When asked what the Church has done for music, Riccardo Muti explains that "the Church has made an enormous contribution to musical literature for centuries" and, moreover, "all great musicians have composed sacred music."
He added that there has always been a close connection between music and Christianity, so much so that "Christian martyrs went to their death singing" and Saint Augustine himself said that "'cantare amantis est': making music is proper to those who love, those who know how to love, those who believe in love."
Muti's answer could be completed by recalling that the Romans and Greeks played monophonic music: a single musical line played by all instruments or voices.
It was ecclesiastical composers in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, such as those of the School of Notre Dame de Paris, who invented polyphony, the simultaneous playing of two or more musical lines. This was an absolute revolution that gave birth to harmony.
Also in the Middle Ages, instruments that needed to fully exploit harmony were perfected, including the organ, clavichord, harpsichord, violin, and double bass.
One of the first forms of polyphony developed was called "Organum." It consisted of two voices: Gregorian chant as the first voice (also known as "Cantus Firmus," fixed chant) and the "Vox Organalis" as the second voice.
In addition to polyphony and harmony, the Church developed musical notation.
Although already present in rudimentary form in ancient Greece, in the 7th century an innovative form of musical notation was developed and popularized through the system of "neumes," graphic signs placed over the liturgical text that indicated the melodic progression of sacred chant.
Over the next 200 years, this transformed into a complete system, which made music more legible and popularized increasingly complex melodies. Musicians could perform music correctly without necessarily having to know the piece.
Priests and the pentagram
The pentagram, still used today by musicians around the world, was invented by the Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo.
The oldest complete polyphonic transcription was composed by Guillaume de Machaut, a great composer, poet, and priest.
From the medieval treatises of the clerics Johannes Cotto and Francone of Cologne to Renaissance theorists like Gioseffo Zarlino, it is clear that almost all music theory originated in the ecclesiastical sphere.
All the conceptual tools used today by composers and musicologists derive from there.
The Church immediately played a leading role in Western and Central Europe's music, becoming the greatest patron of the arts for centuries. In addition to employing a large number of talented musicians, it provided Europe's first codified repertoire, Gregorian chant, as early as the Early Middle Ages.
Scales, modes, melodic formulas, performance rules, and even a singing aesthetic were established, influencing every composer until the twentieth century.
While secular music was episodic and used for occasional entertainment, the Church guaranteed fixed spaces (cathedrals, abbeys), stable performers (monks, musical chapels), and a continuous patronage. This allowed music to grow as a discipline.
This also gave rise to the systematic training of musicians in monasteries: theory, solfège, vocal and instrumental training. Before the conservatories, there were the scholae cantorum, the true ancestors of modern academies. The first was founded by Pope Sylvester I in the 4th century.
Finally, thanks to medieval monks (the scriptoria), thousands of musical manuscripts were copied and transmitted. Without them, 90% of the ancient repertoire would have been lost.
Now we better understand the historical context of the Ratzinger Prize awarded to maestro Riccardo Muti, not only a recognition of his extraordinary career but also a tribute to the thread that links the history of Western music to the Christian faith.