CANTORIA. - It is generally the place in a church that is set aside for the singers, but in particular in present usage it is a gallery, placed in some part of the sacred building not strictly connected with the architectural structures; this gallery is connected with the organ, forming a common decorative element.
Practical needs of acoustics, the development of the liturgy and the introduction of the organ in fact suggested a move to an elevated place and to different positions. Sometimes, as in the Badia Morronese at Sulmona (17th century), the cantoria took on a character of elegant monumentality. Particularly valuable are the marble cantorie in the form of a projecting parapet made for S. Maria del Fiore in Florence and now preserved in the museum of the Opera of that Cathedral: one was executed by Donatello who, behind paired columns, moves the playing putti in a festive and continuous rhythm; the other is the work of Luca della Robbia who, in his static vision of form, isolates the music-making putti within rigid panels; the similarity of the theme makes these works excellent terms of comparison for the understanding of the individual artists. During the course of the 16th century the cantorie still have modest proportions and scarcely conspicuous architectural forms. From the end of the century the technical perfecting of the organ and the new impulse given to sacred music brought it about that a place had to be sought adequate to the grandiose array of the pipes of that instrument. Instead of the presbyterial walls and of choir lofts that allowed too small an expansion of the voices, the vast wall where the main entrance door opens was willingly chosen, and there the pipes of the organ were arranged with a high sense of decoration. Among the 17th-century cantorie, those of S. Maria in Vallicella and of S. Maria della Vittoria in Rome, the latter due to a design by Bernini's follower Mattia de Rossi, are those that present themselves with greater splendor and with a better understood sense of decoration. Conceived as theatrical boxes in wood often gilded, supported by brackets with large corbels, they have a balustrade with a curved course with grilles that hide the singers; stuccoes, rays, festoons, figures of winged putti form part of the decorative apparatus around the pipes of the organ with that sense of sumptuousness and provisionality typical of certain Baroque works. The 18th-century cantoria is sometimes more sober in lines and color, often turned in a concave course so as to facilitate a connection to the side walls of the construction. Later the cantoria narrows into sobriety of line, often finding in the case a direct support from the ground. In modern constructions the cantoria has had various solutions rationally studied according to the plan of the church itself, often hiding the organ which can be controlled at a distance.