Entering the seminary

His mother’s opposition became less fierce, not least thanks to the offer of a paternal uncle to pay for Angelo’s room and board, and the boy entered the seminary at the age of ten, in 1890. There was nothing odd in this: at that time the road leading to the seminary was taken very early. And a child seminarian would not necessarily go on to become a priest – on the contrary. Many boys decided, during their studies in the seminary, not to continue but to take other roads. Not Angelo Lolli.
For some of those years we have a valuable, detailed Diary written by Lolli himself, in which he recounts that he has discovered music. He fell in love with it and never left it again. He was always to regard it as his second vocation. None of his flights could be taken without his beloved organ. Music was always to remain not just a pleasant background, but above all the most heartfelt language of his prayer, especially in the long hours when he accompanied the liturgy in the cathedral.