CASIMIRIO, RAFFAELE. – Musician and musicologist, b. at Gualdo Tadino (Perugia) on 3 Nov. 1880, d. at Rome on 15 Apr. 1943, canon of S. Giovanni in Laterano. A pupil of L. Bottazzo in Padua, he began his Cecilian activity as a teacher and chapel master at Nocera Umbra; later moving to Teano, Capua, Perugia, Vercelli, in 1911 he was appointed master of the Lateran Chapel and professor at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music.
A prolific composer, assiduous researcher and illustrator of ancient music and documents relating to the history of ecclesiastical music, a brilliant propagandist by word and pen, in 1907 he founded the journal *Psalterium* and in 1924 *Note d’archivio per la storia musicale*, in which he published numerous biographical and historical-aesthetic studies of musical criticism. In 1922 he founded and directed the *Società Polifonica Romana*, with which he brought to appreciation, in memorable concerts in Europe and America, the treasures of 16th- and 17th-century music. A profound connoisseur of ancient palaeography and musical theory, he collected and published in modern editions spiritual lauds, motets, masses and psalms by classical authors. Death overtook him while he was preparing the critical and complete edition of the works of Pierluigi da Palestrina, of which 18 volumes had appeared (Rome 1939 ff.), while the remainder were ready for the press.