Malta Libraries is proud to present: ‘STRIKING A CHORD: Musical genres in Malta throughout the ages’; the National Library of Malta's Public Lectures Series for 2021-2022 which is going to be presented entirely in online feature format and eventually also in a publication bearing the same name. This series brings together several local experts in the field and is being brought to the public in collaboration with the National Archives of Malta and the Mdina Metropolitan Chapter. The public is encouraged to follow the National Library of Malta’s Facebook Page and Malta Libraries’ Youtube channel for the latest videos and updates.
Andrew Alamango’s ‘Singing to the Unseen’ will focus on the group of Maltese musicians who travelled to Tunis in early 1931 to make the earliest records of Maltese music; and Maria Frendo’s ‘Joseph Vella: A Man for all Seasons’ will take the shape of an overview focusing on Malta’s leading composer, Mro Joseph Vella. ‘Discarded Rituals. Liturgical manuscript fragments at the Notarial Archives in Valletta’ by Alex Vella Gregory will present a preliminary study into the surviving liturgical musical manuscript fragments at the Notarial Archives in Valletta; and Manoel Pirotta’s ‘The Inno di Gloria ‘San Andrea’ by Mro Antonio Miruzzi’ will focus on this Solemn Hymn written for an orchestra in 1915 which the author himself discovered in the archives of St Andrew's Musical Society in Luqa. Anna Borg Cardona’s contribution entitled ‘Confraternities – Their contribution to the musical scene in seventeenth-century Valletta’ will shine a light on a few of these organisations who apart from praying together and doing charitable works, also created a healthy milieu for numerous artists, craftsmen and musicians in 17th century Valletta.
The programme also includes ‘Music of Court and Chamber Secular music at the time of Manoel de Vilhena’ by Rebecca Farrugia Hall which will introduce viewers to the composers and performances one could expect to find in the court of the Grandmasters of Malta. Noel D'Anastas’ ‘Wine, Woman and Song’ will talk of the Vaudeville Artists and Music Halls in Malta’s Interwar Period and Mario Gauci’s ‘Musical Archives of the Mdina Cathedral’ will serve as an overview of the most significant works conserved in these archives, beginning with the earliest surviving Acquitanian notation chants and will also examine the core music collection mainly commissioned the Cathedral Chapter and some noteworthy donations hailing from private sources.