Higini Anglès's defense of Medieval and Renaissance Sacred Music in Mid-20th-Century Rome

Abstract

Angles's correspondence and other materials at the PIMS in Rome and at the Biblioteca de Catalunya in Barcelona afford a glimpse of a different side to Anglés's activities in Rome, of his worries and frustrations concerning the future of sacred music. These documents provide a new, hitherto hidden context for Angles's musicological production and for the reception of early sacred music in mid-2oth-century Rome. Here we find an Angles not so much as a Catalan/Spanish nationalist praising Spanish music above that of other nations, but an Angles more practica! and ecumenical trying to carry out an important global mission. Angles put all his knowledge at the service of the Catholic Church to try to save for the Roman liturgy a repertory of Medieval and Renaissance sacred music that according to him crossed the boundaries of nations and religions, a repertory in which all Europeans from East and West would be able to recognize their own roots.