Frassati's Favorite Music

Although I have been a symphony-goer for decades, I am still very much a novice in the world of classical music.  So, even though I've been to Mozart's birthplace, please don't ask me for any details about anything he's composed.  I just know what I like. 

Recently, thanks to circumstances only Blessed Pier Giorgio could arrange, I attended a fantastic performance of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 conducted by Manfred Honeck.  The symphony is the last work of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner who died before completing the final movement. He dedicated it "to the beloved God."  Maestro Honeck is also an Austrian who, in addition to his achievement-packed biography, is known for being a devout Catholic. I'm still reliving the concert in my mind and replaying the music as often as possible.

This started me thinking about the music that Pier Giorgio Frassati listened to as a young man.  According to his sister, he was very moved by music, liturgical music most of all.  His passion for singing is frequently mentioned - along with the fact that he was tone deaf.  His parents' love for the operatic works of Richard Wagner was so great that they named family pets after certain characters. But Wagner wasn't Pier Giorgio's favorite.  Who was?

Because Pier Giorgio looks and seems so contemporary, it is easy to forget that he never heard of bluetooth headphones, podcasts, smartphones and downloading.  In his lifetime, both the radio and phonographs (who knows what those are?) were fairly new and, in the absence of television, music videos wouldn't come along for many decades. There was no internet. No social media. No reality talent shows. But he knew music.  He loved music.

It's fair to say that most of the music he heard was probably in the setting of a live performance, a school or church choir, a band, a symphony or opera.  In his letters, he mentions a few by name.  I thought perhaps those of you who feel a special bond with him might want to immerse yourself for a few minutes or so in the music that he enjoyed.  So here are some selections.

1) Mignon - On October 23, 1921, while in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, Pier Giorgio wrote to a friend that he was spending the evening at the theater seeing a performance of this opera. He was staying with the Rahner family to learn German but was about to leave for a bit of traveling around the region.  Click here to listen to a selection from that work.

2) Two Widows (Dve Vdovy) -  About three weeks after seeing "Mignon," Pier Giorgio was in Prague and wrote to his mother that he had attended a performance of this two-act Czech opera on November 15th at the invitation of a priest friend Father Nicola Levy.  According to Pier Giorgio, "it was very well performed."  Click here for a selection from that work.

3) Don Giovanni - Being a fan of Mozart myself, I'm happy to have this in common with Blessed Frassati. To show just how much he loved music, he saw a performance of this two-act masterpiece on November 18th in Vienna - only three days after seeing "Two Widows" performed in Prague. Of course, seeing a Mozart opera in Vienna would have been a wonderful experience and Pier Giorgio wrote to his sister Luciana that he enjoyed it very much.  Click here for a full-length performance of Don Giovanni at the 1954 Salzburg Festival.

There is no way to really know how much time Pier Giorgio spent at the opera and theater, but, given that he saw the above three performances in less than a month, it was probably quite extensive for a man of his social standing with his family's financial situation.  Listening to the music he listened to deepens my understanding of who he was. But no opera could ever replace the music he most longed to experience which he wrote about in a letter to his friend Antonio Villani:

"...the day that the Lord will choose, we’ll find ourselves together again in our true Homeland to sing the praises of God."

Sing on, Pier Giorgio.  Sing on.

Verso l'alto!  ///cmw