The Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra and the Chapel of Music at the Cathedral of Pamplona published a collection of books called Chantria. This initiative seeks to update the historic-musical heritage of the Canonry through transcription, revision and editing to make it available to society.

The first book includes works by Italian masters and is now available. The second, which collects anonymous motets, will go on sale before Christmas. The books are edited by Aurelio Sagaseta, director of the Music Chapel, and coordinated by Rafael Zafra, an ICS researcher within the Creativity and Cultural Heritage project.

"It involves uncovering important works from our heritage at the Cathedral in order to bring them to life and make them available to the world," Rafael Zafra noted. At the same time, he commented that the project also hopes "to encourage creativity in the future" and to "help recover the practically disappeared mass genre."

For his part, Aurelio Sagaseta expressed that the project continues initiatives developed by the Music Chapel in previous years, such as the digitization of Cathedral musical collections (75,000 pages of mostly unpublished works) and the publication of the Archive Catalog of music. He emphasized that they count on the collaboration of the prestigious copyist Ángel Briz and an advisory council made up of prominent musicologists from around Spain.

According to Sagaseta, with this publication of music pieces, the group seeks to "recover them for their original function,” which is why some of them will be presented at public concerts. Thus, some of the pieces included in the first two volumes were presented at the Cathedral of Pamplona during a solemn mass-concert on October 13.

A unique version of Mozart's Requiem

On the other hand, he explained that during this academic year, they are working to recover a unique version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem, adapted in the first half of the eighteenth century for its interpretation at the Cathedral of Pamplona. He announced that it will be released in the fall of 2019.

Esperanza Melero, editor at Eunsa, noted that the collection was founded jointly with the German publisher Edition Reichenberger to givean outlet and international visibility to similar projects focused onthe music of European cathedrals. She added that, with it, Eunsa inaugurated a new line of publications, which "reaffirms the presence of music in the university environment.”

The collection is part of the Chantria Pampilonense project, which is the result of an agreement between ICS— the humanities and social science research center at the University of Navarra— and the Chapel of Music. It is part of DeMusica, a research line within ICS’s Creativity and Cultural Heritage project.