(ANSA) – ROME, APRIL 14 – On a cloudy and sunny morning – in the oncology and internal medicine day hospital and in the Chiostro dei Frati of the Santo Spirito in Sassia hospital – music and treatment are back at the centre, according to the ancient tradition of the oldest hospital in Europe.
Nine young musicians – seven violins, a viola and a cello – accompanied the patients’ daily therapies in a string concert with pieces by Bach, Mozart and Galuppi, bringing relief and beauty into their day and that of doctors, nurses, guests and family members passing through the large hospital courtyard. A health resort overlooking the Lungotevere that has never stopped functioning since 1100 but already existed as a hostel and hospital for pilgrims visiting Peter’s tomb since the 1600s.
A simple and touching project: ‘Notes of therapy’, wanted by the UOC Internal Medicine of the Santo Spirito, with the young students of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, the Neuchatel Conservatory and the Giordano Bruno High School in Rome. They were coordinated by the teachers Ruggero Sfregola and Ruggiero Di Donna, of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, and Olivier Piguet, of the Neuchatel Conservatory. “After all, the son of Apollo Asclepius, the Latin Aesculapius whose stick is a symbol of the medical profession, already treated with music in ancient Greece” says Dr. Agostino Valenti, one of the managers of the UOC Internal Medicine of the Holy Spirit, for years doctor of the Senta Cecilia Orchestra and one of the promoters of ‘Note di Terapia’.
So today it has returned to its usual function, the hospital that Innocenzo Third had thought of as a place of welcome and care for children abandoned in the Exposed Wheel, from which they were taken to be washed in wine and marked with a small tattoo under their feet: the double-armed cross symbol of the Holy Spirit. And where the women then came to breastfeed, cheered by the music, as told by the fourteenth-century frescoes with images of flutes, strings, bagpipes. In the splendid Corsie sistine – frescoed galleries where until 1998 the beds of the sick were still arranged, with a gigantic organ in a central position in the hospital room – for hundreds of years music and care have brought relief to patients. Like today, with the sweet music of nine young musicians and their string concert. (HANDLE).
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