Cecilian Movement

The Cecilian Movement of church reform was centered in Italy but received great impetus from Regensburg, Germany, where Franz Xaver Haberl had a world-renowned Kirchenmusicschule. (Haberl was also the Regensberg Domkappellmeister, where he directed a choir highly skilled in polyphony and chant.) The Cecilian Movement was a reaction to the roughly hundred years (c.1800 to c.1900) when Gregorian Chant all but vanished from Catholic Masses.

In many serious church musicians, there was a deep-seated desire to revive Chant as well as the Renaissance polyphony of Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria, Anerio, et al., and to rid Masses of the more entertaining, operatic style of music.^{[citation needed]} Before Lorenzo Perosi, it may be said that Giovanni Tebaldini, Perosi's predecessor at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice was one of the leaders of this movement named for St. Cecilia, patroness of music.^{[citation needed]} But by Tebaldini's own admission, it was Perosi who brought these hopes to fruition—albeit with the backing of the future Pope Pius X and his motu proprio, Tra le sollecitudini of 1903.^{[citation needed]} The influence of Perosi, as well as Pius, was so strong that not only did chant and polyphony re-enter the Catholic repertory, but Perosi's works—from the 1890s until World War I and beyond—were by far the most widely performed contemporary works in the Roman Catholic Church.^{[citation needed]} (Vide Lorenzo Perosi.)

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  The young Lorenzo Perosi (photo-postcard late 1890s).

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  Giovanni Tebaldini.

References

• Fellerer, Karl Gustav. 1982. "Kirchenmusikalische Reformbestrebungen um 1800". Analecta Musicologica: Veröffentlichungen der Musikgeschichtlichen Abteilung des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 21:393–408.
• Lonnendonker, Hans. 1980. "Deutsch-französische Beziehungen in Choralfragen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des gregorianischen Chorals in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts". In Ut mens concordet voci: Festschrift Eugène Cardine zum 75. Geburtstag, edited by Johannes Berchmans Göschl, 280–95. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag. ISBN 3-88096-100-X
• Pfaff, Maurus. 1974. "Die Regensburger Kirchenmusikschule und der cantus gregorianus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert". Gloria Deo-pax hominibus. Festschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen der Kirchenmusikschule Regensburg, Schriftenreihe des Allgemeinen Cäcilien-Verbandes für die Länder der Deutschen Sprache 9, edited by Franz Fleckenstein, 221–52. Bonn: Allgemeiner Cäcilien-Verband, 1974.
• Ruff, Anthony, and Raphael Molitor. 2008. "Beyond Medici: The Struggle for Progress in Chant". Sacred Music 135, no. 2 (Summer): 26–44.
• Scharnagl, August. 1994. "Carl Proske (1794-1861)". In Musica divina: Ausstellung zum 400. Todesjahr von Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina und Orlando di Lasso und zum 200. Geburtsjahr von Carl Proske. Ausstellung in der Bischöflichen Zentralbibliothek Regensburg, 4. November 1994 bis 3. Februar 1995, Bischöfliches Zentralarchiv und Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg: Kataloge und Schriften, no. 11, edited by Paul Mai, 12-52. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 1994.
• Schnorr, Klemens. 2004. "El cambio de la edición oficial del canto gregoriano de la editorial Pustet/Ratisbona a la de Solesmes en la época del Motu proprio". In El Motu proprio de San Pío X y la Música (1903–2003). Barcelona, 2003, edited by Mariano Lambea, introduction by María Rosario Álvarez Martínez and José Sierra Pérez. Revista de musicología 27, no. 1 (June) 197–209.