One of Malta’s longest active musicologists, Joseph Vella Bondin, recently had a research paper published in the latest edition of the very prestigious publication The Musical Times of London, founded in 1844. The paper was entitled ‘The Order of St John in Malta: Liturgical Music in its Magnificent Primary Temple’.
Malta is graced with a number of musicologists who are doing sterling work in the field of research into the history of music in Malta, its different genres and diffusion, whether by foreign or local composers. In his paper, Vella Bondin, now in his early 80s, delves into a theme very dear to his heart and to many aficionados of the history of liturgical music in Malta – the founding of a musical establishment at the former Conventual church of the Order, built in the 1570s.
The Order set great store about the organisation of regular use of vocal and instrumental music during Mass and other religious services, which after the Tridentine reforms were very clearly laid out and adhered to. The author laments the paucity of extant repertory material on which to build a rounded analysis of the ritual music performed at St John’s. This rendered it impossible for a scholar who wished to formulate a comparative perspective on liturgical music-making in terms of the Order’s religious-military ideology and the content of its musical repertoire; nor was it possible to investigate aesthetic variations between the limited surviving repertoire at St John’s and that of the purely spiritually focused Mdina Cathedral, most of which is extant.
The Order set great store about the organisation of regular use of vocal and instrumental music during Mass and other religious services
Vella Bondin examined in detail the setting up of the Cappella di canto fermo and that of the Cappella di musica figurata, how they functioned and the difference between them. Delving into the day-to-day administration of the Cappella di musica he underlined the importance of the working conditions of instrumentalists and singers, different grades of salaries and pensions and the very careful screening of prospective members, most of whom seem to have come from Italy.
More specifically, many of the maestri di cappella, musicians and singers had some connections with Naples and its famously influential conservatories, the fertile breeding ground of some of Europe’s best composers and musicians, and there was a very close relationship between them. However, there was always a considerable Maltese element. All this provides not just an insight in the history of music but also aspects of social history.
Other details concerned the positioning of the church’s organs; there were eventually three of them. There also came a time when three different groups were positioned in different parts of the church, thus enhancing the sonority of the music. All was in the hands of the Grand Master and his council.
There is an interesting rare detailed description of the sumptuous ceremony and music with all pomp and splendour held in February 1656. The occasion was the christening of a number of catechumens, including the teenage Turkish slave Osman, reputed then to be a son of the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim, captured by the Knights in 1644.
Upon his christening, with Grand Master Lascaris as his godfather, Osman assumed the name of Domenico di San Tommaso. Later he became a Dominican monk and died in the plague of 1675-1676.
The Cappella was suddenly disbanded with the expulsion of the Order in June 1798.