From the Gregorian chant, studied, rehearsed and practiced in the whole Divine
Office, masses, psalms, antiphons, anthems, etc., in my young years at that old Seminary of the Salesians,
— and the active, theoretical and practical contact with sacred music in the years
at the Seminary [Palestrina, Josquin de Prés, Willaert, Thomas de Victoria, Orlando
di Lasso etc.] and later, already in Germany, during the Courses of Sacred Music at
the Musikhoschule Frankfurt, with such teachers as Helmut Rilling, Helmut Krebs,
Ernst Gerold Schramm, Wolfgang Schäfer and others…
— also due to the intense and longtime studies dedicated to the music [theory, harmony and counterpoint, formal analysis, history and instruments, in my case violoncello and piano], especially in Frankfurt (Musikhochschule and J.-W.-Goethe-University) and in Heidelberg (Musikseminar of the University)…
— and to the experiences with musical theater alluded in the item “Theater”, I can say with certain pride and great satisfaction that in the decade from 10 to 20 my strongest emotions and aesthetic experiences were, in this or that way, intimately linked to the music, instrumental and vocal, and almost exclusively in the area of the so called classic or erudite music.
What came later, such as the increasing interest and the feeling for the most different forms of “popular” music, first of all obviously of ours, the Brazilian music, and later also the American, this one especially in the traditional songs and in the multiple forms of the classic jazz, ah the glorious 30s, 40s and 50s, the innovations of the 60s, and of course the Latin-American music, tango, rumba, salsa, bolero, etc., all that, so I see and feel it now, has not been
anything more than a logical and natural consequence of the premises, established in the adolescence.