Neapolitan Organ Works of the 19th and 20th Century

Description

The Italian organ possesses a memory broader than that transmitted by the monumental repertory alone. Between the nineteenth century, the twentieth century and the present, it preserves symphonies of theatrical savour, Christmas pastorals, domestic songs, pages for harmonium, liturgical forms reread by modernity, and recent compositions in which colour becomes thought. Amann, Melchiorre, Acton, Frontini, De Bonis, Maione and Castaldo form an arc in which southern Italy, Neapolitan culture, Aversa and contemporary writing are mirrored in a single keyboard. The decisive place is the musical collection of the Archivio Storico Diocesano di Aversa, fondo monasteri soppressi, Monastero di Sant’Agostino degli Scalzi, from which come the Sinfonia per solo Organo, the Pastorale, Cornamuse and the Canzone di montagna. The rediscovery of some two hundred manuscripts and several exercise books reveals a living practice, sustained by study, copying and liturgical use. The deed of sale of the complex, with its mention of two grand pianos and an organ, confirms a daily and formative function.
The interest of the collection exceeds its documentary value. Many papers bear the signatures of copyists, dedications to the religious sisters, traces of use, signs of a shared sonic life. At Sant’Agostino degli Scalzi a piece existed as exercise, ceremony, memory and offering. From this arises the fascination of the Sinfonia per solo Organo by M. Amann, an author of whom the sources preserve initial and surname without permitting a secure biographical profile. The page displays a fully nineteenth-century character, with almost band-like traits. The title Sinfonia, in the Italian organ world of that time, evokes the theatrical overture transported into church, the energy of the ripieni, the alternation of cantabile episodes and fanfare-like calls. Amann places at the opening a disciplined, luminous, wholly Italian theatricality.
The Pastorale by Mauro Melchiorre leads listening into a landscape of intimate sweetness. The Italian organ pastoral belongs to the world of the crib, of the pifferari, of bagpipes, of the drone and the rocking rhythm. It translates the Nativity into a sonic figure and transports into the church the idealised profile of the countryside. The pastoral character manifests itself through the evocation of rustic breath and the transfiguration of the popular element. The organ here assumes the countenance of the ennobled bagpipe, an ancient and imaginary instrument uniting street, rite and domestic intimacy. With Cornamuse by Carlo Acton the pastoral colour acquires a more picturesque tint. Acton, a composer and pianist associated with Neapolitan musical life, is also remembered for the theatre and for sacred production. The title recalls an archaic sonic object, made of reeds, drones, dance and nasal roughness; in writing for the organ, that image becomes registration, play of timbres, stylised imitation. Beside Acton stands Francesco Paolo Frontini, a native of Catania attentive to song and to the collection of popular melodies. The Canzone di montagna n. 4216, originally attested in the piano repertory, assumes a new density on the organ. The title evokes open air, height, melodic simplicity; on the organ the song becomes timbral memory, almost a communal song enlarged and preserved.
The section devoted to Alessandro De Bonis opens the devotional and pedagogical side of the programme. The Tre pezzi per armonium od organo con ped. ad libitum op. 14 belong to the civilisation in which the harmonium accompanied schools, chapels, parishes and practices of piety. The indication of optional pedal reveals a flexible destination, conceived for different instruments and concrete circumstances. Preludio – Ave verum immediately places the collection under the Eucharistic sign, preparing the sacred melody with an ordered introductory gesture. Preghiera della sera concentrates affect in a vespertine light, with a movement suggesting recollection and trusting abandonment. The Finale restores to the triad a firmer and more ceremonial profile. De Bonis works within functional music, elevating it through proportion, clarity and expressive modesty. The small form becomes spiritual measure.
With Rino Maione the trajectory enters a twentieth century of greater complexity. A musician from Sannio, composer, conductor, teacher and musicographer, Maione unites Catholic devotion, symphonic culture and awareness of the great European organ tradition. The bond with Achille Longo illuminates the relationship with a Neapolitan school still capable of conceiving technique as a discipline of character. Intonazione, Corale e Toccata op. 30 presents an openly orchestral conception of the instrument. The organ is treated as a plural body, with changes of colour, contrasts of register and allusions to Bach, Poulenc, Messiaen and the symphonic horizon of the twentieth century. The opening Intonazione possesses energetic brilliance, rapid passages, incisive chords, rhythmic cells subjected to shifts of accent and syncopations. The central Corale opens a more properly organistic zone: broad legatos, soft registers and suspended harmonies create a rarefied climate. The concluding Toccata releases the virtuosic and spectacular dimension of the page, alternating tightly wrought sections and broader harmonic openings up to a majestic close.
The final block of the disc is entrusted to Mauro Castaldo and shifts the discourse into the present. An organist-composer linked to the practice of the instrument and to pedagogical responsibility, Castaldo conceives the organ as a mobile space, open to the transformation of material and to timbral choice. The preparatory notes, compiled by Rigliaco, observe that in Castaldo’s music «one of the most interesting aspects is the freedom left to the performer» and specify that «the writing continually opens spaces for improvisation and for personal dialogue with the musical text, making every performance different and alive.» The written page establishes a path, while the organ becomes a place of decision, active memory and sonic responsibility. The same notes continue by indicating that «within the pieces there continually emerge references and quotations from different musical worlds: one perceives echoes of Prokofiev, from Romeo and Juliet to Peter and the Wolf, Bachian references and also colours that recall the great French organ tradition.»
The Tre pezzi per strumento a tastiera dedicati a Luciana Renzetti form a timbral suite. Rigliaco notes that «the three organ pieces composed in 2022 instead show a different kind of writing, very closely bound to colour and to the continuous transformation of sonic material. Together they form a sort of suite». Sequenza 14 proceeds according to a logic of circular motion, almost mechanical and obsessive; in the words of the same source, «The sequence proceeds instead like a rotor in continuous motion: the theme always remains present, but transforms itself incessantly, evolving in an almost ostinato manner without ever truly stopping.» Chiaro alla luna opens a nocturnal and contemplative zone, constructed upon a few intervallic nuclei. Here one reads that «Chiaro alla luna is born almost entirely from the use of only two intervals, the fourth and the sixth, from which, however, a very broad timbral palette develops.» The same note points to «allusions to the New World Symphony by Dvořák, and to early Neapolitan music». La corrente dei cavalieri possesses a more theatrical, rapid and playful physiognomy; the performer describes it thus: «It has a decidedly more playful and theatrical character, with a quotation from Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev. The piece alternates rhythmic impulses, swift flourishes and virtuosic passages, while always maintaining a light and dynamic tone. Here the key to interpretation is amusement and brilliance.»
The Corale in La and the Finale complete the portrait of Castaldo through a writing bound to formal freedom. The Corale in La, from 1997, for instance, is built with a mirror structure: the second part takes up the first exactly, but “in reverse”. Between the two sections and in the final cadenza there are completely free moments, left to the improvisation of the performer. The specular structure assumes an architectural and performative value, since symmetry coexists with instantaneous invention. The possibility of the pedal also modifies the identity of the piece; the performer specifies that «the piece can function both with and without the pedal, but the addition of the pedal profoundly modifies the harmonies and the perception of the piece.» In the Finale contrast becomes a dramaturgical principle. The preparatory notes define it in exact terms: «In the Finale, instead, two highly contrasting dimensions coexist: on the one hand, a rhythmic, energetic and virtuosic writing, on the other, a central section with almost suspended, distant, “otherworldly” echoes.» The chordal material is subjected to minimal transformations, producing, according to the same testimony, «a continuous sensation of recognition and surprise, as though the musical material were constantly changing while always remaining familiar.» In Castaldo the contemporary organ lives as a machine of memory and metamorphosis.
Heard in its entirety, the disc tells a history of the organ as a living archive. The pages from the Sant’Agostino collection restore an Aversa culturally active, a place of study, copying, liturgical practice and musical circulation. The organ of the Abbazia di San Lorenzo fuori le mura becomes the point of convergence of these memories: nineteenth-century symphony, stylised bagpipe, mountain song, evening prayer, chorale, toccata and contemporary freedom. What emerges is a sonic geography in which the sacred, the popular, the theatrical and the modern share one and the same root. Each piece illuminates a fragment of Italian organ civilisation, composing the portrait of a keyboard that preserves, transforms and returns time.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2026