THE CECILIAN REFORM
Towards the end of the 19th century the Cecilian Movement was found in Italy: the title belonged to a musical movement that reformed the sacred music inside the Catholic church. So called in honour of Saint Cecily, patroness of music, was the answer to the centenary and almost total absence of the Gregorian chant and of the renaissance polyphony from the liturgical catholic celebrations in favour of more similar styles of the opera music. The main aim of the new compositions had to be a major moderation and pursuit in order to let the assembly participate to the liturgy through chant. In this period were born in almost all the parishes the Scholae Cantorum, choral groups that vivified the liturgy and the learning of music art, and Istituti Diocesani di Musica Sacra. Consequently the organ art was influenced by this movement with the deletion of all those registers called da concerto, typical of Italian organs of the nineteenth century, in favour of less thunderous sounds. Therefore, reeds and mutations were replaced or cancelled, with funds, mainly of 8 ‘ and violeggianti registers. In this period, in fact, the organ is renewed from a technical point of view: deleted the eighth scavezza (also called short octave or octave in sixth) and the broken registers between basses and sopranos, a new transmission system has been designed to replace the traditional mechanical one, the pneumatic-tubular transmission. Among the musicians who gave birth to the Cecilian Movement were Giovanni Tebaldini (Brescia, 7 September 1864 - San Benedetto del Tronto, 11 May 1952), predecessor of Lorenzo Perosi (Tortona, 21 December 1872 - Rome, 12 October 1956) in the position of kappelmeister in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, even if all sources agree in identifying the guide and the main exponent of the Cecilian Movement in Perosi. Tebaldini himself admitted that what he had dreamed and hoped for had become reality thanks to the Tortonian priest and composer. The Cecilian Movement found maximum support in the person of Pope Pius X (born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto; Riese, June 2, 1835 - Rome, August 20, 1914) who on November 22, 1903 (not surprisingly on the day of Saint Cecily), issued what it is considered the manifesto of the movement, i.e. the Motu Proprio Inter pastoralis officii sollicitudines, in which he reaffirmed all the concepts dear to the Cecilianists and urged the whole Catholic Church to conform to them. Edgardo Pocorobba

Additional info about this CD
Recorded: Duomo di Ciriè, Turin, Italy, Ottobre 2019
8 pages full colour booklet (Ita and Eng)
Artist biography
Musicology comment
Full organ specs card included