When music became a prayer

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0:59It's work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. There is a mysterious link between music and religion. Think of monks chanting in their monasteries and the Muslim call to prayer. Gospel singing in churches in Alabama. And Bach signing all the music he ever wrote. Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone the glory. And sometimes music is a revelation. We hear it and somehow we know or think we know that he is there and he is great. I'm John Lawrenson and this is a documentary from the BBC World Service. For this week's Heart and Soul, I've come to Rome to meet a Chinese pianist who found God through music.

1:49I first felt something was missing when I was about 20 years old. around a year before I graduated from university. I had already finished most of my studies, and I was thinking about what to do next. I kept asking myself what's next, what kind of life I'm going to. So on the other side, everything looked fine. I was studying music, I had goals, but inside I felt lost. It wasn't only about my career. It felt like I was missing someone or something to guide me. Was there a moment when music stopped being enough? Yes, I think so. There were moments like that. It was hard for me to admit because music had always been my language.

2:48but sometimes when I couldn't find deeper meaning in what I was doing, when music felt like only technique or performance, I felt empty. For me, the music could express longing, but it couldn't answer it. That's when I realized my question about life was bigger than that music itself.

3:21I'm 32 years old. I'm a pianist and live in Roma, Italy. My name is Irei. In Italy, I would like people to call me Eleonora because it's like a new name for me, a new life. I was born in Hangzhou. It's a city near Shanghai and grew up there. Did religion have a part in your life when you were small, when you were growing up? When I was a child, the school and our family taught us, it's like you need to be a good child, a good student, so you need to focus on the study. Don't think there are things that you couldn't touch, because it's not useful for them. They think it's not useful, so you need to focus on the daily life, what you do, and the grades you take, and if you practice enough the pianoforte, it's like this.

4:18teachers would actually say, concentrate on your work, don't think about spiritual things? Yes, it's actually my mother. Okay. Because my mother is a physical teacher. Ah, physics. Science. Okay, okay, okay. And she doesn't believe. So your parents weren't religious at all? No, no. My mother just goes to temple to pray for us, but she always told me that you need to believe in yourself not something else. Tell me about your discovery of the piano. Were you very young when you started? Yes, it's like I was four years old because a person of my parents were a middle school teacher so before they finished the work they would leave me in the music classroom.

5:17There happened to be a piano here, which actually became my childhood toy and company. It started like this. So they didn't even invite you to play? You just saw a piano and started playing? Yes, because the classroom is empty. There's only one piano. So it's like a big toy. Do you remember what kind of pieces you were playing when you were a little girl? Mozart, Sonata. It's very, really easy for the child. I just like to play the piano. I don't think it's like the homework. I just play. I just enjoy. Could you explain the pleasure that you felt playing when you were small? Perhaps it's the same now, I don't know.

6:05Okay, it's quite like you talk with someone with the music, because music for me is like a language. I could speak with my mouth. I could speak even with my finger. So that time I read the score, I play. It's like I have a community with the composer. Was that especially important for you, do you think? Were you a quiet child? Yes, it's very quiet. I like to stay alone. I'm very shy when I was a child. I wouldn't guess now, but OK. Now, a little bit better. A little bit less.

6:58Looking back, she thinks the search began long before she knew it in the quiet child who found a way to speak through music. I think for many children and teenagers, you know, discovering music, a particular kind of music, they adopt it as their own, and it becomes part of their identity. It's kind of like a religious conversion somewhere. Did you experience something like that when you discovered music?

7:24Yirui Weng:I said in Chinese.

7:31Yirui Weng:When I was a child, the feeling was not that so strong because I was constantly struggling with technique. But as I have grown older, especially at this age of my life, I often feel a sense of freedom and purity. These are words that you can associate with the religious experience when you look back at your childhood self, do you see a desire for God that perhaps you didn't recognize at the time? Yes. I have always had a sense of curiosity and longing for a creator. I deeply believe that such a being exists because there are so many things that feel so perfect, such as laws of nature, human intelligence and the harmony of music.

8:31Yirui Weng:I also believe that there is a presence watching over me, protecting me, accompanying me in planning my life and helping me in the search for the meaning of life.

8:48It was here in Italy that that curiosity about God started to become perhaps more conscious for you and a curiosity about Christianity as well. How did that begin?

9:07Yirui Weng:Italy is full of churches and once when I passed by church I noticed that in the quiet church, there were people sitting there without speaking, and I felt curious about their behavior. Many works of art are connected to stories from the Bible. In order to understand those things, I wanted to study Bible stories in a systematic way. So you had lots of questions about Christianity. Do you remember what those questions were? Yes, it's like, was Jesus human or divine? If he was human, why did he rise from the dead? If he was a son of God, why was he betrayed and made to suffer? Who is the Virgin Mary?

10:03Yirui Weng:What is the meaning of the cross?

10:08In your second year at the Milan Conservatory, you took a sacred music course. Did you already feel something for sacred music at that time?

10:20Yirui Weng:At that time, I only felt that sacred music carried an inexplicable sense of holiness, as if time certainly stood still. It was a feeling I had never experienced before. Can you sing and play together? Yeah, if you can. I'll try. One day in this course, you encountered Vivaldi's Gloria. This was an epiphany for you. Tell us about that.

11:03Yirui Weng:The opening of this work is very splendid and full of light, but when it reaches the unused day, it takes a sorrow for Tom. Especially at qui toli specata muti, I felt a sense of nakedness, as if being exposed in broad daylight.

11:44Yirui Weng:I was immediately drawn in. Who is the son of father? Why is he called the Lamb of God? Why is he able to take away the sins of the world? At that time, I was completely unable to understand the meaning, so I began to search for answers. You could say that this moment inspired me to begin my journey of faith.

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14:18I'm John Norrenson. For this week's Heart and Soul, I'm in Rome with Eleonora Wang, the Chinese pianist who found God in music. We wander down towards the church at the end of her road. Eleonora lives really close to the Vatican. You can actually see the walls of the city-state from where the Pope leads the Catholic world if you lean out of her window. She could then, if you wanted, go to Sunday Mass at St Peter's, but she goes to this other local church.

14:51we sit in a pew at the back what's it called this church St. Amalia de la Glacia St. Mary of Grace yes it's a huge church enormous isn't it really big yes for me it's very new yeah bright yeah what's the mass like that you go to on Sunday I usually went to the mass at 10am or 11am because full of children and teenagers and you like that yes it's very active is the church full? yes from 7am to 12am every hour is full what's the prayer that you like the most? Holy Mary can you pray it for me? in Italian you usually pray it

16:12Amen.

16:18Where do you usually sit? At the front? Yes, because I like to see the priest. It's easier to understand when you see him speaking. I ask her about China, where she returns quite often. It's a delicate subject, Catholicism in China, because religion in general is strictly controlled. There is an unofficial church, but it has to operate clandestinely. On these political issues, Eleonora would rather not comment. But she will speak about her church life when she's there, which is as rich as the one she lives here. In her hometown, she's in a local Catholic youth group on WhatsApp that has 400 members.

17:06When you go back to China, you go to church in your hometown? Yeah, in my hometown, even other cities. Every city I went, the first thing is search for the church. How does it compare mass here, mass there? It's a little bit different. The mass here, I feel more peaceful. But in China, another feeling, I feel more like home. maybe because they speak my languages. I could understand more. I can hear, I can feel the people. But now it's like prayer alone. It's like you're praying alone? Yes. Okay. More silence for me. Okay. So it's more meditative? Yes. Because the Italian language for me is like, it sounds like music.

18:09So here it's more like a meditation prayer. But in China it's like I can hear my language, so it's like they communicate with me. So you like them both, in fact? Yes. Different feeling. Back home, Eleonora picks up her story again. In Milan's Chinatown, she found someone who could answer all the questions thrown up by Vivaldi and walking past churches. a Chinese priest named Father Zhao. I remember the first time we met in the church and his office, he asked me, why you come here? I said, I want to know a little bit about who is Jesus and who is God and the story of the Bible. And then he asked me the first question.

19:06It's very, very interesting. And he asked me, so you believe in something? I said, yes, I believe in something, but I don't know who is it. You've found your way to this priest, thanks to the music. Do you think that people can hear God in music?

19:33Yirui Weng:Yes, absolutely. I explain in Chinese. I believe that through music, people can feel a kind of supernatural peace and the presence of beauty. This, for me, is the presence of God. Why do you think that so many people are touched by the presence of God through music? Because in the music, you no longer feel the passage of time or space. often the moment when you are moved by beauty is a symbol of eternity. Many people were touched by this feeling because it is a kind of beauty that no language or image can fully describe.

20:46She came to Italy because of Italian opera. And when she'd completed her studies at the conservatory, she began playing professionally, like at this concert in Milan that she shows me on her telephone. Before that concert, I did Ave Maria. like pray for me this concert very beautiful I remember this and so you prayed just before and did you feel her presence, did you feel her help during the concert

21:16Yirui Weng:I hear the presence because I I remember in my prayer I said this concert I want to play for you and did it change something? yes I'm not nervous I was not nervous you don't look nervous actually in the video yes it's like one hour concert but I was not nervous it's interesting because you said that you're quite a timid person quite a shy person and for a shy person to get up on stage in front of all of these people. It must be quite terrifying usually. But do you feel your faith has helped you with that, overcome your fear? It helped me a lot. It helped me overcome my troubles. Yeah, yeah. And more generally, even outside of music, you feel it helps you overcome fear?

22:25Yes, yes. especially when I feel weakness maybe when I'm in some troubles I feel not lonely because I feel there's someone there's God and Jesus they always stay with me and they won't help me so I just need to wait

22:56Getting back to the journey of faith that you started with Father Zhao did that change the way you saw things?

23:05Yirui Weng:I was very surprised first of all it takes great courage to forgive and even to love one's enemies It calls for complete, self-giving and selfless help to others. It even rises to philosophical questions. How to transfer suffering into redemption?

23:34Redemption, making yourself better again, being saved. Were the teachings of Jesus very different from the values that you were raised with?

23:47Yirui Weng:Yes, very different. Because in Jesus' words, the beatitudes of Jesus completely overturn the worldly divination of success, happiness and power. It is not the strong, the rich, or the winner who are blessed, but the humble, the suffering, the gentle, and those who hunger for justice who can become truly human in God. This radically overturned the values I was raised with, which taught me that I had to become stronger and bigger in order to survive and avoid being hurt.

24:39Did you start to pray at that time?