De Santi, Angelo
De Santi, Angelo
De Santi, Angelo, distinguished Italian music scholar; b. Trieste, July 12, 1847; d. Rome, Jan. 28, 1922. He became a Jesuit at age 16, and after studies in Italy and France, he completed his training at the Univ. of Innsbruck (ordained, 1877). He taught at the Zara Episcopal Seminary before being called to Rome in 1887 by Pope Leo XIII to take part in the reform of church music; he also taught music at the Vatican Seminary, where he founded a schola cantorum. His reformist zeal encountered opposition and he quit his position in 1893. However, Pope Pius X’s encyclical Motu proprio (1903) reflects De Santi’s views. In 1910 he founded the Scuola Superiore di Musica Sacra. With C. Respighi, he founded the Rassegna gregoriana in 1902.
Writings
(all publ. in Rome unless otherwise given): // maestro Filippo Capocci e le sur composizioni per organo (1888); Intorno al metodo di canto ecclesiastico (Prato, 1888); S. Gregorio Magno, Leone XIII e il canto liturgico (1891); A Solesmesfra i monad esiliati all’Isola di Wight (1901); // ”cursus” nella storia letteraria e nella liturgia (1903); L’origine delle feste natalizie (1907); II primo decennio della Pontificia scuola superiore di musica sacra (1920); Le “Laudes” nell’incoronazione de Sommo Pontefice (n.d.).
—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire