CONCERT IN HONOUR OF THE HOLY FATHER
OFFERED BY THE "ACCADEMIA PIANISTICA INTERNAZIONALE DI IMOLA"

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

 Paul VI Auditorium
Saturday, 17 October 2009

Your Eminences,
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Distinguished Authorities,
Dear Friends,

We are meeting this evening for another concert, also of a remarkably high musical standard and of great historical interest, shortly after the one held last week in the Auditorium on Via della Conciliazione. I address my cordial greeting to each one of you: to the Cardinals, Bishops and Prelates, to the Authorities, to the welcome guests and to everyone present. I would like to address a special greeting to the Synod Fathers, who have also wished to share this moment of serene relaxation together.

On behalf of all, I express cordial gratitude to the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale "Incontri con il maestro" of Imola. I would like to thank and to express my sentiments of deep appreciation especially to Maestro Franco Scala, who founded this praiseworthy musical institution 20 years ago and continues to direct it with enthusiasm and talent. I also express my gratitude to him for the words with which, at the beginning of the evening, he interpreted the common sentiments of those present. I address a courteous "thank you" to the pianist, Jin Ju, who has permitted us to enjoy the expressive potential of the fortepiano and the pianoforte, and the emotional charge of the music she played. Lastly, I am eager to greet and thank all those who cooperated in various ways to organize this concert.

Dear friends, this evening we have been accompanied in the ideal captivating historical and artistic development of the fortepiano, which became the pianoforte, one of the best known musical instruments dear to the most famous composers and an instrument capable of offering a wide range of nuances of music and harmony. The seven instruments played, which come from the important collection in Imola which has more than 100, are in themselves an aesthetic, artistic and historical patrimony, both because they emit sounds heard by people in the past and because they testify to the progress in the craft of making pianos, revealing the insights and subsequent perfection achieved by able and incomparable piano-builders.

This concert has allowed us once again to savour the beauty of music, a spiritual, hence universal, language and a particularly suitable vehicle for understanding and union among people and peoples. Music is a part of all cultures and, we might say, accompanies every human experience, from pain to pleasure, from hatred to love, from sorrow to joy, from death to life. We see that in the course of the centuries and millennia, music has always been used to give a shape to what is impossible to express with words, because it awakens emotions otherwise difficult to communicate. It is not, therefore, by chance that every civilization has given importance and value to music in its various forms and expressions.

Music, great music, relaxes the mind, awakens profound sentiments and is, as it were, a natural invitation to raise one's mind and heart to God in every situation of human existence, both joyful and sad. Music can become prayer. My thanks go once again to those who organized this beautiful evening. Dear friends, I warmly bless you all.

© Copyright 2009 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana