Italian city. It is situated in the Umbria region. The earliest evidence of a flourishing musical activity in Assisi is given by a Franciscan breviary and two fragments with neumatic notation from the 13th century (I-Ac 683, 694 and 696). Another source from the same century (Ac 695), including nine compositions in early polyphonic style and probably originating at Reims, provides a link between Assisi’s musical life and the prevailing polyphonic practice of the time. Giuliano da Spira (d c1250) was at Assisi (1227–30) after having served at the court of Louis VIII in Paris; he was delegated to compose the first rhythmical Office of the Franciscan Order. Troubadour songs were cultivated by several secular societies (the most famous being the Del Monte) and were heard on 1 May each year when the town’s districts competed in a musical contest called the Calendimaggio.
The community of the Friars Minor, founded by St Francis (c1181–1226) at Assisi, promoted the singing of laude during sermons and religious services. In the 13th and 14th centuries the singing of laude was also practised in Assisi by 12 religious confraternities. The statutes of the Confraternita di S Stefano, compiled in 1327, report that meetings were held at least twice weekly, when laude were sung to stir the hearts of the brothers to lamentation and tears.
From its construction in the last quarter of the 13th century the Basilica di S Francesco was the centre of the city’s musical activities. In 1363 a new organ was installed by Francesco di Santa Colomba of Rimini. The most noted maestro di cappella in the 15th century was Lorenzo Panconi of Arezzo (1489–94). Venanzio da Alessandria filled the post in 1503, probably preceded by Ruffino Bartolucci, who subsequently returned there (1534–9) and who organized the installation of a new organ in the lower church in 1537. Among the composers who held posts at the basilica in the 16th century were Ludovico Balbi (a pupil of Costanzo Porta), Lorenzo da Porciano (1563), Nicolò d’Assisi (1587) and Silvestro d’Assisi (c1599).
In the cathedral of S Rufino a cappella musicale was officially instituted in 1525 and organized on the model of the Roman papal chapel, after a new organ had been constructed in 1516 by Maestro Andrea da Firenze. The cathedral’s Atti capitolari cite the appointments as organists and maestri di cappella of Ambrogino da Spello (1551), Matteo Rocchichiola (1561), Camillo da Frascati (1562), Gaetano Gabrat (1570), Francescantonio Contolini (1571), Camillo Lameto (1573), Giuseppe da Gubbio (1577), the Flemish Giovanni Tollio (1584) and Camillo Mattlem (1592).
In the 17th century maestri di cappella at S Francesco were Bartolomeo Agricola (c1622), Francesco Targhetti da Brescia (intermittently from 1614 to 1641), Claudio Cocchi (1632), Giovanni Battistini (1642), Antonio Cossando (1639–53) and Felice Arconati. From 1649 at least 40 singers were employed, and the cappella reached its greatest splendour under the direction of Francesco Maria Angeli in the second half of the century.
The theorist and singer Giovanni Battista Bovicelli (d c1627) was active in Assisi from 1592 to 1627, singing at S Rufino from 1622 to 1627. Giacomo Carissimi also served the cathedral from 1628 to 1630, and G.O. Pitoni from 1674 to 1676. Outside the churches, music was promoted by the Accademia dei Disiosi (founded 1554) which later (1656) changed its name to Accademia degli Eccitati. In 1657 the academy presented a dramma per musica, Dafne, with players and singers from the basilica. The printer Giacomo Salvi published Antonio Cifra's Psalmi sacrique concentus (1620) and Psalmorum sacorumque concentuum liber secundus (1621), motets by A. Perconti and E. Jarram and madrigals by G. Bovicelli.
Maestri di cappella at S Rufino included Democrito Vicomanni (1602), Vincenzo Pace (1620) and Timotello Timotelli (1643). At S Francesco were F.M. Benedetti (1711–15, 1716–46), Francesco Zuccari (1725–6, 1750–88), Clemente Mattei (1781–3) and Luigi Vantaggi (1798–1800), while the cathedral was served by Pietro Sabbatini (intermittently, 1705–43). Pietro Serafini (1745–55) and Giovanni Ricci (after 1750) were maestri at both S Rufino and S Francesco.
During the 18th century a music school was run by the Sacro Convento. Notably among its pupils, who were mostly castratos, were the sopranos Felice Fabiani, who later sang in Rome and Loreto, and G.B. Velluti. In 1750 the Accademia degli Eccitati was renamed Accademia dei Rinati; in 1754, Colonia Arcadica Properziana; and in 1810, Accademia Properziana del Subasio. Under its sponsorship, the architect Lorenzo Carpinelli began in 1836 the construction of the Teatro Metastasio, which was inaugurated in autumn 1840 with Mercadante’s Emma d’Antiochia. Verdi was a member of the academy from 1874.
From 1858 to his death in 1896 Alessandro Borroni, a pupil of Rossini, directed the cappella at S Francesco. During this period, the cathedral frequently drew on the basilica for its singers and directors. During the first half of the 20th century Domenico Stella reorganized and catalogued the musical archives at the basilica, partly stored at the Biblioteca Comunale di Assisi, and directed its cappella (1919–56). The première of Licinio Recife's Trittico Francescano (1926) took place there; Lorenzo Perosi directed the première of his Transitus animae Sancti Patris Nostri Francisci there on 4 October 1937.
In 1927 the Accademia Properziana began to revive the tradition of the Calendimaggio, and each September since 1946 some of the musical productions of the Sagra Musicale Umbra have also taken place at Assisi. The Cantori di Assisi, directed by Evangelista Nicolini, was founded in 1960 and performs early music and traditional music.
DEUMM(B.M. Brumana)
GroveO(G. Ciliberti)
MGG2(G. Ciliberti)
RicordiE
Notizie relative al Teatro Metastasio di Assisi (Assisi, 1881)
G. Fratini: Storia della Basilica e del Convento di S. Francesco d’Assisi (Prato, 1882)
G. Mazzatinti and L.Alessandri: ‘Assisi: Biblioteca del Convento di S. Francesco’, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, iv (Forlì, 1894), 21–141
D. Stella: ‘Serie dei maestri di cappella minori conventuali di San Francesco: compilata dal Padre Stanislao Mattei [1800]’, Miscellanea francescana, xxi (1920), 42; xxii (1921), 44, 134; xxiii (1922), 122
F. Pennacchi: ‘Città di Assisi: Biblioteca comunale’, Bollettino dell’Associazione dei musicologi italiani: catalogo generale, xi (Parma, 1921)
A. Fortini: ‘La tradizione musicale della Basilica di Assisi’, Perusia: rassegna del Comune di Perugia, ix (1937), 14–23
A. Seay: ‘Le manuscrit 695 de la Bibliothèque communale d’Assise’, RdM, xxxix–xl (1957), 10–35
A. Fortini: La lauda in Assisi e le origini del teatro italiano (Assisi, 1961)
C. Sartori, ed.: Assisi: la cappella della Basilica di San Francesco, i: Catalogo del fondo musicale nella Biblioteca comunale di Assisi (Milan, 1962)
G. Zaccaria: ‘Il principale fondo musicale della Cappella di S. Francesco’, Miscellanea francescana, lxii (1962), 155ff
A. Varotti: La cappella musicale di San Rufino in Assisi: contributo per una storia (Assisi, 1967)
C. Pampaloni: ‘Giovani castrati nell'Assisi del Settecento’, Musica/Realtà, viii (1987), 133–54
C. Pampaloni: ‘Musici invitati alla festa di San Francesco nella Sacra Basilica d'Assisi negli anni 1700–1750’, Studi in onore di Giulio Cattin (Rome, 1990), 267–305
ELVIDIO SURIAN/CATERINA PAMPALONI