In this series, considerable space has been given to pieces of sacred music (to mention a few: Missa by Gian Paolo Luppi, Di voci d’oro by Biancamaria Furgeri, Per il tempo di Pasqua by Franco Cavallone, and other pieces which have appeared here in various collections). Now it is the turn of Alpha et Omega by Marco Simoni.
The Composer had already experimented with the sacred genre by composing Sicut dies illuminabitur, published in this series in the anthology Homage to Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
By doing something similar to that of the piece mentioned, Simoni starts from some fragments also taken from Gregorian chant and which have as their subject some passages from the Easter liturgy. The Composer turns this musical material into modern and very idiomatic writing for the guitar, “while trying not to betray the vocal intent of those same fragments”, as he himself writes.
The idea, in short, from which this Suite arises, is to trace a sort of via lucis, to be the ideal continuation of the via crucis.
(Piero Bonaguri)

Born in 1972, Marco Simoni studied composition with Antonio Di Pofi, Pippo Molino and Mario Garuti, graduating from the Milan Conservatory, then specializing in electronic music at the Civica Scuola di Musica. For over twenty years he has been working with numerous theaters, foundations and musical and cultural associations; he is a member of the Italian Society of Contemporary Music and of the Cluster association of Lucca; he was artistic director of the International Composition Competition S. Rossore in Pisa.
Since 2012 he has been writing television music for RAI. He has written operas for the opera season of the Teatro Verdi in Pisa and for that of the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca. He has written instrumental music, for theatrical prose, docu-films, audio books, short films; his works have been performed in Italy and abroad in prestigious places such as the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, the Modern Art Gallery in Turin, the Teatro Verdi in Pisa, the Philip Kutev room in Sofia, the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca, the Palazzina Liberty in Milan.