Anton Nani's sacred music

Some authors and critics seem to cast a shadow on the church music composed by our own Anton Nani, implying that it tends towards an "operatic" style.

When on December 6, 1877, Nani returned from ten years of intensive music studies at the Naples Conservatory, bearing the Academy award, Malta had become an important stop for vessels and steamers on their way to the Far East and India through the newly-opened Suez Canal in Egypt.

The main entertainment in Malta for aristocrats and British colonial officers was definitely the opera which in those days was taken very seriously and visiting members of the British royal family, and other royalty, attended performances at the Royal Opera House in Valletta.

When Nani's opera I Cavalieri di Malta was performed there, it received no fewer than 37 curtain-calls in one evening.

Nani's outstanding sacred compositions of great value, still very highly appreciated and performed during parish feasts, were composed when he was maestro di cappella for the Carmelites - from 1851 up to his death in 1929.

Laudate Pueri, which he composed in 1882 for the coronation of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the Carmelite Basilica in Valletta is the first ever children's 'falsetto' head-voices choir to perform in church, known as pezzo concertato.

Thank to his risponsori, Missa Solemnis and Deus dixit for the feast of St Paul Shipwrecked, two Masses, one of which was performed on various occasions at St Mary Major in Rome, a Mass in F, dedicated also to the Carmelite Basilica, Deus in Adjutorium and Dixit Dominus, Nani obtained high praise from the Holy See, and his music was appreciated by the Church.

As an example of the Church music desired by Pope Pius X, who issued his Motu Proprio in 1903, laying down restrictions on how sacred music should be composed, Mro Mgr Amelli, who chaired the committee for Sacred Music in Rome, singled out the music of Anton Nani. In a letter of appreciation to the Maltese composer, Mgr Amelli, on November 25, 1919, wrote:

Questa musica è in piena confomità con le prescrizioni liturgiche col Motu Proprio di Pio X e va lodata per la sua forma musicale.

In fact one of Nani's Masses was performed by Mgr Amelli himself at Montecassino Abbey.