Pope Benedict XVI: Music Can Become Prayer

'Music, great music, distends the spirit,arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God'.

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VATICAN CITY (VIS) - Saturday evening in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father attended a concert by the International Piano Academy of Imola,Italy, marking twenty years since its foundation. The Chinese pianist Jin Ju, using seven pianofortes from different historical periods, played pieces by Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Czerny, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Liszt.

At the end of the concert the Pope expressed his thanks to the academy and to the pianist, who "enabled us to savour ... the emotional impact of the music she played".

"This concert has, once again, given us the chance to appreciate the beauty of music, a spiritual and therefore universal language, and hence the appropriate vehicle for understanding and union between individuals and peoples. Music forms part of all cultures and, we could say, accompanies all human experiences, from suffering to pleasure, from hatred to love, from sadness to joy, from death to life".

Benedict XVI then highlighted how "over the centuries and the millennia music has always been used to give form to what cannot be expressed with words, because it arouses emotions otherwise difficult to communicate. It is, then, no coincidence that all civilisations have given importance and value to music in its various forms and expressions.

"Music, great music", he added in conclusion, "distends the spirit,arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer".