Echi d’Organo: Music for Two Organs in Renaissance and Early Baroque Italy – Montserrat Torrent & Matteo Bonfiglioli

During the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, in the most important churches (such as, for example, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, the Duomo of Milan, S. Stefano dei Cavalieri in Pisa, Malta Cathedral, etc.), the provision of a second organ developed in parallel with the rise and consolidation of the polychoral repertoire. It is no coincidence that at S. Petronio Baldassarre Malamini’s organ (1596) was placed alongside that of Lorenzo da Prato (1475), «quod possint cum duobus organis fieri concertus et chori ac musica duplex et responsiva ac alternata». Although the formation of a specific repertoire for two organs took place only in the late seventeenth century, the two instruments interacted closely in accompanying polychoral performances, leaving the exercise of an autonomous role, plausibly, to improvisatory practices.