Ascolta Maria

In the spring of 2020, lockdown closed rehearsal rooms along with everything else. Coro Monti Verdi carried on singing regardless: rehearsals moved online and scores were shared remotely. Each singer recorded their own voice at home, and the tracks were then brought together into a single choir. The first result was «Dove», another piece by Marco Maiero.

The second piece was «Ascolta Maria», shared on the choir’s Facebook page at the end of May — by tradition, the month devoted to the Virgin. The singers dedicated it to the Madonna di Tirano in particular, asking her, as they put it at the time, to “extend her hand over us all” during a difficult period. It came with an old saying the choir had long made its own: he who sings prays twice.

For many of the singers — not all of them digital natives — it was above all a test of patience: learning to record themselves, to sing alone with headphones on, and to trust a choir they could not hear. On 3 June 2020, La Provincia di Sondrio described it as something of a “social experiment”: a way of staying together when being close was not an option.

In Tirano, the Madonna is no distant figure. According to tradition, she appeared at dawn on 29 September 1504 to the Blessed Mario Omodei, near the Folla bridge. Work on the sanctuary began on 25 March 1505, and it was consecrated in 1528. For five centuries it has been the spiritual heart of the town and of the whole valley, so offering her a sung prayer in those months came naturally to the choir.

Marco Maiero was born in Tricesimo, near Udine, in 1956. A trombone graduate of the Udine Conservatoire, in 1978 he founded the Vôs de mont choir, which first brought his songs to an audience. His early steps as a composer owe much to Bepi De Marzi, who wrote Signore delle cime. His folk-inspired pieces, with approachable melodies and harmonies, often draw on the landscapes and history of Friuli, and are now sung by choirs in Italy and abroad. Ten of them feature in Coro Monti Verdi’s repertoire.