Maestro Ennio Morricone on Musica Sacra

"Today the Church has made a big mistake, turning the clock back 500 years with guitars and popular songs," says the man "widely regarded as one of Hollywood's finest film score composers" — Ennio Morricone: Faith Always Present In My Music. "I don't like it at all," says the Maestro explains, "Gregorian Chant is a vital and important tradition of the Church and to waste this by having kids mix religious words with profane, Western songs is hugely grave, hugely grave."

(Interviewer Edward Pentin explains "it's turning the clock back because the same thing happened before the Council of Trent when singers mixed profanity with sacred music.")

Of Pope Ratzinger, he says, "He seems to me to be a very high minded Pope, a man of great culture and also great strength." Of the Holy Father's "Reform of the Reform," he says, "He is doing well to correct it. He should correct it with much more firmness. Some churches have taken heed, but others haven't."

Of the Maestro's most reknowned score, that for The Mission (1986), he speaks of its "technical and spiritual effect." Mr. Pentin explains:

By that, he means the way it managed to combine three musical themes related to the movie. The presence of violins and Father Gabriel’s oboe represent "the Renaissance experience of the progress of instrumental music." The film then moves on to other forms of music that came out of the Church reforms of the Council of Trent, and ends with the music of the native Indians.

The result was a "contemporary" theme in which all three elements -- the instruments that came out of the Renaissance, the post-conciliar reformed music, and the ethnic melodies -- harmoniously come together at the very end of the film. "The first and second theme go together, the first and third can go together, and the second and third go together," Morricone explains. "That was my technical miracle which I believe was a great blessing."

Below, two interpretations of pieces from that score, that have been posted with more details on this blog before, Gabriel's Trumpet and El Coro Sinfónico de la Universidad de Chile Sing Ave María Guaraní:




[link via The New Beginning]