Restorations   MILAN PASSION

THE ORGAN

On 12 August 1558, the organ builder Gian Giacomo Antegnati received the balance of the payment due to him for the construction of an organ in the Milanese church of Santa Maria della Passione.
The beautiful case, which still exists today, on the right when looking at the altar "in cornu Epistolae", reveals one of its salient features: it was a 12-foot organ, with the F grave pipe at the front;

In the first half of the 17th century, a second organ in a 'twin' case was built opposite the Antegnati. We do not know the name of the builder of this second instrument, which was restored with the total reintegration of the phonic part in 1985. The chest and keyboard are ancient. The phonic arrangement, clearly in the Renaissance tradition, has some additions, probably from the 18th century: a cornet register, a reed register in the basses and the double basses on the pedal; perhaps the maker of these additions was Gio.Paolo Binago, an organ builder from Milan, whose name is engraved on the case of the instrument next to the dates 1726 1727. Many organ builders certainly followed one another in the following centuries at S. Maria della Passione.

While the case 'in cornu Evangelii' remained mute for a long time, until its restoration in 1985, the ancient case of the Antegnati housed an instrument by the firm Balbiani-Vegezzi-Bossi until recently. This instrument, however, was incompatible with a 'two-organ dialogue': hence the courageous decision to give up this old but not antique instrument (today it is in a church in San Martino della Battaglia) in order to reconstruct an instrument of better artistic quality and which would allow a two-organ performance.

The Mascioni organ company, which was commissioned to build the instrument, was asked to build an organ (allow us to trace the 16th century contract of the Milan Cathedral) conforming to the principal registers which are in the other oratory which is presently used, these are the undersigned: first the principal of XII feet; the octave; the quintadecima; the decimanona; the vigesimaseconda; the vigesimasexta and vigesimanona; the flute in octave. In addition to these, the pre-existing organ has been superseded by a greater number of registers up to the number of registers twenty-eight. In reality, the challenge was manifold: it was not just a matter of making a bigger organ, but rather of trying to realise an idea that the writer has been pursuing for some time: to succeed in combining the purity of sound of the ancient Italian Ripieno with the polyphonic clarity of the German Mixture; to mix the bright, delicate colours of the Italian Renaissance with the sound palette necessary for the music of Bach. An extremely creative instrument then, not a copy; a creation anchored in several traditions, not a museum instrument, but not an 'eclectic' organ either (meaning a bandwagon without personality where you can play everything from Cavazzoni to Messiaen... everything, but bad!).