DE SANTI, ANGELO. — Jesuit, born in Trieste on 12 July 1847, died in Rome on 28 January 1922. Having completed his studies, he immediately devoted himself to teaching music at the seminary of Zara (1887), and in the same year was summoned by Leone XIII to Rome, where, through his collaboration with La Civiltà cattolica, as well as through lectures and studies, he was to carry out a broad and effective work for the restoration of sacred music, which subsequently took concrete form in Pius X’s motu proprio Inter pastoralis officii sollicitudines of 22 November 1903 (Acta S. Sedis, 36 [1903–1904], p. 329 ff.).
In 1910 he founded the Higher School of Sacred Music in Rome, opened by solemn brief in 1911, declared pontifical in 1914, and officially named, in 1931, the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. At the Vatican seminary he established a model «Schola cantorum» for performances of classical music, Palestrinian polyphony, and Gregorian chant, the latter according to the editions of the Benedictines of Solesmes. From 1909 until his death he was also president of the Italian Association of S. Cecilia, directing the Bollettino ceciliana until 1914.
His principal works are: Maestro Filippo Capocci and his compositions for organ (Rome 1888); The Lauretan litanies. A historical-critical study (there 1897); The “Cursus” in literary history and in the liturgy (there 1903); The origin of the Christmas feasts (there 1907); The Forty Hours’ prayer and times of calamity and war (there 1919); The first decade of the Pontifical Higher School of Sacred Music (there 1920); and many other studies in various journals: La civiltà cattolica, to which he contributed for approximately 35 years; La rassegna gregoriana, of which he was the principal driving force. His facile vein also produced the novel Maternal Memory (Rome 1896), still sought out and read in our own day.