CHAPEL CHOIR. - A body of voices and sometimes also of instruments assigned to liturgical service at a court, a cathedral, a cardinal's household, and above all at the Pope's.
I. PONTIFICAL CHOIR
The oldest c. and the one that served as a model for all the others was that created by the pontiffs at the Roman Curia.
The origins of the schools of sacred chant 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 also in the monasteries erected near certain basilicas, as in catacumbas (Sixtus III, 432-40), near St. Peter's (St. Leo the Great, 440-61) and St. Lawrence outside the Walls (Hilarus, 461-68), etc. The archcantor John in his Ordo Romanus (ed. C. Silva-Tarouca, in Mem. della Pont. Acc. Rom. d'Arch., I [1923], p. 215) informs us that various popes before Gregory the Great concerned themselves with chant, which suggests the existence of true schools of singers. However, the Roman tradition, gathered by John the Deacon around 872 (Vita Gregorii, II, 6: PL 77, 90) points to Gregory the Great as the true founder of the «Schola cantorum», which would also be called Orphanotrophium, to which he is said to have assigned various endowments, among them a house near St. Peter's and another near the Lateran.
The «schola cantorum» was directed by a «prior scholae» or «primicerius» (who in 1397 became the master of the c.), followed by the «secundus», the «tertius» and the «quartus scholae» or «archiparaphonista»; then came the «paraphonists», perhaps singers chosen as soloists; the number of singers was not fixed; they were recruited from among the young men who were educated in the foundations annexed to the «scholae», who often followed an ecclesiastical career and not a few of whom even reached the pontificate (Leo II, Benedict II, Sergius I, Sergius II, etc.).
The internal organization of studies was very similar to that which Alcuin had established for Charlemagne's schola palatina, and the characteristic of the schola was that of taking part always and only in the papal functions, a prerogative that would remain for centuries with the Pontifical c., which, in the new foundation of Sixtus IV, would be called the Sistine. In the glorious history of the schola of the Lateran patriarchate, in 1027 we also find Guido d'Arezzo, summoned there by Pope John XIX to give a demonstration of his method of teaching chant and to expound his theories.
The Roman schola cantorum began to decline with the departure of the papal court from Rome during the Avignon period (1309); it was extinguished in 1370 (suppressed by Urban V) and then revived with new splendor upon the return (1377) of the pontifical court, which brought with it the c. formed at Avignon with predominantly French and Flemish elements; from that time John XXII is remembered, who with his famous decretal of 1324-1325 (Corpus Iuris Con., ed. Friedberg, Leipzig 1881, part 2, col. 1255) warns against the profaning abuses of measured music, of which some followers of the new school make themselves guilty, rendering unrecognizable the sacred melodies of the antiphonary and the gradual, showing that they do not blend the tones and obscuring the serene modal balance of Gregorian chant. Nevertheless, it was not against polyphony in itself that the Pontiff launched his barbs, but against its excesses: in fact, in the last paragraph he clarifies that he does 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 Charles IV (1364), enjoyed benefices and canonries offered to him by Pope John XXII himself in the diocese of Arras, at Verdun and at Reims. Of the musical repertoire in use in the c. m. of Avignon, an idea may be given by the two codices containing collections of polyphonic sacred music preserved in the library of Ivrea and in the treasury of Apt, a bishopric near Avignon, as well as other precious codices from Barcelona.
In the Avignon c. French and Flemish musicians served, but the first precise indications are had only after the return of the Popes to Rome; in 1389 the presence in the Roman Papal c. of two singers of the diocese of Liège is noted: Henri Desire de Latinne (or Latunna) and Gilles de Lensi, to whom are added, in 1390, Henri Tulpin and Nicolaus Simonis in 1409. Until about 1430 singers from other dioceses (Tournai, Le Mans, Rouen, Cambrai, Beauvais, Noyon, Brindisi, Toul, Thérouanne, etc.) gradually joined the Liégeois, until the supremacy passed from the school of Liège to that of Cambrai, which came to predominate in the Pontifical c. between 1420 and 1430. It was precisely from the choir of Cambrai that there came to the papal one in 1428, barely ordained a priest, Guillaume Dufay, the first Belgian musician to have an international career, and who remained there until 1437. Less than fifty years later came the foundation of the Sistine c., made by Sixtus IV with a bull of 1 January 1480, as a stable choir reserved for papal functions, for which a worthy seat had been prepared in the c. of the same name built in the Vatican palaces, frescoed by Mino da Fiesole, by Signorelli, by Fra Angelico, by Perugino, as it would later also be by Michelangelo, etc. Immediately after this foundation we find in the new choir two Flemings: Gaspard van Weerbecke, vainly detained by Ludovico il Moro in the Sforza c. of Milan, who came to Rome as a singer in the Papal c. from 1481 to 1488 and then from 1499 until his death, which occurred after 1514; Josquin Després, who was a member of it from 1486 to 1494, and, in the glorious Roman '500, the great figures of Costanzo Festa (1517), of the Spaniards Cristóbal Morales and Bartolomé Escobedo (1535 and 1536), of the Frenchman Leonardo Barre (1537) and of the Belgians Ghiselin Danckerts and Jacob Arcadelt (1538 and 1539), to arrive at the immortal name of Palestrina, who entered it in Jan. 1555, but, because he was married, was expelled from it in June by the new pope Paul IV. After him other names, less celebrated but nevertheless worthy of note, follow in the Sistine registers; a teacher of Palestrina, the Frenchman Firmin Le Bel (1561), the Spaniard Francesco Soto (1562), who had so great a part in the origins of the Filippine Oratory in Rome with his collection of Laudi, the Belgian Cristiano Ameyden (1563), the Roman Annibale Zoilo (1570), the Tiburtine G. M. Nanino (1577), a pupil of Palestrina; after the appearance of Felice Anerio (1594) and of the great Brescian madrigalist Luca Marenzio (1595), the golden century of polyphony closes with the Velletran Ruggero Giovannelli (1599), while in the incomparable splendor of a T. L. da Victoria (1601), the 17th century closes, which would see in the c. the most eminent representatives of the Barberini theater, from Loreto Vittori to Stefano Landi, and to Marco Marazzoli, to arrive at M. A. Cesti (1660) who, with Antimo Liberati, musician and theorist, is the last renowned composer that the c. numbers in this century. In fact, toward the end of the '600, composers of a certain fame begin to be scarce, although there always remained excellent singers in it, of some of whom Leone Ghezzi has left us the amusing caricature, often singers of church and at the same time of theater and from the stages sometimes contested and taken away from the c., like that Giov. Franc. Grossi called Siface, who, having entered the Sistine in 1675, left it in 1677 to devote himself to the theater, which gave him the nickname for the opera Scipione Africano by Cavalli (Venice 1678) and which procured for him the admiration of Queen Christina of Sweden in the Lisinaco by Pasquini (Rome, Tordinona theater 1681). After him, still in the '600, we find a name worthy of note, that of Andrea Adami da Bolsena (1689), author of a famous volume of Osservazioni per ben dirigere il coro dei cantori della c. Pontificia (Rome 1711) in which, besides the technical part, a gallery of the most distinguished masters is of great historical interest, with portraits engraved on copper and valuable biographical presentations of them.
The entire 18th century still always had excellent voices, more so than illustrious masters; two good singers who were also accomplished composers are, however, exceptions: Pasquale Pisari, a bass (1752), called by Fr. Martini "the Palestrina of the 18th century," and Giuseppe Baini, also a bass (1795), a composer of music, among which a Miserere for 10 voices (1821) and the famous Memorie storico-critiche della vita e delle opere di Giov. Pierluigi da Palestrina (2 vols., Rome 1828), in which he also describes the political events of Rome and of the Holy See, with the deportation of Pius VI (1798) and the other painful events that afflicted the history of the Church and of the world in that final period of the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th. This state of affairs naturally also affected the c., which went through a period of stagnation in the admission of singers; at the end of the century, among the sopranos, who had prevailed with success in the history of sacred and theatrical music, one emerged, Domenico Mustafa, a singer and composer of merit (author, among other things, of a Tu es Petrus for three choirs that enjoyed great success), who held the direction of the c. until the beginning of the 20th century, when it passed from his hands to those of d. Lorenzo Perosi, a composer already famous for his oratorios (La Passione, La Trasfigurazione, La Risurrezione, Il Natale, etc.).
II. THE CHOIR OF ST. JOHN LATERAN
After the papal chapel of St. Peter, we must speak of the other schola, founded by St. Gregory the Great in that Lateran patriarchate 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 Paul III with a brief of 1 June 1543, and called "Pia" on account of privileges granted at the end of the 18th century by Pius VI Braschi — number immortal names in the history of polyphony: suffice it to think, after Rubino Mallapert, who was its first master from 1535 to 1539 and who returned there from 1548 to '50, of Orlando di Lasso, who directed it in 1553, and of Palestrina (1 Oct. 1555-61), recalled from the Liberian basilica, where he had made his debut as a choirboy.
After him we find A. Zoilo (1561-70), A. Stabile (1575-76), G. A. Dragoni (1576-98), F. Suriano, with whom we reach the threshold of the 17th century, a century that would see Antonio Cifra, the master of the Holy House of Loreto, A. M. Abbatini and Virg. Mazzocchi, already encountered at the Sistine, at the head of the chapel; in the 18th century we should also remember G. O. Pitoni, composer, of Rieti, Francesco Gasperini, whose teaching D. Scarlatti appears to have benefited from, and finally G. B. Casali and P. Anfossi, authors of oratorios and cantatas performed especially at the Oratory of the Chiesa Nuova. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of this century are divided between the tenures of the two Capocci, Gaetano and Filippo, father and son, themselves also authors of oratorios known in Roman circles; they are followed by the glorious and more than thirty-year direction of Raffaele Casimiri, the fervent and passionate apostle of Palestrina's works, the lively polemicist and the serene artist, wholly devoted to reviving, in 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. THE CAPPELLA GIULIA
Founded by Julius II with the bull In altissimo militantis Ecclesiae, of 19 February 1513, the choir of the Vatican Basilica also has a most glorious history on account of its masters, who form a select array of illustrious names, beginning with that of Jacob Arcadelt, the exquisite madrigalist who in 1539 was master of the putti, followed, in the same post, by Rubino Mallapert, who returned there twice (in 1539 for 20 months and in 1550 for 18 months), down to Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who entered there in 1551 and left it in 1555 to go to the Sistine, and down to 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 other spiritual madrigals, motets, lauds and masses, «secundum formam concilii», with which he marks 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 again V. Mazzocchi and Orazio 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 in the post of director Domenico Scarlatti, who remained there from 1715 to 1719, composing various sacred music, among which masses, Salvi Regina, etc. Yet another illustrious name, that of Niccolò Jommelli but only as coadjutor, then Pietro Guglielmi, Nicola Zingarelli, Valentino Fioravanti, the two Meluzzi and finally Ernesto Boezi, d. 30 December 1946 and replaced by Armando Antonelli.
IV. THE LIBERIAN CHOIR
It is in this chapel that we find for the first time the name of the little Gianetto Pierluigi, who came from Palestrina, and who, having taken flight from here as a «puer cantus», would return there in 1561 as chapel master. Many others already mentioned for the other chapels will be omitted here, such as Francesco Suriano (twice), Ann. Stabile, A. M. Abbatini (three times), Orazio Benevoli, to arrive at Alessandro Scarlatti: he, at the age of 47, won the competition that had been announced on 24 July 1707, served 21 months and resigned immediately after Easter of 1709. Another great name is that of Bernardo Pasquini, composer of organ, harpsichord and theatrical music, admired by Queen Christina of Sweden and by Louis XIV, who held the post of organist from 10 February 1664 to 26 October 1704 and who was also organist of the Roman Senate and of the basilica of Ara Coeli.
V. ROMAN MINOR BASILICAS
1. S. Maria in Trastevere
The period of greatest splendor for this c. was that which runs from 1574 to 1709, a period in which one finds: the post of organist held, in 1607, by Gerolamo Frescobaldi, and as maestri the young Benevoli (appointed at the age of 20 in 1624), that Paolo Agostini (Apr. 1615) who later became maestro at S. Pietro, Domenico Allegri (1609) and Francesco Foggia (1626-1709).
2. S. Lorenzo in Damaso
Here too, besides the maestri, of whom some names have already been cited several times (F. Rosselli, maestro at the Giulia and at the Lateranense, Abbatini, Foggia, Pitoni, Ant. Bencini, etc.), we find a well-known name in the post of organist: having been pensioned off on 5 Jan. 1766 Giulio Giorgi, there was engaged, at a single scudo a month, the fourteen-year-old Muzio Clementi, who left that post 9 months later to follow Fr. Bekford to England.
VI. OTHER CHURCHES OF ROME
Among these, mention should be made first of all of the national churches: French, German and Spanish. The first, St. Louis of the French, established in 1514, had periods of great splendor especially in the second half of the 16th century and in the 17th (it will suffice to recall the names of A. Zoilo, the two Nanini, Suriano, Giovannelli, Ugolini, Benevoli, Abbatini, Bernabei, Cifra) and was dissolved, for economic reasons, in 1948. The second, St. Mary of the Soul, arose, in its present form, especially through the work of Franz Witt during the Cecilian restoration in Germany, and had as its co-founder and animator the old abbot F. Liszt. Witt was succeeded in the direction by F. X. Haberl, the editor of the Opera Omnia of Palestrina, Ignaz Richterer, Peter Müller, Ferdinand Haberl, nephew of the aforementioned F. X., and finally Maestro Franz Zehrer, who still directs it. The third, dedicated to St. Mary of Montserrat, had, in the first half of the 19th century, the names of an Aldega and of the two Capocci. The new Church of St. Mary in Vallicella had G. B. Costanzi in 1700. The church of the Gesù could glory in the name of Zipoli, who was succeeded by Carpani, Terziani, Meluzzi. For the other churches, one can here only record the numerous and sorrowful deaths of the c. that disappeared one by one, like so many lights being extinguished; among them it is dutiful to recall, first of all, that of St. Spirit in Sassia, which could also boast of the name of Gerolamo Frescobaldi and whose end dates to 1737; that of St. Mark, of the Pantheon, of St. Mary in Cosmedin, of St. Agnes in the Circus Agonalis (founded by Innocent X), of St. Jerome of Charity, of St. Lawrence in Lucina, of the Madonna of the Monti, of St. Ignatius, of St. Apollinaris, etc.
VII. OTHER CHOIRS OUTSIDE ROME:
1. In Italy
Of the c. in the rest of Italy, the most celebrated may be said to be, for their antiquity and glory, those of Naples, Florence, Milan and Venice, along with Ferrara and Mantua, as well as those of the singers of Padua and Loreto, and other lesser ones that we shall barely mention.
As maestro di c. at the court of Ferdinand I of Aragon in Naples, there is found, in the 15th century, J. Tinctoris, the great theorist and composer who, among 12 treatises, left us the oldest dictionary of musical terms (1475).
The c. of the Tuscan court was founded in 1539 by Cosimo I and entrusted to Francesco Bern. Corteccia, of Arezzo, then to Cristoforo Malvezzi and to Luca Bati (after 1571), subsequently to Marco da Gagliano (1609-42) and to Jacopo Peri, who was at once maestro di c. and superintendent of spectacles; Teodulo Mabellini, in 1848, was its last director. Worthy of particular remembrance is the procession of July 1, 1629 (for the festivities in honor of St. Andrew Corsini), in which Gerolamo Frescobaldi participated as organist. The c. ceased, as such, to exist from April 27, 1859, since, with the unification of Italy, it was merged with the musical schools of the Academy of Fine Arts, to become later the Royal Musical Institute, today Cherubini, by decree of March 15, 1860. Of the Milanese Ducal c., erected between 1471 and 1472 by Galeazzo Maria, the first and principal organizer was Gaspare Van Weerbecke, who on several occasions (1472, 1473) went to Flanders and Burgundy to supply the c. with singers. With him was another Fleming who would later be maestro at the court of Spain, Alessandro Agricola. In a list of July 1474 there are found, among the new names, Josquin Després, Loyset Compère, with whom are 3 other singers from Cambrai and 2 from Spain. By mid-1474 the complete establishment of the Franco-Belgian musicians in Milan was an accomplished fact. After a brief pause during the regency of Bona of Savoy, who had the expenses for the c. m. reduced, Galeazzo's tradition was taken up again by Ludovico il Moro, who recalled Van Weerhecke from the pontifical c. where he had transferred (and where he would later settle definitively in 1499, while the star of the Moro was setting) and took into his service the great theorist Franchino Gaffurio of Lodi (1484).
In the musical c. of St. Mark in Venice, after the long direction of Petrus de Fossis (Pierre des Fosses), a Burgundian, who remained there for fully 36 years, one must recall the illustrious name of another great Fleming, Adriano Willaert, coming from the court of Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, who was its maestro from 1527 until his death (1562), and then that 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 from 1561 and where he died in 1565.
After de Rore flourished Gioseffo Zarlino, the famous theorist, author of the Attituzioni hormoniche (1558), who was maestro from 1565 until his death (1590: while the organists were Claudio Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli and then Giovanni Gabrieli); after him come some less illustrious names (Baldassarre Donati and Giovanni della Croce called Chiozzotto) but one cannot fail to dwell on the figure of Claudio Monteverdi (appointed on Aug. 19, 1613) who composed much religious music (masses, motets, etc. of which, unfortunately, only the record remains to us) and who remained in office until 1643, the year of his death. Then still some musicians of worth, who from first organist (and also second) later reach the post of maestro, such as Cavalli (Nov. 20, 1668), Legrenzi (Apr. 23, 1683), Lotti (Apr. 2, 1736), Galuppi (Apr. 27, 1767) and then in 1797, the year in which the ducal government of the free republic of Venice ceases, the c. closes the last page of its glorious history that had lasted more than four centuries.
In Ferrara, in the c. of the Este court, there are found many musicians already known, such as Obrecht, Isaak, Després and de Rore, brilliant names that illustrated that court between the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the Antonian c. of Padua, of which Fr. Costanzo Porta of Cremona (1565-1567) may be considered the founder, Giuseppe Partini carried on for many years his fervent activity as violinist and composer, from 1721 until his death (1790).
Fr. Costanzo Porta (1574-79) may rightly be called the restorer also of the musical c. of the Holy House of Loreto, of which he was the first maestro. This c., which arose around 1540, following a bull In comitantibus Angelis Assumptae (Oct. 21, 1507) and a brief Gloriosae semperque Virginis of Pope Julius II, saw alternating in its direction the Romans Annibale Zoilo (1584-92) and Antonio Cifra (1609-22), Tommaso Redi of 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 ones.
2. Outside Italy
Mention is made first of all of the c. at the principal courts of Europe. In France in the 15th century Charles V maintained a souveraine chapelle in which à dechant was sung on feast days; in the time of his successors Charles VI and Louis XI the maestro di c. was, from 1465 until his death (1495), the celebrated Fleming Giovanni Ockeghem, and, after him, Josquin Després (1500); among the singers Loyset, Compère and Jakob Arcadelt around the middle of the 1500s.
Under Louis XIII, in the early 17th century, the c., until then divided into two choirs that performed respectively polyphony and Gregorian chant, became a single institution, and in 1638 Louis XIV added to the organ also the accompaniment of an orchestra. The c., closed with the Revolution, was reopened by Napoleon I and finally suppressed in 1830.
Quite prosperous was the fate of the musical c. of Flanders and Burgundy, where there are found, in the service of Philip the Good, G. Binchois and G. Dufay; at the court of Charles the Bold, A. Busnois (1447); and, at the court of Philip the Fair and then of Margaret of Austria in Brussels, there are still recalled Josquin Després, Pierre de La Rue (1492-1510) and Agricola.
In Germany, Orlando di Lasso brought great luster to the c. of the Elector of Munich, who established in that center the stronghold of Catholic art against the invading wave of spreading Protestantism; he devoted to the activity of maestro fully 34 years of his industrious life (from 1560 until his death, which occurred in 1594) and his most important religious output: masses, motets, penitential psalms, etc.
In Spain, the court chapel up to the time of King Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad was composed of foreign musicians and performed almost exclusively Flemish music (one finds there Pierre de La Rue and later Alessandro Agricola, who died at Valladolid in 1566); only with Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand the Catholic, whose respective chapels succeeded the royal chapels of Castile and of Catalonia-Aragon, did they begin to engage exclusively native musicians with a typically Spanish repertory. On the death of Isabella (1504), King Ferdinand chose the best musicians of the chapel of Castile and joined them to his Aragonese chapel: thus arose the royal chapel of Spain, which was to reach its greatest splendor under the reigns of Charles V and Philip II, made illustrious by the by then famous names of Morales, Guerrero, Victoria, A. de Cabezón, etc.