Giovanni Morandi: Complete Organ Works Vol. 9

Description

In the final printed collections of Giovanni Morandi, writing for the organ appears to perform an act of synthesis, establishing a definitive equilibrium between function, form and editorial circulation. The Undicesima raccolta di Sonate per gli organi moderni and the Dodicesima raccolta di Sonate per gli organi moderni, brought together here, belong to this late season. The composer, chapel master and pedagogue, deploys his language in recognisable modules, ready for use, yet capable of a dignity that does not depend on duration. Recent research has insisted on the complexity of his activity, on the network of religious institutions with which he collaborated, and on his involvement in organ-building matters, all signs of a competence that never separates the page from its sonic concreteness. A distinctive feature of his fortune lies, indeed, in dissemination through different publishers. The most recent bibliography recalls how the circulation of his music was ensured by several firms, with a significant role for Ricordi, and how a foundational anthology such as the Gran Raccolta di Sonate – 18 pieces in 6 fascicles – displays an artistic quality capable of correcting the stereotyped image of a Morandi bound exclusively to theatrical language. It is not insignificant that, already in that collection, the fascicles organise the sonatas according to the sequence Offertory – Elevation – Postcommunion, and that the last inserts a Pastorale and pieces without titles. This is, therefore, an idea of cycle that unites liturgical order and practical flexibility and that, in the eleventh and twelfth collections, re-emerges with a drier and more self-aware maturity. To understand these works, it is also useful to consider their typographical destiny. Milan, in the heart of the nineteenth century, is a crossroads in which art becomes catalogue, plate, market. It is not a mere detail that the Undicesima raccolta is linked to Francesco Lucca, whereas the Dodicesima raccolta belongs to the Ricordi orbit: two poles that embody, in different forms, the industrialisation of music and its new public visibility. Lucca, according to the reconstruction offered by Treccani, soon assembled a wide and competitive catalogue, able to traverse genres and publics, until it was able to sustain its own musical periodical; Ricordi, in turn, would later absorb the legacy of the rival firm, sealing a long rivalry. Within this framework, Morandi appears not as a peripheral author, but as a name deployable at the very centre of music publishing. The Undicesima raccolta itself, in the source that is most readily consulted today, is shown as published by Lucca with consecutive plate numbers, a datum that restores its full integration within the serial logic of the catalogue.
The phrase ‘organi moderni’, repeated on the title pages of Morandi, should be understood in its historical sense. Documents and organological studies show that, between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the idea takes hold of an organ that is modernised or istromentato, furnished with concert registers and accessories, with registration practice entrusted to legends and methods intended to guide timbre-orchestral imitation. It is not merely a matter of adding colours, but of transforming the Ripieno into a flexible organism, of which one of the most practised registrations is represented by the Ripieno misto. These are ranks that, traditionally separate, are mixed with flute timbres or with the Cornetta, according to indications that are often not univocal and that vary from organ to organ. In this horizon, the writing of Morandi reveals a mark of fine intelligence, as in his collections he tends above all to indicate common registers, leaving to the good taste of the organist any employment of extraordinary resources. It is a declaration of style even before it is one of prudence, because it transfers the final responsibility from the page to competence, and makes the liturgy a place of measure, not of display.
The organ built by Girolamo Zavarise in the church of San Vincenzo at Isera, used in this recording, exemplifies in an exemplary manner this notion of concrete modernity. The history of the instrument and the restoration, documented by specialised literature and by the very lists of organ-building interventions, recall that an organ is at once a sounding machine and a communal asset, safeguarded by a continuity of care. Above all, however, contemporary registration methods restore the grammar of its colour: for the organ of Isera, Zavarise himself indicated, for the effect of the campanelli, a combination centred on the Principale and the Vigesima nona, a sign of a taste that knew how to integrate ornament within the system of the Ripieno. The same cultural environment was not averse to still richer solutions. Contemporary sources recall instruments equipped with percussion accessories and small expression boxes, tested or recommended by Morandi as well.
Within this framework, the Undicesima raccolta presents itself as a book of applied art, explicitly directed towards formation, as indicated by the dedication to his pupils. The Offertory in D major opens with a controlled energy: it does not aim at surprise, but at a clarity of periods and symmetries, where the rhetoric of festivity arises from control. The Elevation in G major, which will return at the centre of the subsequent collection, seems instead modelled on a principle of cantabile writing without emphasis, in which the line tends towards legato and harmony works by veils, as though liturgical time were asking not for a discourse, but for a permanence. The Postcommunion in E flat major restores motion to a luminous and orderly region, avoiding the outwardness of a brilliant finale. The two additional pages specify the devotional horizon. The Benedizione del Venerabile belongs to a practice in which music, more than commenting, must sustain. Often articulated in two sections, it alternates recollection and release, as though the rite were demanding first stability and then light. It is not surprising that pieces of this kind also circulate independently, as attested by a Benedizione del Venerabile in print with Ricordi, in two movements, with plate number, linked to the twelfth collection. The Pastorale, a genre that, in Italian organ tradition, translates affection into discipline of pace and places a gentler light beside liturgical order, closes without turning into a vignette.
The Dodicesima raccolta retains the framework of Offertory, Elevation and Postcommunion, but expands it with the Sinfonia per le Feste di Prima Classe, a declaration of a more ceremonial vocation. Here an observation of historiography and editions proves useful. For Morandi, the terminology of sonata and sinfonia is often permeable, because the page arises from function and colour rather than from an abstract taxonomy of genres. On a day of the greatest solemnity, the sinfonia therefore takes shape as a device of hierarchy, capable of making audible the difference between ordinary time and a first-class feast, without overstepping the decorum of the church. The Offertory in E flat major thus has the breadth necessary to construct an entrance; the Elevation in G major reprises the meditative axis already tested; while the Postcommunion in B flat major concludes with a clarity that does not renounce movement, but subordinates it to the legibility of design. The editorial frame reinforces this reading. The bibliographical notices available for the Dodicesima raccolta attest the Milanese printing ascribed to Giovanni Ricordi and describe the material data, such as extent and format. These are details that, in a repertory such as this, are not marginal: the printed page is made to be placed upon the desk, to withstand use, to enter a parish archive and remain there.
The bonus track, the Pastorale del mantice, adds an unexpected perspective. A manuscript found within the bellows of an organ, indicated by Luca Scandali, returns the music to the most physical place of its birth, where the instrument breathes. Alongside the printed page, born to circulate, the page saved by chance survives, and for that very reason is able to recount the material life of tradition.
Heard together, these two collections reveal a Morandi who has no further need to display, but rather to consolidate. A nineteenth-century judgement, taken up by later literature, has at times contrasted the freshness of the youthful collections with a greater dryness of the later ones; and yet modern studies insist on the need to resize the one-sided image of an author solely theatrical, recognising in his organ production a structural solidity and a quality of invention that coexist with function. The same contemporary editorial work, which has had to measure itself against historical prints afflicted by numerous and at times striking errors, recalls how organ music of the nineteenth century is also a textual tradition, to be read with critical care. In their equilibrium between rite, pedagogy and editorial practice, the Undicesima and the Dodicesima raccolta thus testify to a sound civilisation that does not confuse modernity with clamour.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2026