Riccardo Muti sides with Pope on sacred music

Muti sides with pope against Church 'sing-songs' - ANSA English

"It is possible to modernize holy music," he once said at a concert at the Sistine Chapel. "But this cannot happen outside the great traditional path of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphonic choral music.

"The pope is right when he says it is necessary to bring our great musical heritage back into churches," said Muti, a former director of Milan's La Scala who is now in charge of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

"When I go to church and I hear four strums of a guitar or choruses of senseless, insipid words, I think it's an insult... I can't work out how come once upon a time there were Mozart and Bach and now we have little sing-songs. This is a lack of respect for people's intelligence."