MUSICAL CONFRATERNITIES. – Associations of devotees and professionals of music (masters, singers, organists and organ-builders, instrumentalists and instrument-makers) who, under the protection and name of St Cecilia, gathered to safeguard their interests or on the occasion of religious festivals, as did the other guilds of arts and crafts. They existed in every city of some musical importance, and some developed into genuine music schools.
As early as 1502 a musical society established in Louvain was named after St Cecilia, and the works of art from the 14th to the 17th centuries depicting the Roman martyr with musical instruments (organ, violin, etc.) are certainly connected with these professional associations, which may date back to the Middle Ages. The custom of celebrating the feast of St Cecilia (22 Nov.) with musical performances is ancient, and the religious Orders, in which the musical tradition was kept alive, promoted the erection in their churches of altars to St Cecilia, which became the seat of the respective musical confraternity. In 1571 the association “Le puy de musique” was founded in Évreux in Normandy; it promoted competitions and contests among composers and performers, in which Orlando di Lasso, Eustache du Caurroy and Giacomo Salomon took part. Similar confraternities also spread in England and France, which, together with devotion to the virgin and martyr Cecilia, promoted the cult of sacred music and the artistic training of their members.
The oldest Italian musical confraternity whose history is known is the “Congregazione di S. Cecilia,” founded in Rome in 1584 not by Palestrina, as has been believed, but by the Venetian Alessandro Marini, a canon of the Lateran, who in 1585 obtained its approval by means of a brief of Sixtus V. Similar associations, which also had aims of mutual assistance, worship and devotion toward deceased brethren—arranging for funerals and suffrages—existed in Milan, Brescia, Padua, Venice, Bologna and many other Italian cities.