The principle music study institution of the Catholic church, the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra (The Pontifical Institute for Sacred Music) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The anniversary festivities will last for a little over a month, and started on 26 May with a major international theological and sacred music conference with musicians and music researchers from many different countries.
One of the key events of the anniversary celebrations came on 28 May when the institute awarded honorary doctorates Laurea Honoris Causa di Musica Sacra to three prominent figures in the music world.
The titles were awarded to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, the most important living creator of sacred music; Diego Fasolis, one of the most noteworthy interpreters of renaissance and baroque polyphony, who will shortly be performing all the works of Palestrina with the Radio Svizzera di Lugano choir; and Professor Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, the internationally renowned organist and music researcher from University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
The predecessor of the century-old Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra was the Higher School of Sacred Music founded by Pope Pius X in 1910, which opened on 3 January 1911 and was approved by a papal bull in the same year.
The aim of the institute today is to teach the disciplines of the practice, theory and history of liturgical music, promote the dissemination of traditional sacred music and encourage artistic expression through sacred music appropriate to contemporary culture. The institute also organises conferences and courses connected to its main aims.
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