Liturgical music | Local choir tours Italy in August

Local group Coro Perosi will start their ‘Musical Tour in Italy’ on August 1. The two-week tour will take the choir to the Vatican, Rome, Assisi, Florence, Siena, Pisa and Venice. In addition to holding concerts throughout the tour, the choir will sing at the Santa Udienza at San Pietro, as well as at Masses in various Catholic cities.
“The main purpose of this event is to take Macau’s local sacred music compositions abroad and so the preparation work for this trip began over a year ago. Under historical and traditional influence, Catholic music has undergone systematic development in Macau for 400 years. St. Paul’s College, the first higher education academy of the Far East, started developing the writing and teaching of liturgical music in the 16th century. Unfortunately however, a fire destroyed most of these historical documents. In the 18th century, St. Joseph’s Seminary was built, and it shouldered the responsibility of musical training in Macau,” stated a press release issued by the choir.
The choir added that Western musicians were hired by successive local bishops, including the Italian F. Ferdinando Maberini (1886-1956) and the Austrian F. Guilherme Schmid (1910-2000). Those musicians contributed a significant amount of liturgical works and produced successful students such as F. Áureo da Costa Nunes e Castro (1917-1993) and Doming Lam (1926- ). Catholic liturgical music thus became a “unique and precious cultural treasure” in Macau.
The group’s Italian tour is sponsored by several entities and individuals, amongst them the Macau Foundation, the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Macau Government Tourist Office and the Bishop of Macau, D. José Lai.