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THE FONDAZIONE PRO MUSICA E ARTE SACRA ADOPTS AN OFFICIAL ANTHEM
As from this year, the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra has its own anthem, namely the Hymn to Faith for oboe and strings by Andrea Morricone. The work received its first performance on Sunday, 26 October 2014 at the opening of the two-concert programme of the 13th International Festival of Sacred Music and Art and will then be featured at concerts and festivals of sacred music as well as events to promote the Foundation's activities. It will also be available to listen and to buy on the homepage www.andreamorricone.com
As the composer explains, "The hymn to faith is my personal response to a strong spiritual call. I wrote this theme at the age of 34 in a very difficult period of my life, which I managed to get through thanks to the strength of faith. What I wish to transmit and communicate with this piece is the sense of deep peace and serenity that always accompanies all of us in our lives and on our spiritual pathways. Nihil difficile volenti. I am delighted and grateful that the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra has chosen it as its official anthem."
The composer of over 25 film scores, music for chamber ensemble, orchestra, solo instruments and voice, choral compositions and sacred music pieces, Andrea Morricone has received numerous awards including two Golden Globes for film scores, first Andrea Bolognini's Raul and then Giuliano Montaldo's L'Industriale in 2012. He has worked with major Italian, American and international orchestras including the Orchestra Sinfonica di Santa Cecilia, the Roma Sinfonietta and the Orchestra Guido Cantelli in Milan, the Symphony Orchestra of Sofia, the Orchestra and Choir of the Budapest Opera House, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra and the Simon Bolivar Youth Symphony Orchestra. Following in his father's musical footstep, he graduated from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome with a diploma in composition in 1994 followed by a diploma in orchestral conducting under the supervision of Bruno Aprea in 1996. His subsequent postgraduate studies took place at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the guidance of Franco Donatoni and Azio Corghi. His mentors also include Ada Gentile, Irma Ravinale and Ivan Fedele. He has a degree in humanities, philosophy and musicology.
His La forza del sorriso, performed by Andrea Bocelli, has been chosen as the official signature tune of the 2015 Milan Expo. Andrea Morricone has been invited as guest of honour to the Saint Petersburg Musical Festival, where he conducted the world premier of four of his compositions for orchestra on 11 October 2014 in the Konstantinovsky Palace, including an Ave Maria, sung by the soprano Chiara Taigi, and Anthem for Russia for soprano saxophone, violin, soloist and orchestra.
He conducted a concert of his operatic and symphonic music in Los Angeles on 26 April 2014 with the Amor Symphonic Orchestra, which he founded specially for the occasion. The acclaim of the public and critics alike was such that the mayor of Los Angeles has invited him to conduct another concert of his music in the city on 8 November.
THE HYMN TO FAITH FOR OBOE AND STRINGS
The Hymn to Faith is a work composed by me for oboe and strings and dedicated to the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra.
We understand faith as something absolute and sublime. Faith can be in the human or the divine but it is always faith and therefore a spark of God. It is not a question of belief in existence or of strength regarding a commitment but something more, an immovable quid that alone can really govern the whole, what we call the cosmos and beyond. Faith is something whose discovery is accompanied by the realization that it has always existed within us. All we have to do is arrive at the point, the laborious and often painful turning point in life, that enables us to take the plunge into the infinite.
The work has various possibilities of approach: overtones of madrigal, a rhetorical aspect and a strong structural framework into which its different elements must fit. The writing for strings has the delicacy of filigree and every section of the orchestra is accorded its own lofty expressive value and deepmeaning. In this connection, I must emphasize the dynamics with which the bridge begins, where the melodic line is entrusted to the cellos, after which, through the addition of the other instruments, we attain the intensity of the forte up to the highest registers of the instruments. I regards this quality of dynamics, written and intrinsic to the score, as one of themost interesting lessons of the great masterpieces in the entire history of music. The extreme delicacy of the part for the oboe is the result both of tessitura and of agonal articulation and interlocking with the rhythmic movements of the strings.
Andrea Morricone