Natalia Di Bartolo, Musicologist, Art Historian Critic.

Mariano Garau is a sensitive and modest man, and a skilled and refined musician.

His taste is of rare philological, compositional and executive subtlety and reflects a thorough preparation and passionate study of his favourite sacred themes.

His compositions are distinguished by the care with which the Maestro never strays from his own feelings and personal style, in a marriage with words that is much more than 'setting to music' texts: it is capturing the moment of 'inspiration', which, in my opinion, is never, in true artists, a symbolic entity or an abstract literary fiction.

It is present in Mariano Garau's music, and this makes him grasp aspects of the Transcendent that are so far removed from common feeling that one wonders how a man who lives our convulsive and impersonal days can stop and 'think', drawing from such thought, from his own profound and sincere Faith as well as from his own iron musical technique, what he is capable of giving to our listening.

Over the past two years, in particular, I have had the pleasure of composing several texts for him, also in Latin, to which Mariano Garau has dedicated himself with interest and community of taste, in an artistic collaboration of rare fusion of religious sentiments and intentions, destined to continue actively over time, resulting in musical pieces of undoubtedly suggestive listening and reflection.

In this interesting dossier, to which I have the pleasure of giving this brief introductory commentary, Maestro Garau intended to collect a set of pieces in Italian and Latin that were 'classics' of chanting inspired by the Sacred and the Liturgy of the Holy Mass, and others that, instead, referred to certain solemn anniversaries of the Liturgical Year.

In fact, we find the presence of a 'Hail Mary' and an 'Our Father', basic prayers, in his case quiet and sweet, to which is added a 'Hymn to the Sacred Heart, to which I myself gave the text.

They are tender and solemn prayers at the same time, but of that solemnity felt deep in the soul by one who is truly an artist.

Natalia Di Bartolo

Musicologist - Art Historian Critic