Le Monde · 9 May 2005. Interview by P. G.
In what circumstances did you found the Laboratory of Contemporary Music in the Service of Liturgy, LmcsL?
The idea came in April 1999 after reading John Paul II’s letter to artists. With support from Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, then Archbishop of Milan, I invited composers to consider liturgy. Twenty-five commissions have since been fulfilled by creators as different as Goffredo Petrassi, Henri Pousseur, Franco Donatoni, Luca Francesconi, Yan Maresz, Luis de Pablo and Ennio Morricone.
How did you come to programme a Karlheinz Stockhausen premiere?
His famous 1956 electronic work Gesang der Jünglinge was performed in March 2004 in the first Pause, our multidisciplinary event. Stockhausen then announced his intention to begin a new cycle. I immediately seized the opportunity because his approach seems authentically sacred.
The project resulted in a difficult-to-realise score, sumptuous spiritually and musically, seeking to fuse two dimensions in the cathedral: a monumental five-manual organ and two solo voices.
Is it not tempting to reconcile antagonistic practices by combining contemporary music, a source of innovation, with liturgy, synonymous with tradition?
In Italy it has been something of a desert since the Second Vatican Council, in December 1965, destroyed the bridge between the domains you consider antagonistic. We had to abandon Latin Mass and remove church choirs for greater congregational participation. LmcsL therefore tries to build something in this desert through artistically strong proposals.
One is the electronic Mass being developed by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, a young composer who honed his skills in IRCAM’s Paris studios. Real-time computer processing of the priest’s and congregation’s responses allows an unprecedented musical path while respecting the congregational participation advocated by Vatican II.