This is a cult of the Virgin (apparently a variant of Our Lady of Sorrows) associated with western Sicily. Our holiday just outside the town of Salemi coincided with the beginning of the festival in her honour, and the Capuchin church dedicated to her there held a special event: the rededication of their Ruffatti organ after restoration work. (Another Marian feature of this church was the lengthy extract from Schubert’s Ave Maria played on a recording of a carillon to introduce the Angelus.)
The Ruffatti organ at Maria Santissima della Confusione, Salemi
A local choir, the Coro Polifonico San Pietro Trapani, gave a concert which began with a prayer of dedication and sprinkling the console with holy water. Most of the pieces they sang weren’t known to me, and I would imagine they were post-Baroque pieces of Italian church music. However there was one piece I recognised, a setting of O sanctissima, O purissima. The melody of this turns up in Church of England hymnbooks to the words O most merciful! as a short Communion hymn and is known as the Sicilian Mariners’ Hymn. The source (English, late 18th century) claims the hymn was sung by Sicilian sailors at the end of the day, although there is no independent confirmation of this, or earlier attestation of this precise text.* I find it hard to believe that a stray traveller was able to transcribe a four-verse hymn in Latin from the singing of Sicilian fishermen! Within a few years of publication in London it was all over the Catholic world, the tune sung by Protestants to other words, and the precise origins lost. But if the attribution is taken at face value, it’s the only Sicilian tune to have made it into my hymnbooks.
The exterior of the church during the festival
There were of course organ pieces to show off the refurbished instrument, including Dubois’ Toccata. I hope the organ gets plenty of suitably ambitious music played on it in future. For the organ nerds among you, here’s the spec.
Facebook users can see a post by the choir about the concert here.
* Wikipedia is not to be relied on here – the text cited from Speyer Cathedral is a German translation of the end of the Salve Regina, and I’ve not been able to check whether Kleber’s earlier organ tablature for a text beginning ‘O Sanctissima’ is in the right metre. Also, all the sailors I know would head for the nearest bar at the end of the day rather than singing a hymn.