting to hear them.

Is there a "prescription" to restore the musica sacra?

Msgr. Colino: it is necessary to return to take a serious, difficult and painful study of the "scholae cantorum", in conservatories and also in the schools. The Musica Sacra is a universal heritage, one of the highest and everlasting art forms. And Italy is full of that which is the legacy of the greatest composers of liturgical music.

And how should the programs of schools of this type look?

Msgr. Colino: It is of foundational importance to return to the direct aqcueintance of the Gregorian Choral and also the education of musicians as well as refining orchestras and choir directors. Nothing happens without didactic rigour and without the knowledge of Gregorian, mother of sacra musica, yes I would even dare to say: of all music, even of the contemporary.© La Repubblica vom 16. Juni 2011   

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