For an authentic renewal of liturgical music

Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, composer and choir master, offered a concert of sacred music in the Sistine Chapel to Benedict XVI on June 24. The program had: Offertories, Motets and Creeds by Palestrina, and several pieces he wrote himself, including a motet for 6 voices, Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto, composed in 2005 on the occasion of the Holy Father’s election. Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, now 89 years old, directed the Sistine Chapel choir from 1956 to 1977, with a concern for the perpetuation of the Palestrinian polyphonic music and of Gregorian chant.
Benedict XVI congratulated him after the concert and declared: "The various pieces we have just heard constitute a collection written between the 16th and the 20th centuries: they confirm the conviction that religious polyphony, and especially that of the Roman school, are an heirloom which must be carefully preserved, kept alive and broadcast for the benefit of the whole ecclesial community and not only for researchers and music-lovers. It is indeed a spiritual, artistic and cultural patrimony of inestimable value."
"This is why, as with the other arts, the ecclesial community always supported expressions which did not reject the past, the history of the human mind which is that of its dialogue with God".
"An authentic ‘aggiornamento’ of liturgical music is possible only in the wake of the great tradition of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony", added the pope.
The "Domenico Bartolucci Foundation" has for its purpose to "preserve and diffuse the classical and contemporary traditions of the famous school of polyphony which was characterized by chant alone without instrumental accompaniment". Msgr. Bartolucci was always concerned to "put into relief liturgical chant as a means of evangelization". Thanks to "innumerable concerts throughout the world the Pontifical Musical Chapel" was able, "through the universal language of art" to collaborate "in the very mission of the popes which is the diffusion of the Christian message".