APS Bank sponsors restoration of one of Malta’s oldest portable organs

Abstract

The history of this organ restoration project goes back to a European project undertaken by the Music Division of the Mediterranean Institute at the University of Malta, in collaboration with the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts. The European project, entitled The Search for the Roots of Mediterranean Music, focused on unearthing old Mediterranean folk music. This encouraged me, as director of the Mediterranean Institute, to start searching for old Maltese music at a number of parish archives. The parish of Cospicua, or Bormla, as it is known in Maltese, has an extensive archive of old Maltese music and it was in this archive that the oldest Maltese composition was discovered. However, this archive not only possesses Maltese music of outstanding scholarship; it also holds other scores which, although less important in musical content, reflect facets of old Maltese traditions which are now lost.