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Monday, March 22, 2010

CONCERT IN THE VATICAN FOR THE HOLY FATHER'S NAME DAY

VATICAN CITY, 20 MAR 2010 (VIS) - Yesterday evening in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, Benedict XVI attended a concern held in honour of his name day.

  The Henschel string quarter and the mezzo-soprano Susanne Kelling performed "The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross" by Joseph Haydn in a new arrangement of Haydn's "Passion" by Jose Peris Lacasa, composer to the royal court of Spain.

  At the end of the concert the Holy Father made some brief remarks in which he thanked the musicians and praised the "austere beauty" of the composition. It is, he said, "worthy of the Solemnity of St. Joseph, ... appropriate for the period of Lent, and prepares us to experience the central Mystery of the Christian faith".

  Haydn's work "conceals a universal rule of artistic expression: that of using a physical medium to communicate a beauty that is also good and true. ... This is the same law that God followed when communicating His love to us: He became incarnate in our human flesh and created the greatest masterpiece of the entire creation: the 'one mediator between God and humankind, the man Jesus Christ'".

  "The 'harder' the material, the more the constraints on expression and the greater the genius of the artist. Thus, on His 'hard' cross God pronounced in Christ the most beautiful and true Word of love, which is Jesus in His full and definitive giving of Self".

  Christ's "bond with history, with the flesh, is the supreme sign of faithfulness, of a love so free as not to be afraid to commit itself forever, to express the infinite in the finite, the whole in the fragment. This law, which is the law of love, is also the law of art in is most exalted expressions", Benedict XVI concluded.
BXVI-CONCERT/ARTISTIC EXPRESSION/...                    VIS 20100322 (320)

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