August 14, 2012

conference cultural

MUSIC AND SPIRITUALITY IN FITERO MONASTERY

The organs of the monastery of Fitero

D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia
Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro

The organ patrimony of our temples has reached our days very diminished, if we compare it with the richness it had, especially in cathedrals, monasteries and collegiate churches, where together with the monumental organs installed in the main naves, there used to coexist other organs of lesser size and some realejos installed in chapels, and even kept in the sacristies to serve as musical support in processions and rogations, at times when the latter were very abundant.

In the Cistercian monastery of Fitero, during the Modern Age, along with the large organ in the nave, exceptionally located in the section preceding Wayside Cross, because the choir was already moved to the foot of the church, others are documented. The first, also of large proportions in the section immediately before the choir loft, a large realejo in the latter room and two other portable organs that were still preserved in the abbey sacristy a century ago.

Regarding the first of these, it should be remembered that only the very interesting original baroque case is preserved. The instrument (1657-1669) was contracted by the abbot Fernando de Ferradillas with the French organ builder Nicolás Briset and it was finished as abbot Fray Bernardo de Erviti. Once the musical part was finished, it was inspected by two prestigious musicians: Don Lucas Pujol, organist of the cathedral of Tarazona, and Don Lorenzo López de Galarreta y Baquedano, a master organ builder who lived in Lerín. In 1800 it was completely renovated by the French organ builder Juan Monturus, at a cost to the monastery of 3,317 reales. Along with the monastery's accounts, a small parchment found in the secret of the instrument gives an account of that renovation at the beginning of the 19th century.

With these last arrangements the baroque organ arrived until 1929, when the instrument was replaced by another one of romantic character, both in its pipework and in the registration and system, because the mechanical part was replaced by a pneumatic one. In 1997 the entire horizontal or battle trumpet system was replaced, literally sawn off in 1929.

We attribute the case to Riojan sculptors, although the model is evidently of French descent and the presence of the sirens, located as corbels on the lateral wings, are reminiscent of the case of the Parisian organ of St. Etienne du Mont, contracted in 1631 by Jean Buron for 4,000 pounds and finished in 1633. There is no doubt that either through some engraving, or better yet through the indications of the French organ builder Nicolas Briset who became position of the instrument itself, the sirens were incorporated, evoking the legend of Jason and the Argonauts and the well-known passage from the Odyssey (XII,39) of Ulysses, in both cases in relation to their songs and the music.

The monastery had several realejos for the cloister processions and other functions, of which a couple of them were conserved in the sacristy in the first years of the XX century, as well as another one of greater dimensions in the high choir that was the object of a transaction for the harmonium that is conserved at the present time in the parish. The chronicle of a feast organized in 1622 refers to one of the realejos, when the images of the Virgen de la Barda de Fitero and the Virgen del Monte de Cervera del Río Alhama were exchanged for a few days. At least in two occasions it is alluded to the mass that was interpreted halfway between both localities at the time of proceeding to exchange with "organ singing". Regarding the choir loft, we know that it was used in the first two decades of the twentieth century in some religious functions, specifically in the darkness of Holy Week.

Organ. Parish Church of Santa María de Fitero

Registration of the old organ of the parish church of Santa María de Fitero