MUSICAL CONFRATERNITIES. - Associations of music lovers and professionals (masters, singers, organists and organ builders, players and makers of musical instruments), who under the protection and name of St. Cecilia gathered to protect their own interests or on the occasion of religious feasts, like the other guilds of arts and crafts. They existed in every city of some musical importance, and some developed into true and proper schools of music.
Already in 1502 a musical society established in Louvain was named after St. Cecilia, and the works of art of the 14th-16th centuries that represent the Roman martyr with musical instruments (organ, violin, etc.) are certainly connected to these trade associations, which may date back to the Middle Ages. Ancient is the custom of celebrating the feast of St. Cecilia (22 Nov.) with musical performances, and the religious Orders, among 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 constituted at Evreux in Normandy, which promoted competitions and contests among composers and performers; in these competitions Orlando di Lasso, Eustache du Caurroy and Jacques Salmon took part. Also in England and in France similar confraternities were widespread, which, together with devotion toward the virgin and martyr Cecilia, promoted the cult of sacred music and the artistic formation of the 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, canon regular of the Lateran, who in 1585 obtained its approval with a brief of Sixtus V. Similar associations, which also had purposes of mutual assistance, of worship and of piety toward deceased confreres, providing for funerals and suffrage masses, existed in Milan, Brescia, Padua, Venice, Bologna, and in many other cities of Italy.
Paolo Guerrini