VI Puntata – This Monday starts for an overwhelming journey to the roots of rhythm, in the heart of a continent that taught the world the beat, dance and strength of sound. 🥁 THE CONTINENT OF RIGHT: THE AFRICA ANTICA 🥁 Between ancestral drums, ritual songs, fires in the night and millennial traditions, we will discover a music born to unite men, spirits and nature.
📅 Monday 27 April 2026 🕘 ♪ 21:15 📺 On the official YouTube channel with Marialuisa Veneziano ✨ An intense, magnetic evening full of energy and wonder. Prepare to hear the heartbeat.
V episode – Tonight you travel far... far away. The "Music before Spotify" column opens the doors to an extraordinary civilization, where sound was not simple entertainment... but power, harmony and philosophy. A fascinating journey between emperors, temples, millenary instruments and melodies capable of placing the soul and the world in order. From the guqin ropes to the thoughts of Confucius, we will discover together an ancient music that still knows how to speak to the heart.
A recollection of the soul between sound and silence, where fear unfolds and death is revealed in its composed truth.
by Marialuisa Veneziano
Ancona 15 April 2026
I remember almost embarrassing clarity — as it happens for those moments who do not ask to be remembered and just for this they do not forget — the evening in which, without any particular disposition, I found myself listening to the Requiem of Fauré. There was neither in me nor the fervour of the scholar, nor the devoted expectation of those who approach a sacred work with the intention of being built of it; indeed, if I must be honest, I carried with me that elegant distraction and a little guilty of those who believe they can cross the beauty without being touched.
And yet, few jokes were enough — few, but of such a unique quality to escape any frantic description — because my safety, so well-disposed and so unfounded, was intrigued with a discretion that, if it had not been so deep, could have exchanged for kindness.
There is nothing that would be expected of a Requiem. No harsh gravity, no sense of imminent catastrophe, none of those solemnities that, more than rising, sometimes seem to please their own weight. But there was a sort of measure — and give me the term, though imperfect — that did not humiliate the pain, but did not even exhibit it; a composure that did not deny death, but it deprived it of all theatricality.
It was then that I understood, not without some inner resistance, that Gabriel Fauré did not intend to persuade me of anything. He did not want to teach, nor to move in the most immediate sense of the term; and his renunciation — so unusual, so little accommodating — It produced a more radical effect than any statement: it left me alone, but not abandoned; exposed, but not threatened.
It is as unique as, in the history of music, the most daring works are recognized not so much for what they say, as for what they dare omit. In the case of the Requiem of Fauré, this omission assumes an almost philosophical character: he renounces terror. There where others — and just evoke the names of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi — they had questioned death through tremor or challenge, Fauré chooses a way that, at first sight, may appear less intense, but that, at a more careful glance, it turns out to be an almost disconcerting audacity: he removes his apparatus from death.
And what remains, when the end of his most feared images is deprived?
It remains, to say it with a frankness that does not exclude grace, the simple fact of not being able to continue. A limit, and nothing more.
Now, if there is something that the human soul endures with difficulty, it is not so much the presence of evil, as the absence of a form that makes it intelligible. Judgment, punishment, even punishment — all these figures, however terrible, have the advantage of offering a narrative. But Fauré, with a discretion that shatters irony, withdraws this narrative, and leaves the listener in front of a more naked truth, and therefore more demanding: that of an existence that does not need to be justified or punished, but only understood in its end.
This understanding, however, does not give itself as a concept, but as an experience — and, as far as I am concerned, it was revealed with unexpected clarity in the "Sanctus".
There is, at that time, an appearance that escapes any ordinary description. The harp — and here every word risks being either too poor or too stressed — does not accompany, does not say: inaugurates. Its sound stretches out with a naturalness that makes it forget its origin, as if it were not produced, but simply given.
Then I had the singular impression — that I could not defend with arguments, but that I cannot deny — to find me suspended. Not raised, not elevated in the rhetorical sense of the term, but freed from the very weight of being placed. It was like planar, yes, but without wind, without direction: above an infinite sea, immovable, whose extension did not arouse dizziness, but an unexpected quiet.
The ropes of the harp drew, so to speak, the surface of this sea; and when the choir entered, he did not do it to dominate it, but to live it. The voices rested on that sound as light on water, without ripple. There was nothing solemn in the common sense: no affirmation, no will to rise. And yet, precisely in this renunciation, something was manifested higher than any elevation: a presence that did not ask to be recognized, because it could not be denied.
If the "Sanctus" was, so to speak, a revelation of space, the "Pie Jesu" was a revelation of the limit.
Here the music is portrayed again, as a person of great education who, having said the essential, does not insist. The single voice arises, and its simplicity is such as to disarm every attempt of interpretation. There is no supplication in the dramatic sense of the term; there is no urgency, nor fear. There is, rather, a form of abandonment that has nothing passive, but that comes from such a complete understanding that you no longer need to resist.
I remember having felt, at that moment, a feeling that I could describe — with some fear of being misunderstood — like a loss. Not loss of something dear, but loss of a tension. As if a part of me, always vigilant and always ready to oppose, had suddenly been found without function.
And it was then that death, a word that until then I had dealt with that prudence that is proper to things not understood, ceased to appear to me as a violent interruption. She became a friend — would be an expression too easy — but stopped being enemy.
In this transformation of the gaze, which happens without declaring itself, is perhaps the highest lesson of the Requiem of Fauré. There is no consolation, because consolation implies a promise; and Fauré, with a coherence that shatters the severity, refuses to promise. There is not even despair, because despair requires conflict, and here the conflict has already been overcome.
There is, however, a sort of balance — fragile, of course, and yet sufficient — that comes from the renunciation of images that, while making death more bearable, make it even less true.
When, finally, the "In Paradisum" unfolds, it is not the impression of reaching a conclusion, but of witnessing a progressive subtraction. The voices are made to read, the harmonics are rarefied, as if the sound itself, reached the limit of its need, retreated with an almost moral discretion.
There is no triumph, there is no landing. There is, rather, the lack of that need — so deeply human — to reach.
And perhaps, if I am given a conclusive thought, it is precisely here that the work reaches its highest truth: in suggesting, without ever affirming it, that the end is not an event to understand, but a condition to welcome; and that such acceptance, far from being a surrender, can constitute — for short and precarious — a form of peace.
IV episode: a fascinating journey between Mesopotamia, Egypt and the first musical instruments of history, when music was rite, tale and memory. A little journey through time to listen to music before the "play" button existed.
Saturday 28 March 2026, 2 hours1 – In the historical hall of the Teatro dell’Aquila di Fermo, the FORM – Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, together with the Regional Choir ARCOM and the young musicians of the "Rossini" Conservatories of Pesaro and "G.B. Pergolesi" of Fermo, retrace under the direction of Manlio Benzi the great path of the soul that Verdi entrusted to his Requiem.
by Marialuisa Veneziano
«God never troubles the joy of his children except to prepare them for a more certain and greater.» — Alessandro Manzoni
If the human soul was a land to be crossed, there would not be only bright plains and gentle slopes, but also sudden ravines, shadow valleys and cliffs from which the gaze struggles to detach. And it is perhaps from one of these inner cliffs that seems to be born Mass by Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi. Not as a peaceful music, not as a liturgy that goes down already consoled from above, but as a cry that rises from the depth of man, crosses the terror of judgment and slowly, almost with hesitation, seeks the way of mercy. Those who have had the opportunity to listen to her live know well that unique impression it produces: it is not only about attending a concert, but to take part in an experience that resembles a moral journey. So it was also in the performance of Saturday 28 March 2026 at the Teatro dell’Aquila di Fermo, where the FORM – Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana, enriched by students of the Conservatories"Gioachino Rossini" of Pesaro and "Giovanni Battista Pergolesi" of Fermo, together with the Regional Choir ARCOM and the quartet of the soloists Yulia Tkachenko, Mariangela Marini, Davide Giusti and Alessandro Abis, under the direction of Manlio Benzi, gave rise to an intense reading of this score that, at a distance of one hundred and fifty years, continues to question man more than comfort.
The Requiem was born in 1874 to commemorate Alessandro Manzoni. Greens, who was not prone to literary idolatry, nourished for the Lombard writer a veneration that aroused devotion. When he heard about his death, he wrote to the editor Remember words that reveal a seldom confessed emotion: «With him disappears one of the purest splendours of our glory». Now, those who are familiar with Verdi's temperament know how alien the composer was from all rhetorical sentimentalism; and yet that loss struck him as one gets hit when a figure disappears, which, despite not belonging to his own daily intimacy, represents a kind of collective moral consciousness. Manzoni had been, for many Italians of the nineteenth century, something like this: not only an author, but an ethical point of reference. It is not surprising that Verdi’s tribute was not just a musical commemoration, but a work of extraordinary spiritual complexity.
And here, if you look carefully, a consonance emerges that is not only literary but almost philosophical. The history of human consciousness — they knew well thinkers like Blaise Pascal or Søren Kierkegaard — is always suspended between two abyss: that of despair and that of faith. The man, writes Pascal, is «a thinking rod»: fragile in his matter, immense in his consciousness. The Requiem Verdiano seems to be born from this condition. We do not find a faith proclaimed with theological security, but a conscience that is questioned. Not a dogma, but a drama. In this sense Verdi’s music is surprisingly approaching the Manzonian vision of human moral history. In Wedding promises, the conversion of the Unknown represents perhaps one of the most profound moments of European literature: a man who, coming on the edge of the abyss, suddenly discovers that mercy can exist. It is exactly the same spiritual movement that crosses the structure of the Requiem.
This tension is already evident in the first lines of the Requiem aeternam. The entrance of the choir has nothing of the solemn proclamation: it is rather a breath, a prayer that is almost shy. The arches accompany with a suspended delicacy, as if the music itself feared to disturb the silence from which it emerges. Here Verdi demonstrates an extraordinary theatrical wisdom: faith does not appear as certainty, but as desire. The ARCOM Choir has returned this atmosphere, albeit with a pronounced shyness of female voices, keeping the sound suspended in an almost metaphysical dimension.
But who believed that this calm represents the definitive face of the Requiem He would soon be denied. Just wait a few minutes for the entire musical building to be shaken by one of the most impressive pages in the history of music: Dies. Here Verdi seems to want to evoke not only the day of judgment, but the moral earthquake that it represents for human consciousness. The brass explode with almost apocalyptic violence, the choir enters as a compact mass and the orchestra turns into a feverish organism. Many scholars have observed how this page possesses something profoundly Dante, and the reference to Dante Alighieri does not appear at all arbitrary. In the sound turbine of Dies it seems to glimpse the storms of Dante’s Hell, those souls overwhelmed by forces that can no longer govern.
But here there is also a deeper philosophical question. Judgment, in Christian tradition, is not only an eschatological event: it is also a metaphor for consciousness. Every man carries his own inner court. ImmanuelKant talked about «moral law within me and starry sky above me». Verdi, without any explicit philosophical claim, seems to transform this idea into music. The Dies It is not only the divine judgment: it is the moment when man is suddenly faced with his own truth.
Incipit of Dies Irae, by Requiem
The FORM has faced this moment with energy and compactness, supported by the enthusiasm of the students of the conservatives of Marche who have joined the teachers of the regional ensemble. But what was most striking was not only technical precision or sound power, but that rarer quality that could be called collective musical consciousness. The orchestrals of the FORM seemed to breathe together, as if each instrumental gesture was part of a greater thought than the individuality. In philosophy it would be said that here the individual is done in the community: not the sum of isolated musicians, but a living organism, able to transform the individual gesture into shared language. And this is one of the most silent miracles of orchestral art. The bows, compact and intense, possessed that timbre depth that allows green music to never become merely sound rhetoric; the brass, powerful but not brutal, sculpted the acoustic space with the almost liturgical dignity that this score requires; the woods, with their most intimate nuances, remembered that even in the heart of musical storms there is always a more fragile and more human inner voice.
The direction of Manlio Benzi has favoured a vibrant and theatrical reading, highlighting the dramatic dimension of Verdi's writing. If you would like to make a critical remark — and criticism, when it is sincere, must always maintain its freedom — some times of Dies Perhaps they could have adhered even more deeply to the narrative monumentality of the mature Green, which tends to sculpt terror with an almost sculptural gravity.
The choir, throughout the work, plays a role that goes far beyond that of simple sound mass. Verdi uses it as a sort of collective consciousness of humanity. In Quantus tremor est futurus writing assumes an almost declaiming character, as if the whole human species spoke with one voice in front of the unknown of the final judgment. The ARCOM Choir has shown here a compactness and clearness of remarkable joints.
In the Confutatis maledictis the drama takes on an almost theatrical form. The bass Alessandro Abis authoritatively pronounces the condemnation of the wicked, while the orchestra responds with a restless plea. Verdi builds this passage on a clear contrast between the serious and the acute register, between the sentence and the prayer. It is one of those moments when his operatic experience emerges strongly: the composer knows perfectly how to transform a theological concept into a musical gesture of immediate effectiveness.
Among the most moving pages emerge then the Lacrimo, where the invocation appears Save me, fons pietatis. Here music suddenly changes color. The melodic line of the soloists stretches with an almost disarming sweetness, as if the consciousness, after contemplating the abyss, finally found the strength to beg. But Verdi is not limited to this: it lets the choir enter over that melody, slowly, as a wave that wraps and exceeds the individual voice. The result is one of the most intense moments of the entire score. The solo quartet has found here a particularly successful balance: the soprano Yulia Tkachenko with a bright and penetrating line, the mezzo-soprano Mariangela Marini with a warm and deep timbre, the tenor Davide Giusti with a clear and well projected vocality and the bass Alessandro Abis with a strong timbre authoritativeness.
And when, after so many storms, the Pie Jesu, music finally seems to breathe. It is a simple, almost childish supplication, which asks mercy more than justice. Here the parallel with Manzoni becomes almost inevitable: as the Unknown who, after the night of conscience, discovers the possibility of forgiveness, so the Requiem Verdiano seems to arrive at a dimension of hope.
But Verdi does not give an easy conclusion. In Free me, Domine the solo soprano is back in front of the theme of Dies, returning as a shadow of memory. It is an extraordinary dramatic gesture. The composer does not erase the fear of judgment: he recalls it, reproposes it, almost to suggest that human consciousness can never get rid of it completely. Yet, through the final prayer, that fear seems to turn into something different: no more terror, but awareness.
And at that moment — while the choir suspends its voice between imploration and silence and the orchestra seems to hold the last breath — something happens that no musicological analysis can really explain. One has the feeling that that prayer no longer belongs to the Latin text, neither to Verdi's score, nor to the performers on stage. It becomes a question addressed to each of us. Not a question cried, but almost whispered, as happens in the most intimate hours of consciousness: if indeed, beyond the tumult of life and our fears, there may be a mercy capable of accepting man as it is, fragile, imperfect, but irreparably human.
When the last sound dissolved in the hall of the Teatro dell’Aquila, the audience remained for a few moments suspended in that silence that follows only the great musical experiences. Verdi, with his disarming irony, once said: «I don't know. Requiem be sacred or theatrical; I know only that it is true». And maybe this is the truth. — human before even religious — to make this work one of the leaders of Western music: a journey that, starting from the barter of conscience, stubbornly attempts to find the way to heaven.
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