No guitar playing and out of tune choirs. One Sunday a month the faithful who attend mass in the Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere will be able to follow the rite accompanied by the voices of the Choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of the oldest and most prestigious Italian musical institutions. The initiative is called Mass at Santa Cecilia and debuts on Sunday 9 November at 11.30 with music by Bruckner, Perosi, Mozart and Händel. The songs on the program are Locus Iste, O Salutaris Hostia, Hail Verum and the very famous Hallelujah (from Messiah). The Choir, led by the maestro Andrea Secchiwill accompany the key moments of the liturgy.
The repertoire that will be proposed from time to time will offer an excursus within sacred music starting from its origins, passing through the polyphonic schools of the 16th and 17th centuries up to the classical and romantic repertoire and twentieth-century polyphony.
The promoter of the initiative is Massimo Biscardi, President and Superintendent of Santa Cecilia. “We will offer a journey through sacred music”, he explains, “also rediscovering many Roman composers. You will also be able to listen to valuable sacred music in Rome, as happens in Notre-Dame in Paris or in Westminster Cathedral, where great organists and choristers perform. In fact, if a tourist in Paris or London can listen to a wonderful repertoire simply by attending mass on Sunday, in Rome you don’t always have the same possibility. We have therefore decided to do this experiment here too and see what response we will have”
The idea of a monthly mass accompanied by the Santa Cecilia Choir also arises from the desire to enhance the musical heritage preserved in the archives of the Academy’s Library and Media Library: 120,000 volumes and files of high historical value, including an important liturgical section. Scores of important composers are preserved there, from the Roman school to the sacred music of Fauré and Poulenc.
The place chosen for this initiative could only be the Basilica dedicated to the Patron Saint of music.
The Basilica of Santa Cecilia stands on the ancient house of the Saint, martyred around 230 AD. The woman, according to tradition, was tortured for three days in the calidarium, and finally beheaded for trying to convert several members of her family to Christianity. In 1599, when Cardinal Sfondrati had the tomb of Saint Cecilia opened, the woman’s body was found miraculously intact, dressed in white and with wounds on her neck. So the sculptor Stefano Maderno was entrusted with the task of creating a marble statue, reproducing the exact position in which the body was found. The church stands in the place where a place of worship was built already in the 6th century. The building is accessed from a monumental entrance built in 1741-1742 by Ferdinando Fuga. You cross a garden and from here you enter the church. Here, in addition to the statue of Maderno, you can admire a 9th century apse mosaic depicting the Redeemer with saints and Pope Paschal I and a Gothic tabernacle from 1293 by Arnolfo di Cambio.
(in the photo the Choir Master, Andrea Secchi)
