MUSICAL CHAPEL. – An ensemble of voices and sometimes also instruments assigned to liturgical service at a court, a cathedral, a cardinal’s residence, and above all at the Pope’s.
I. PONTIFICAL CHAPEL
The oldest chapel, which served as a model for all the others, was that established by the pontiffs at the Roman Curia.The origins of the schools of sacred singing in Rome must be sought both in the schools for the preparation of the clergy assigned to the liturgical service of the basilicas and of the Pope, and in the monasteries erected near certain basilicas, such as in catacumbas (Sisto III, 432–40), near S. Pietro (S. Leone Magno, 440–61), and S. Lorenzo fuori le mura (Ilaro, 461–68), etc. The archicantor Giovanni informs us in his Ordo Romanus (ed. C. Silva-Tarouca, in Mem. della Pont. Acc. Rom. d'Arch., I [1923], p. 215) that various popes before Gregorio Magno had concerned themselves with singing, which leads one to suppose the existence of genuine schools of singers. The Roman tradition, however, recorded by Giovanni Diacono around 872 (Vita Gregorii, II, 6: PL 77, 90), points to Gregorio Magno as the true founder of the «Schola cantorum», also called the Orphanotrophium, to which he is said to have assigned various endowments, including one house near S. Pietro and another near the Lateran.
The «schola cantorum» was directed by a «prior scholae» or «primicerius» (who in 1397 became the maestro of the chapel), followed by the «secundus», the «tertius», and the «quartus scholae» or «archipara-phonista»; then came the «parafonisti», perhaps singers selected as soloists. The number of singers was not fixed; they were recruited from among the young men educated in the institutions attached to the «scholae», who often pursued an ecclesiastical career, and not a few of whom even attained the pontificate (Leone II, Benedetto II, Sergio I, Sergio II, etc.).
The internal organization of studies was very similar to that which Alcuino had established for the palatine school of Carlomagno, and the characteristic feature of the schola was that it took part always and exclusively in papal functions—a prerogative that would remain through the centuries with the Pontifical chapel, which, in the new foundation of Sisto IV, would be called the Sistine. In the glorious history of the schola of the Lateran patriarchate, Guido d'Arezzo is also found there in 1027, summoned by Pope Giovanni XIX to demonstrate his method of teaching singing and to expound his theories.
The Roman schola cantorum began to decline with the departure of the papal court from Rome during the Avignonese period (1309); it finally died out in 1370 (suppressed by Urbano V), only to resume, however, with renewed splendor upon the return (1377) of the pontifical court, which brought with it the chapel formed in Avignon, consisting chiefly of French and Flemish elements. From that period one recalls Giovanni XXII, who, in his famous decretal of 1324–1325 (Corpus Iuris Con., ed. Friedberg, Leipzig 1881, part 2, col. 1255), warned against the profanatory abuses of measured music, of which certain followers of the new school were guilty, rendering the sacred melodies of the antiphonary and gradual unrecognizable, showing that they did not blend the tones, and obscuring the serene modal equilibrium of Gregorian chant. Nevertheless, it was not polyphony as such against which the Pontiff launched his strictures, but its excesses: indeed, in the final paragraph he makes clear that he did not intend to prohibit the sweet consonances (octaves, fifths, and fourths) that please the ear and inspire devotion. It is also known that Phil. de Vitry, the theorist of the Ars nova, was well regarded by the popes at Avignon, and that Guillaume de Machault, the author of the great polyphonic mass for the coronation of Carlo IV (1364), enjoyed benefices and canonries offered to him by Pope Giovanni XXII himself in the dioceses of Arras, Verdun, and Reims. An idea of the musical repertory in use in the Avignonese chapel may be provided by the two codices containing collections of sacred polyphonic music preserved in the library of Ivrea and in the treasury of Apte, a bishopric near Avignon, as well as by other precious codices in Barcelona.
French and Flemish musicians served in the Avignonese chapel, but the first precise indications are found only after the return of the Popes to Rome. In 1389, the presence in the Roman Papal chapel of two singers from the diocese of Liège is recorded: Henri Desire de Latinne (or Latunna) and Gilles de Lensi, to whom Henri Tulpin was added in 1390, and Nicolaus Simonis in 1409. Until around 1430, singers from other dioceses (Tournai, Le Mans, Rouen, Cambrai, Beauvais, Noyon, Brindisi, Toul, Thérouanne, etc.) gradually joined those from Liège, until supremacy passed from the school of Liège to that of Cambrai, which came to predominate in the Pontifical chapel between 1420 and 1430. It was precisely from the choir of Cambrai that Guillaume Dufay came to the papal chapel in 1428, immediately after being ordained a priest—the first Belgian musician to pursue an international career—and remained there until 1437. Less than fifty years later came the foundation of the Sistine chapel, established by Sisto IV with a bull dated 1 January 1480 as a permanent choir reserved for papal functions. A worthy seat had been prepared for it in the chapel of the same name built in the Vatican palaces, frescoed by Mino da Fiesole, Signorelli, Beato Angelico, and Perugino, and later also by Michelangelo, etc. Immediately after this foundation, we find in the new choir two Flemings: Gaspard van Weerbecke, whom Ludovico il Moro had unsuccessfully attempted to retain in the Sforzesca chapel of Milan, and who came to Rome as a singer in the Papal chapel from 1481 to 1488 and again from 1499 until his death after 1514; and Josquin Després, who was a member from 1486 to 1494. Then, in the glorious Roman sixteenth century, came the great figures of Costanzo Festa (1517), the Spaniards Cristoforo Morales and Bartolomeo Escobedo (1535 and 1536), the Frenchman Leonardo Barre (1537), and the Belgians Ghiselin Danckerts and Jacob Arcadelt (1538 and 1539), leading up to the immortal name of Palestrina, who entered in January 1555 but, because he was married, was expelled in June by the new pope Paolo IV. After him, other names, less celebrated but nevertheless worthy of note, appear in the Sistine registers: a teacher of Palestrina, the Frenchman Firmin Le Bel (1561); the Spaniard Francesco Soto (1562), who played such an important role in the origins of the Oratorio filippino in Rome through his collection of Laudi; the Belgian Cristiano Ameyden (1563); the Roman Annibale Zoilo (1570); and the Tiburtine G. M. Nanino (1577), a pupil of Palestrina. After the appearance of Felice Anerio (1594) and the great Brescian madrigalist Luca Marenzio (1595), the golden age of polyphony closes with the Velletrian Ruggero Giovannelli (1599), while, in the incomparable splendor of a T. L. da Victoria (1601), the seventeenth century comes to an end. That century would see in the chapel the most distinguished representatives of the Barberini theater, from Loreto Vittori to Stefano Landi and Marco Marazzoli, leading up to M. A. Cesti (1660), who, together with Antimo Liberati, musician and theorist, was the last renowned composer to be counted among its members during that century. Indeed, toward the end of the seventeenth century, composers of a certain fame began to become scarce, although excellent singers continued to serve there, some of whom Leone Ghezzi has left us amusing caricatures of—often church singers who were also active in the theater, and who were at times competed for and taken away from the chapel by the stage, as happened with Giov. Franc. Grossi, known as Siface. Having entered the Sistine in 1675, he left it in 1677 to devote himself to the theater, which gave him his nickname through Cavalli’s opera Scipione Africano (Venice 1678) and brought him the admiration of Queen Cristina di Svezia in Pasquini’s Lisinaco (Rome, Teatro di Tordinona, 1681). After him, still in the seventeenth century, we find another name worthy of note: Andrea Adami da Bolsena (1689), author of a famous volume, Osservazioni per ben dirigere il coro dei cantori della c. Pontificia (Rome 1711), in which, besides the technical material, a gallery of the most distinguished maestros, with portraits engraved on copper and valuable biographical presentations of them, is of great historical interest.
The entire eighteenth century still had, and continued to have, excellent voices rather than illustrious maestros; two good singers who were also accomplished composers, however, form an exception: Pasquale Pisari, bass (1752), called by Fr. Martini “the Palestrina of the eighteenth century,” and Giuseppe Baini, likewise a bass (1795), composer of music including a Miserere for ten voices (1821) and the celebrated Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giov. Pierluigi da Palestrina (2 vols., Rome 1828), in which he also describes the political vicissitudes of Rome and the Holy See, including the deportation of Pius VI (1798) and the other sorrowful events that afflicted the history of the Church and the world in that final part of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. The c. naturally also felt the effects of this state of affairs, passing through a period of stagnation in the admission of singers; at the end of the century, among the soprannomi who had successfully dominated the history of sacred and theatrical music, one emerged, Domenico Mustafa, a distinguished singer and composer (author, among other works, of a Tu es Petrus for three choirs that enjoyed great success), who directed the c. until the beginning of the twentieth century, when it passed from his hands into those of d. Lorenzo Perosi, a composer already celebrated for his oratorios (La Passione, La Trasfigurazione, La Risurrezione, Il Natale, etc.).
II. C. OF S. GIOVANNI IN LATERANO. — After the papal chapel of S. Pietro, we must speak of the other schola, founded by s. Gregorio Magno in that Lateran patriarchal palace which was the residence of the Popes from the 4th century until their departure for Avignon. The annals of this chapel — restored, that is, founded in its present form, by Cardinal G. Dom. De Cupis, a Roman, known as the Cardinal of Trani, archpriest of the Basilica, endowed by Pope Paolo III by a brief of 1 June 1543, and called «Pia» because of privileges granted at the end of the 18th century by Pio VI Braschi — include immortal names from the history of polyphony: suffice it to recall, after Rubino Mallapert, who was its first maestro from 1535 to 1539 and returned there from 1548 to 1550, Orlando di Lasso, who directed it in 1553, and Palestrina (1 October 1555–61), recalled from the Liberian Basilica, where he had begun as a boy chorister.
After him we find A. Zoilo (1561–70), A. Stabile (1575–76), G. A. Dragoni (1576–98), and F. Suriano, with whom we reach the threshold of the 17th century, a century that would see the chapel directed by Antonio Cifra, maestro of the S. Casa di Loreto, A. M. Abbatini, and Virg. Mazzocchi, already encountered at the Sistina; in the 18th century, mention should also be made of G. O. Pitoni, a composer from Rieti, Francesco Gasperini, whose teaching D. Scarlatti apparently benefited from, and finally G. B. Casali and P. Anfossi, authors of oratorios and cantatas performed
especially at the Oratorio della Chiesa Nuova. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of this century were divided between the masterships of the two Capocci, Gaetano and Filippo, father and son, likewise authors of oratorios known in Roman circles; they were followed by the glorious direction, lasting more than thirty years, of Raffaele Casimiri, the fervent and passionate apostle of the works of Palestrina, the lively polyphonist and serene artist, wholly devoted to reviving, through the technique of transcription and the practice of performance, the glories of the Roman school and, with it, the greatest masterpieces of all polyphony.
III. C. GIULIA. — Founded by Julius II with the bull In altissimo militantis Ecclesiae, of 19 February 1513, the choir of the Vatican basilica likewise has a most glorious history by virtue of its masters, who form an elect company of illustrious names, beginning with that of Jacob Arcadelt, the exquisite madrigalist who in 1539 was master of the choirboys, followed in the same office by Rubino Mallapert, who returned to it twice (in 1539 for 20 months and in 1550 for 18 months), continuing through Giov. Pierluigi da Palestrina, who joined it in 1551 and left it in 1555 to go to the Sistine, and through Giovanni Animuccia, a Florentine, who had already published three books of spiritual madrigals and who during the sixteen years in which he was master published further spiritual madrigals, motets, laude, and masses, «secundum formam concilii», with which he marked the first step toward a restoration of sacred music in the sense of a Catholic and Roman Renaissance. He remained in office until his death, which occurred in 1571, the year in which Palestrina returned there and likewise remained until his death (1594).
Among the masters who succeeded Palestrina we shall recall Ruggero Giovannelli, Asprilio Pacelli, Francesco Suriano, then V. Benevoli, the latter of whom had already composed a grandiose mass for 53 voices for the consecration of the Cathedral of Salzburg; after Ercole Barnabesi and others of lesser renown, we find Domenico Scarlatti in the position of director, remaining there from 1715 to 1719 and composing various sacred works, including masses, Salvi Regina, etc. Yet another illustrious name was that of Niccolò Jommelli, but only as assistant; then came Pietro Guglielmi, Nicola Zingarelli, Valentino Fioravanti, the two Meluzzi, and finally Ernesto Boezi, who died on 30 December 1946 and was replaced by Armando Antonelli.
IV. C. LIBERIANA. — It is in this c. that we find for the first time the name of the young Gianetto Pierluigi, who had come from Palestrina and who, having taken flight from here as a «puer cantus», would return here in 1561 as maestro of the c. Many others already mentioned for the other c. will be omitted here, such as Francesco Suriano (twice), Ann. Stabile, A. M. Abbatini (three times), and Orazio Benevoli, proceeding to Alessandro Scarlatti: at the age of 47, he won the competition announced on 24 July 1707, served for 21 months, and resigned immediately after Easter 1709. Another great name is that of Bernardo Pasquini, author of organ, harpsichord, and theatrical music, admired by Queen Cristina of Sweden and by Luigi XIV, who held the position of organist from 10 February 1664 to 26 October 1704 and was also organist of the Roman Senate and of the Basilica of Ara Coeli.
V. BASILICHE MINORI ROMANE
1. S. Maria in Trastevere. — The period of greatest distinction for this chapel was that from 1574 to 1709, during which we find Gerolamo Frescobaldi occupying the post of organist in 1607, and among the choirmasters the young Benevoli (appointed at the age of 20 in 1624), that Paolo Agostini (Apr. 1615) who later became choirmaster at S. Pietro, Domenico Allegri (1609), and Francesco Foggia (1626–1709).2. S. Lorenzo in Damaso. — Here too, besides the choirmasters, several of whose names have already been mentioned repeatedly (F. Rosselli, choirmaster at the Giulia and Lateranense, Abbatini, Foggia, Pitoni, Ant. Bencini, etc.), we find a well-known name in the post of organist: when Giulio Giorgi was pensioned off on 5 Jan. 1766, the fourteen-year-old Muzio Clementi was appointed, at a salary of one scudo a month; he left that position nine months later to follow P. Bekford to England.
VI. OTHER CHURCHES OF ROME
Among these, the national churches must be mentioned first of all: the French, German, and Spanish. The first, S. Luigi de' Francesi, established in 1514, enjoyed periods of great splendour, especially in the second half of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth (it will suffice to recall the names of A. Zoilo, the two Nanini, Suriano, Giovannelli, Ugolini, Benevoli, Abbatini, Bernabei, and Cifra), and was dissolved, for economic reasons, in 1948. The second, S. Maria dell'Anima, arose in its present form chiefly through the work of Franz Witt during the Cecilian restoration in Germany, and had as co-founder and driving force the elderly abbot F. Liszt. Witt was succeeded in its direction by F. X. Haberl, the editor of Palestrina’s Opera Omnia, Ignaz Richterer, Peter Müller, Ferdinand Haberl, nephew of the preceding F. X., and finally by M° Franz Zehrer, who still directs II. The third, dedicated to S. Maria di Monserrato, had, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the names of an Aldega and the two Capocci. The Chiesa nuova of S. Maria in Vallicella had G. B. Costanzi in the eighteenth century. The church of the Gesù could boast the name of Zipoli, who was succeeded by Carpani, Terziani, and Meluzzi. As for the other churches, it is possible here only to record the numerous and sorrowful deaths of the musical chapels that disappeared one after another, like so many lights going out; among them, it is especially necessary to recall that of S. Spirito in Sassia, which could likewise boast the name of Gerolamo Frescobaldi and whose end dates from 1737; those of S. Marco, the Pantheon, S. Maria in Cosmedin, S. Agnese al Circo Agonale (founded by Innocent X), S. Girolamo della Carità, S. Lorenzo in Lucina, the Madonna dei Monti, S. Ignazio, S. Apollinare, etc.VII. OTHER MUSICAL CHAPELS OUTSIDE ROME: 1. In Italy. — Of the musical chapels elsewhere in Italy, the most celebrated, by reason of their antiquity and glory, may be said to be those of Naples, Florence, Milan, and Venice, together with Ferrara and Mantua, as well as those of the singers of Padua and Loreto, and other lesser ones that we shall merely mention.
As maestro of the musical chapel at the court of Ferdinando I d'Aragona in Naples, there appears in the fifteenth century J. Tinctoris, the great theorist and composer who, among twelve treatises, left us the oldest dictionary of musical terms (1475).
The chapel of the Tuscan court was founded in 1539 by Cosimo I and entrusted to Francesco Bern. Corteccia of Arezzo, then to Cristoforo Malvezzi and Luca Bati (after 1571), subsequently to Marco da Gagliano (1609–42) and Jacopo Peri, who was at once maestro of the chapel and superintendent of theatrical performances; in 1848 Teodulo Mabellini became its last director. Particularly worthy of remembrance is the procession of 1 July 1629 (for the celebrations in honour of S. Andrea Corsini), in which Gerolamo Frescobaldi took part as organist. The chapel ceased, as such, to exist on 27 April 1859, since, with the unification of Italy, it was united with the musical schools of the Academy of Fine Arts, later becoming the R. Istituto musicale, today the Cherubini, by decree of 15 March 1860. The first and principal organizer of the Milanese Ducal chapel, established between 1471 and 1472 by Galeazzo Maria, was Gaspare Van Weerbecke, who went on several occasions (1472, 1473) to Flanders and Burgundy to recruit singers for the chapel. With him was another Fleming who would later become maestro at the Spanish court, Alessandro Agricola. In a list from July 1474, among the new names are found Josquin Després and Loyset Compère, together with three other singers from Cambrai and two from Spain. By mid-1474, the complete establishment of the Franco-Belgian musicians in Milan was an accomplished fact. After a brief standstill during the regency of Bona di Savoia, who had the expenses of the musical chapel reduced, Galeazzo’s tradition was taken up again by Lodovico il Moro, who recalled Van Weerbecke from the papal chapel, where he had moved (and where he would finally settle permanently in 1499, as the Moro’s star was sinking), and took into his service the great theorist Franchino Gaffurio da Lodi (1484).
In the musical chapel of S. Marco in Venice, after the long direction of Petrus de Fossis (Pierre des Fosses), a Burgundian who remained there for fully thirty-six years, mention must be made of the illustrious name of another great Fleming, Adriano Willaert, who came from the court of Ladislao II of Bohemia and Hungary and was its maestro from 1527 until his death (1562), and then of his great compatriot and pupil Cipriano de Rore, who, however, after the brief Venetian interlude (1563–64), resumed service at the court of Parma, where he had been maestro since 1561 and where he died in 1565.
After de Rore, Gioseffo Zarlino, the famous theorist and author of the Attituzioni hormoniche (1558), flourished; he was maestro from 1565 until his death (1590; while the organists were Claudio Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli, and later Giovanni Gabrieli). He was followed by some less illustrious names (Baldassarre Donati and Giovanni della Croce, called Chiozzotto), but one cannot pass over the figure of Claudio Monteverdi (appointed on 19 August 1613), who composed much religious music (masses, motets, etc., of which, unfortunately, only the record remains) and who remained in office until 1643, the year of his death. There were still several musicians of distinction who, as first organist (and also second organist), subsequently attained the post of maestro, such as Cavalli (20 November 1668), Legrenzi (23 April 1683), Lotti (2 April 1736), and Galuppi (27 April 1767); then, in 1797, the year in which the ducal government of the free Republic of Venice came to an end, the chapel closed the final page of its glorious history, which had lasted more than four centuries.
At Ferrara, in the chapel of the Este court, there are many musicians already known to us, such as Obrecht, Isaak, Després, and de Rore, brilliant names that brought distinction to that court during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In the Antoniana chapel of Padua, of which p. Costanzo Porta of Cremona (1565–1567) may be regarded as the founder, Giuseppe Partini carried on his fervent activity as violinist and composer for many years, from 1721 until his death (1790).
P. Costanzo Porta (1574–79) may rightly also be called the renewer of the musical chapel of the S. Casa of Loreto, of which he was the first maestro. This chapel, which arose around 1540 following a bull In comitantibus Angelis Assumptae (21 October 1507) and a brief Gloriosae semperque Virginis of Pope Julius II, saw the Romans Annibale Zoilo (1584–92) and Antonio Cifra (1609–22), Tommaso Redi da Siena (1731–38), Andrea and Francesco Basili, father and son (1740–77), G. B. Borghi of Macerata (1777–96), Nicola Zingarelli (1796–1805), and other lesser figures succeed one another in its direction.
2. Outside Italy. — First of all, the chapels attached to the principal courts of Europe should be recalled. In France, in the fifteenth century, Carlo V maintained a souveraine chapelle in which à dechant was sung on feast days; under his successors Carlo VI and Luigi XI, the maestro of the chapel, from 1465 until his death (1495), was the celebrated Fleming Giovanni Ockeghem, followed by Josquin Després (1500); among the singers were Loyset Compère and Jakob Arcadelt around the middle of the sixteenth century.
Under Luigi XIII, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the chapel, until then divided into two choirs that performed polyphony and Gregorian chant respectively, became a single institution; and in 1638 Luigi XIV added orchestral accompaniment to the organ. The chapel, closed during the Revolution, was reopened by Napoleone I and finally suppressed in 1830.
The musical chapels of Flanders and Burgundy enjoyed a very prosperous fate: serving Filippo il Buono were G. Binchois and G. Dufay; at the court of Carlo il Temerario, A. Busnois (1447); and at the court of Filippo il Bello and later of Margherita d'Austria in Brussels, Josquin Després, Pierre de La Rue (1492–1510), and Agricola are likewise remembered.
In Germany, Orlando di Lasso brought great distinction to the chapel of the Elector of Munich, which he made in that centre the stronghold of Catholic art against the encroaching…
ondata del protestantesimo dilagante; egli dedicò alla attività di maestro ben 34 anni della sua operosa vita (dal 1560 alla morte, avvenuta nel 1594) e la sua più importante produzione religiosa: messe, mottetti, salmi penitenziali, ecc.
In Spagna la c. di corte fino al tempo del re Filippo il Bello e Giovanna la Pazza era composta di musicisti stranieri ed eseguiva quasi solamente musica fiamminga (vi si trovano Pierre de La Rue e poi Alessandro Agricola, che morì a Valladolid nel 1566); soltanto con la regina Isabella e con il re Ferdinando il Cattolico, le cui rispettive c. succedevano alle c. reali di Castiglia e di Catalogna-Aragona, si cominciarono a scritturare esclusivamente musici nazionali con repertorio tipicamente spagnolo. Alla morte di Isabella (1504) il re Ferdinando scelse i migliori musici della c. di Castiglia e li unì alla sua c. aragonese: sorse così la c. reale di Spagna, che doveva raggiungere il massimo splendore con i regni di Carlo V e Filippo II, illustrati dai nomi ormai famosi di Morales Guerrero, Victoria, A. de Cabezón ecc.