At the conclusion of the Pittsburgh Symphony’s landmark performance at the Vatican on Saturday, Pope John Paul II surprised conductor Gilbert Levine.<\/p>\n
“Thank you for bringing the Pittsburgh Symphony to me,” the pontiff said. “Would you play an encore?” <\/p>\n
No encore had been planned because encores normally are not performed at the Vatican. <\/p>\n
\nBut Levine saw the pope’s expectant look and John Paul’s personal secretary giving the go-ahead to play. So the orchestra repeated the final pages of Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh Symphony performed a 75-minute concert yesterday emphasizing reconciliation and peace among faiths in a celebration of John Paul’s silver anniversary as pope. It was the first time an American orchestra had played at the Vatican. <\/p>\n
“I love the music we played tonight, and I played my heart out. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again,” said principal oboe Cynthia DeAlmeida as tears ran down her face after the concert. She said she was not prepared for the intensity of the experience. <\/p>\n
“I can’t even speak,” she said. <\/p>\n
More than 7,000 people, including leading Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives, heard the world debut of American composer John Harbison’s choral work, “Abraham.” <\/p>\n
Inspired by the Renaissance music of Italy, which the pope enjoys, the piece emphasizes that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all derive from the Biblical figure. The choir included Jews, Christians and Muslims from Pittsburgh; London; Krakow, Poland; and Ankara, Turkey to emphasize harmony among people of diverse backgrounds. <\/p>\n
John Paul had requested that the concert’s main piece be the Mahler symphony. The 83-year-old pontiff was keen to hear the first movement, which depicts the struggles of life, the soul’s yearning for beauty and love and, finally, death. Mahler’s finale evokes vast spaces and the time when all spirits that have lived will be resurrected. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…at the Vatican: Pope meets with Israel’s rabbis Calls for unity “During the next eight days, in every part of the world, Christians of different confessions and traditions will gather to pray intensely the Lord strengthens the common commitment for their full unity,” John Paul said. This year’s theme – peace – was chosen by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}