I’m not sure what
I expected when I walked into the church of Santa
Maria della Sanità.
The
belfry outside had been beautifully
restored, but
the rest of the façade was still cloaked in the cloths and
scaffolding of
painstaking restoration. Some day soon, one hopes, the church will
again look
like the jewel of the Neapolitan Counter-Reformation that it was when
it was
built in the early 1600s. The entrance was open; I walked in and found
myself
alone and mesmerized by the ornate marble double stairway, the pulpit
above,
and, above that, a magnificent organ (photo, above). I half-expected to
see the
half-masked
visage of the Phantom of the Opera turn and leer over his
shoulder at me
as he struck up the infamously chilling opening of Bach’s Toccata
and Fugue in D Minor (you know,
the one that starts: da-da-DAAAAAH!).
This is not meant to
be even a
mini-manual on organs—their history, how they are
made, how they are played, how they
are
restored, etc. (For that, I urge you buy The Cambridge
Companion to
the Organ by Nicholas Thistlethwaite and
Geoffrey
Webber. Cambridge University
Press, 1999,
and read it. Get back to me when you’re done.) Suffice
it to say that an organ has keyboards, pipes, ranks, pedals,
stops, registers and, historically, any number of ways to move “wind”
though
the instrument; an organ can have one keyboard or many and it can have
many
thousands of pipes. Organ terminology is very technical,
and
none of it is accessible to the layman. (They speak of “pipe feet,”
“pull-down
seals,” “cone valves,” and “pallet magnets,” which to me might as well
be parts
of the Large Hadron Collider atom-smasher about to open near But let my due
feet never fail In the church
of
Ascensione
a
Chiaia.
This
organ
has 2,500 pipes
Most organs in churches throughout southern The
church of S. Maria in Portico.
The instrument is from the 1600s;
* The eponym, Trabaci
(1575-1647), was an organist and prominent composer for the instrument
who for many years was active at the Oratorio
of
the
Filippini
in
the
church
of
the
Girolamini
in
Naples. The organ that stirred my
inner Lon Chaney in Santa Maria
della
Sanità is
from the early 1700s and was last restored in 1940. That restoration
was done
by Pietro Petillo, a
Neapolitan whose entire family was prominently
involved in
organ building and restoration throughout
In
the
church
of
San
Domenico
Maggiore
The instrument shown above is a
double-organ, the two components of which are situated on either side
of the nave in the recently restored church of Santa Maria dell'Aiuto. Double organs
were not particularly rare, but this is the best-restored
one I have seen. Literature on the church simply describes it as "a
17th-century instrument"—not particularly helpful. I am making
enquiries, but I have a feeling that the otherwise very successful
restoration of this church stopped short of restoring the organ such
that it can be played.  I note elsewhere on the reopening of the
Church of the Girolamini. It is obviously going to be a long process of
restoration to return that magnificent structure to the icon of the
Neapolitan Baroque that it used be. My understanding is that it will
sooner or later serve as a museum rather than a house of worship much
like the Diocese Museum within the splendid church of Santa Maria Donna Regina. But at least
the Girolamini church is open after many decades of neglect and that is
a start. You can walk in and see the partially restored art work on the
walls, as well as other partially restored this and that. My gaze
wandered up to the organ (photo, right). It is a total wreck; the few
pipes that are still there are askew. I know nothing of the details of
the instrument—that is, who built it and when. I suspect it will be the
last thing to be put in order and then only cosmetically, which is to
say that they may make it look good, but I doubt that it will ever again—in Milton's words—"blow...in
service high, and anthems clear...".
But one can hope.Organs in the Naples
Cathedral
The musical instruments within the Naples cathedral are well-known, so
they are not really within the "the lost organs" premise of this entry.
Yet, for the sake of completeness, one should know something about
their history; also, as we shall see, organ construction in the
cathedral may bear on the presence of organs in other churches in the
city.There are organs (1) in the main nave of the cathedral; (2) in the left-hand chapel (known as the Basilica of Santa Restituta; and (3) in the chapel of the Tesoro [Treasure] of San Gennaro.  —(1) The main
nave displays the instrument that one sees upon entering
the cathedral: the Grand Ruffati Organ from 1975. It consists of two
identical organs facing each other, one on the left side of the
nave (photo) above the episcopal throne and the other directly across
from it, above
the pulpit. Even in a house of worship as splendid as the Duomo of Naples, they stand out and
are what
many people first notice, even if they are not particularly
scouting for
organs. The instruments are played from a console located near the
front of the cathedral. I include here and gratefully acknowledge the
following
comments from Larry Ray (who has other material
on this website). Besides being an expert on
Underground Naples, a helicopter pilot,
a broadcaster, print journalist and an artist, he obviously knows a lot
about organs (Leonardo da Vinci, eat your heart out!):The Ruffati organ is essentially the last in a series of rebuildings that go back to 1767 when cathedral organist, Fabrizio Cimino, removed two older organs and replaced them with a new twin instrument, two identical unit organs exactly the same in sound and appearance. Besides 1975, rebuildings of that 1767 instrument occurred in 1843, 1931, and 1963. Such work is not just simple modification, but entails adding pipes, stops, manuals (keyboards) and, most importantly, converting the controls and mechanisms from earlier mechanical systems to electrical ones. The 1767 Cimino organ was itself, however, a replacement for the first grand organ in the cathedral, the first element of which was the 1549 organ, built by G.F. de Palma, set on the right in the main body of the church and, then, a second unit, set on the left and built in 1652 by P. and M. de Franco. Those large components faced each other (the same way the modern ones do) on either side of the nave and were termed "the magnificent twins." (Indeed, they both bore decorative art by Luca Giordano.) Before that, there is no reliable documentation of instruments in the cathedral, but one assumes there was some sort of organ in place to accompany the choir by the second half of the 1400s. The separate small choir organ at the front was from 1782 and had a long life, remaining in use until as late as 1950. It was removed in 1963. —(2) In the Santa Restituta section of the cathedral, there are two instruments: the historic 1750 de Martino organ and the Frescobalda organ built in 1975 (although it was built to look older). The latter is free-standing, relatively small and mobile; the fine wooden case housing the pipes features a small, historic keyboard; the case is mounted on wheels and the entire affair can be repositioned if necessary. (3) The Royal Chapel of the treasure of San Gennaro, contains the 1640 de Franco twin organs. The unit on the right was rebuilt in 1902 by Petillo. To my knowledge, neither of them is currently in condition to be played.  As noted above,
the cathedral may have to do with organs elsewhere
in the city. When Fabrizio Cimino built
the "new" twins in
1767, he removed the original "magnificent twins," and no one seems to
know exactly what happened to them. They were highly regarded and
almost
certainly would not have been destroyed. In the opinion of some
researchers,*they
may have wound up in the church of Santa
Maria La
Nova, where the organ has traditionally been regarded as somewhat
of
a mystery in terms of origin. That church was built in 1596 and had a
small instrument there for many years. The two large unit organs
that one sees today, however, on the right and left (the left organ is
shown in the photo, above) are
not recorded
in early church documentation and do not seem to have been there until
sometime in the 1700s.*This includes Graziano Fronzuto, from whose article on the history of the organs in the cathedral of Naples I have drawn much of my information. to main index to music portal |
In a city such as
Naples, where there are hundreds of churches, many of which were built
in the
hey-day of the Baroque (the 1600s), you would expect there to be at
least a
few
dozen fine, ornate organs still up and playing. Alas, there do not seem
to be.
There are a few, but not many, and the real problem is that no one
seems to
know, or, until recently, to have cared much about preserving this rich
part of
the musical heritage of 
The
details of it all,
however, are
obscure for many reasons. A lot can happen in 500 years. There are the
natural
ravages of time, not to mention earthquakes, volcanoes, bubonic plague,
cholera, urban destruction/renewal, wars, revolution, vandalism and
theft, all
of which have caused entire churches
to disappear, forget about the furnishings! Through all of this, even
devout
Roman Catholics—while no
A few other
examples in 