A well-known composer and professor in Rome has revealed his goal of
depicting the Bible through musical composition, stressing that it is an
important avenue of evangelization.
“My career,” explained Msgr. Marco Frisina in a Nov. 11 interview with
CNA, is to have “the Bible and the music” be “together like one
embrace.”
Msgr. Frisina graduated with a degree in composition from the
Conservatory of Saint Cecilia in Rome, as well as a Licentiate from the
Pontifical Biblical Institute in the city.
He is currently Chairman of the Diocesan Commission for Sacred Art and
Cultural Heritage and a Consultant of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting the New Evangelization, and since 1991 has been the Director
of the Pontifical Musical Choir of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.
For his ministry as “a priest,” Msgr. Frisina noted that in the “evangelization” through music, “the Bible was a unique link.”
As an expression of this connection, he has written over twenty musical
selections specifically for Bl. John Paul II, whom he knew in seminary,
and for Benedict XVI, all illustrating the lives of various Biblical
figures and Saints.
Highlighting how music is also an important tool for evangelization,
Msgr. Frisina stated that “I believe the music, in my experience…is a
great harmony” in terms of meeting different “people” and “cultures.”
“All things with the music” he added, “begin to move; to move emotion, to move conversion, to move friendship, to move faith.”
Evangelization, continued the priest, “for me is communicated love. The
music is love because we sung only for love. The singer, player is an
act of love. And I believe to communicate the faith with the music,
communicate the love with the music (or) with the words...is the love.”
Having been born in Rome and written most of his work in Italian,
including the music for several movies on the lives of the Saints and
the Beatification Mass for Bl. John Paul II, Msgr. Frisina expressed his
ardent desire to continue expanding his work into the English language.
Although he mostly writes English compositions for “international
occasions” such as World Youth Day, the priest expressed that it is his
“dream to write the great compositions in English” like the “’oratorium’
opera.”
“I believe the English language is a language universal for many
people,” Msgr. Fisina explained, referring to the language as “the new
Latin of the world.”
“I believe in English it is possible to tell the Bible history in music.”
Msgr. Fisina travelled to the United States in 2011 for a special tour
in which he performed concerts in New Jersey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in
New York, Sacred Heart in Newark and Regina Pacis in Booklyn, and will
return to America again in 2014 for several other commissions he has
accrued there.
Among the compositions requested of him in the United States is a new
symphony he is working on entitled “Mysterium Paschale,” the “movements”
of which are like the days of Triduum, Paschale Triduum: Thursday,
Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Easter.”
“Like a passage, a passage from the love, the painful, the waiting and
the light and this passage is Paschale Mysterium, the Mystery of
Easter.”
“Music is,” he said, “like one language universal. God has created the
music, I believe, to give us a way, a way to meet God and friends and
brothers, like one privileged way to us.”
As far evangelization, the priest stated that “Music can be a potential
weapon, capable of uniting the close to the far away making them vibrate
to the unison for beauty of love of Christ.”