By the time this article appears in print, we will be in the throes of Christmas celebrations, despite the fact that the actual holiday will have about 3 weeks to go. For more than a month, we are inundated with music, merchandise sales, tacky decorations, and all of the trappings that accompany our commercialized and materialistic celebration. Each year, I am reminded first-hand of the enormous amount of work that goes into making music for the season. One thing led to another within my thought process as an artist, and I began to think about the making of music in times past and how the churches were designed to accommodate the musicians. Singers, and later on organs, were relegated to the cantoria.
The cantoria was literally a “singing gallery”, a box that was positioned on a wall overhanging the church nave. Many churches had cantorie as early as the 13th century. Singing from a cantoria, above the worshipers, improved the acoustical impact and provided a sort of celestial effect. The framework provided a perfect place for artistic decoration. The bas-relief is frequently featured on the “box” of the cantoria. The Duomo (cathedral) of Florence once housed two of the most famous cantorie ever constructed. Today they can be seen in the Cantoria Room of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.
In 1688, the great patron of music, Ferdinando de Medici married Violente Beatrice of Bavaria. Ferdinando required an excessively large choir, rendering the two cantorie useless. They were removed from the walls and placed in the Duomo Museum.
Even St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel had cantorie. A large cantoria, supported by six columns was constructed in St. Peter’s for the Holy Year 1500. It did not survive the reconstruction of the new basilica later in the century. The Sistine Chapel has an 8’ x 12’ cantoria carved into the Chapel wall during the 1470’s. Only singers of the Papal Choir were allowed to enter it. In 1997, during the Vatican restoration project, the cantoria was cleaned. Hundreds of signatures, snippets of music, messages, and other “graffiti” were found on the inner walls and even on the stairwell. It reads like a Who’s Who of the Papal Choir.
One thing is certain. Most of the Renaissance churches utilized the cantoria as a choir loft. As musical styles changed to include organ and other instruments with the singers, the cantorie were enlarged to accommodate more space. Many organs are placed in highly decorated cantorie that show off the lavish pipe and casework. But the dancing children and the putti were gone, replaced by the “king” of instruments. However, they live on in reproductions. There is even a copy of Luca’s singing boys hanging on the wall of a local funeral home! Go figure!