St Cecilia

Saint Cecilia, Patron Saint of Music - her life and work
by Prof. Donald Trelford Chairman of the Society of Gentlemen, Lovers of Musick

Every November for the last 400 years the name of St Cecilia has been invoked as patron saint of music at festivals around the world. Poets from Dryden to Auden have written works in her honour, which have been set to music by composers from Purcell to Britten. But who was she and what did she know about music?

She was adopted as patroness by the Academy of Music when it was founded in Rome in 1584. Her connection with music was inferred from a passage in a story about her life that read as follows: "While Cecilia was being led into the house of her betrothed on her wedding day to the sound of musical instruments (cantantibus organis) she invoked only God in her heart, asking him the favour of keeping her body and soul without stain.

The historical Cecilia certainly existed - she appears in one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She was also of a saintly disposition. She converted her husband to Christianity on their honeymoon and persuaded him to live in chastity. When she was condemned to death by the Roman Governor, she is reported to have survived suffocation in a steam bath and immersion in a cauldron of oil. She even lived three days after being struck on the neck with a sword.

So she was definitely a martyred saint and a remarkably tough old bird to boot. But what about her musical credentials? Modern scholars have discovered that the phrase cantantibus organis did not refer to musical instruments at the time St Cecilia was alive, though it had a musical connotation in sixteenth-century Italy when the Academy of Music was founded. So her musical reputation certainly rests on a Latin mistranslation.

But it's too late now to go back and rewrite 414 years of musical history. The legend has acquired a truth of its own. Music needed a patron, and Cecilia was as good as any. Who knows - perhaps she had a musical ear anyway? If she was tone deaf, however, one wonders what she makes of the thousands of musical tributes directed heavenwards in her honour every 22 November.

One of the most famous of these musical tributes, Hail! Bright Cecilia by Henry Purcell, was first performed in Stationers' Hall in 1692. It was commissioned by the Society of Gentlemen, Lovers of Musick, which used the Stationers' Hall for its concerts, always enjoyed with the aid of good food and fine wines. Samuel Pepys records in his diary that he once attended a St Cecilia's Day concert at the Stationers' Hall and had a good time. Unfortunately, the revels of the Society of Gentlemen became too rowdy for the liverymen of the Stationers' Hall - one contemporary account even describes them as "bawdy" - and the original Society was wound up in 1707.

In 1992, however, to mark its 300th anniversary, Hail! Bright Cecilia was performed again at Stationers' Hall by Fiori Musicali, on authentic instruments. Inspired by the success of this occasion and by the enthusiasm of Dr Penelope Rapson, the director of Fiori Musicali, and her husband Bernard, the annual St Ceciliatide International Festival of Music was born. It has grown every year since.

Reborn, too, after nearly three centuries, was the Society of Gentlemen, Lovers of Musick. The tradition of good food and wine to follow an evening of sublime music has been maintained by the Rapsons, who spend almost as much time choosing the menus and selecting the wines as they do in preparing the musical programme. Both are members of the Jurade de Saint-Émilion, whose connections with the City of London go back 800 years to the time of King John.

Three centuries ago, the Society of Gentlemen used to promise "a splendid entertainment . . . by the best voices and hands in Town". That promise is being fulfilled again today. What St Cecilia will make of it all we can only guess. Some cynics claim to have detected a wink in her eye on the stained glass portrait window devoted to her in the Hall. I prefer Dryden's version in his famous Song for St Cecilia's Day, written for performance at Stationers' Hall:

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher;
When to her Organ vocal breath was given,
An Angel heard and straight appear'd - Mistaking Earth for Heaven!