SPONTINI, GASPARE, LUIGI, Pacifico. – Musician, born 14 Nov. 1774 at Majolati (Jesi) and died there 24 Jan. 1851.
In Rome he made his debut as a composer of stage works; in 1803 in Paris he achieved great success with *La Vestale* (1807) and *Fernando Cortes* (1809); in 1810–12 he was conductor of the Italian opera theatre. In 1820 he became director of the Berlin Opera, where he produced other works of his with success, but in 1841 he left, embittered by opposition and envy. After several years in Paris, in 1850 he retired to his native Majolati.
Besides his career as a theatrical composer, noteworthy is his activity on behalf of the reform of sacred music, of which an important testimony is the *Rapporto intorno alla riforma della musica di Chiesa* written in Jan. 1839 to the Primicerius of the Congregation of S. Cecilia. In it Spontini expresses indignation and scandal at finding, after a long absence from Italy, theatrical music introduced into churches, with all its lascivious and impure elements; he proposes first of all to bind unscrupulous musicians by an oath of fidelity to uprightness and holiness in composing music expressly for the temple, without copying or plagiarising scores of melodramas; he then proposes the establishment in Rome of a Library or Institute of ecclesiastical music, capable of supplying engravings of music approved by the appropriate commission; finally, he declares the establishment everywhere of schools of singing for boys to be necessary and urgent, similar to those envisaged by St Gregory the Great.
Spontini’s services were of exceptional importance, for he, a composer of stage works only, was the first to feel and advocate the urgency of a reform of sacred music, and his concrete proposals, presented to Gregory XVI, who conferred on him the title of Count of S. Andrea in recognition, were among the most important historical precedents of the *motu proprio* of Bl. Pius X (1903).