Film composers Simon Boswell and Stefano Mainetti have both been involved in an unusual and currently much talked-about project where new (non-film) music has been written for an album called “Alma Mater: Music from the Vatican.” The album features the voice of Pope Benedict XVI as well as the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome conducted by Pablo Colino and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Boswell and Mainetti, who are joined by Nour Eddine, contributed eights original compositions to the album, which will be released on November 29 by Geffen Records. As well as writing for Alma Mater, Mainetti and Boswell have also been involved with the album’s music arrangements and production.

“Here, instead of composing to a film script, which I’m used to, the ‘script’ was the Gregorian chants sang by the Choir and the words of the Pope, and it was fantastically inspiring,” said Stefano Mainetti, who has been involed in several other projects focusing on Christian faith, most recently writing the original epic music for the massive audio bible, “Word of Promise.” Simon Boswell said that “listening to the air resonate with Gregorian chant was mesmerizing and a great responsibility – as it was when using the Holy Father’s voice. When composing, I was very sensitive to the rhythms of his speech. To me, the album has an uplifting, emotional core that, as with Renaissance art, you don’t have to be Catholic, Anglican or Muslim, to appreciate.”

All three composers will be conducting their music from ‘Alma Mater’ at a series of concerts to launch the album in the winter – details to be announced.

 Editor’s note: In the case of Simon Boswell, we could not help notice that this project was a pretty big step in a different “thematic” direction for the composer, who is best known for his horror scores. If you search the IMDb for the most common keywords associated with films scored by Boswell, among the top 10 are: “murder,” “female nudity,” nudity,” “sex,” “blood” and “death”.