El. knyga: Spirto Gentil

Whenhe was a young seminarian, the teacher in Luigi Giussani’s singing class playeda recording of an aria from a Donizetti opera, “Spirto gentil” (“Gentle spirit,you once shone in my dreams, but after, I lost you forever. . . .”). At thatmoment, Giussani “understood for the first time that God existed, and thus thatnothing could exist without a meaning; that the heart could not existunless the heart’s goal existed: happiness.”

Manyyears later, after founding Communion and Liberation—a lay movement within theCatholic Church—Father Giussani started and directed a series of compact discs, named SpirtoGentil, that included many of the greatcomposers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of the masterpiecesof church music, and collections of folk songs from various nationaltraditions. The English translations of his introductions to the booklets thataccompanied the compact discs have finally been gathered together, revised, andpublished in book form.

Giussaniheard in music a privileged way of perceiving beauty as the splendor of truth,capable of arousing and keeping alive the desire for “infinite beauty,”recognizing it as one way through which the Mystery speaks to the heart of man.Spirto Gentil thus introduces us not only to the elements of musicalform but above all it accompanies us in a search for the ultimate meaning ofexistence.