Lucchesia’s rich artistic heritage must include its remarkable legacy of historic organs. While the UK suffered a terrible devastation of this king of instruments as a result of the reformation and the civil war, our area, in common with other parts of Italy, preserves instruments dating back to at least the seventeenth century.
In fact, the reputedly oldest organ in Europe is the one that used to be in Florence cathedral until 1966. This instrument can now be seen (dismantled) in the refurbished Museo dell’Opera Del Duomo nearby. It conserves parts built by Matteo da Prato in 1448.
One of the oldest organs in the diocese of Lucca is that at Pieve Santo Stefano. Built by Onofrio Zeffirini it dates back to 1551.

Recently I visited an adjoining region of Italy, Emilia-Romagna which is to the north of Tuscany. Bologna’s magnificent basilica of San Petronio houses the oldest still-functioning organ in the world. It’s the one to the right of the transept and was built between 1471 and 1475 by Lorenzo Giacomo di Prato.
(The UK’s oldest organ, incidentally, is that in St Botolph, Aldgate, and London – the church where Daniel Defoe got married. Built by Renatus Harris, it dates back to 1704).
Like the UK there was a revival of organ building in Italy in the nineteenth century. One of the greatest of organ builders were the combined firm of Nicomede Agati e Filippo Tronci from Pistoia, surely the capital of Tuscan organ-building and home to the Tronci foundation – now concentrating largely on bell-casting and percussion instruments. (See their web site at http://www.fondazioneluigitronci.org/).
It’s important to note that until the 1970’s there was little interest in restoring Lucca’s great organ heritage. Changed liturgical practise and the fact that an electronic keyboard was much cheaper than any money spent on the ancient instruments meant that many of them were in danger of falling into utter decrepitude and, if they were restored, they were restored unskilfully. This situation has happily changed now, starting from the 1990’s.
I was at a concert last Saturday 16th June at San Jacopo, Borgo a Mozzano’s parish church, to celebrate the restoration of the Cosimo Ravani organ of 1632. It’s one of the least spoilt by later hands with over 90% of the original pipes. Glauco Ghilardi restored the organ’s technical part while the case and pipes were refurbished in their original colours by Patrizia Caraffi.

Borgo’s parish priest, Don Francesco Maccari, blessed the instrument and the organ’s inaugural concert was given by internationally renowned Eliseo Sandretti in a magisterial program of pieces ranging from Guami to Alessandro Scarlatti, all perfectly suited to the instrument’s essentially high renaissance and baroque timbre.
This was the programme:

And here is what this superlative instrument sounded like in Gioseffo Guami’s ‘La Guamina’.
And here’s another delightful piece:
It was a truly unmissable evening, especially for someone like me brought up in the United Kingdom where sadly so many instruments of that era were destroyed by the Taliban-like mentality of the reformation of the sixteenth century and by the following century’s civil war.
My whole-hearted congratulations go to all those who have helped to restore the authentic sound to a second jewel of an organ jewel in Borgo a Mozzano. (The first one is that in the convent of Saint Francis, described in my post at https://longoio3.com/2017/10/18/organ-morgan-at-borgos-convent/ ).
PS If you are interested in seeing and perhaps lucky enough to hear others of Ravani’s fabulous organs, some built together with (or by) his brothers Cosimo and Bartolomeo here is a little list of them for you to discover.
| CHURCH | PLACE | Date |
| San Bartolomeo | Cutigliano | 1626 |
| Chiesa del Carmine | Pisa | 1613 |
| Cathedral of St Martin | Lucca | |
| San Marcello | San Marcello Pistoiese | |
| Music room, Palazzo Mansi | Lucca | |
| San Micheletto | Lucca | |
| San Domenico | Pistoia | 1617 |
Do also view the NOI TV report at:
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