THE MELODIC VOICE OF CARMO SOUNDS AGAIN
December 20, 21 and 22 of the year of God’s grace of 2013 deeply marked the culture of diamantinense. People who reached or exceeded the old age of this editor were already resigned to die without hearing the only survivor of all the church organs in which Lobo de Mesquita worked. Hence the mixture of pride and frustration of the people of Diamantina to have in one of their splendid baroque churches the most complete organ ever built in this part of the Americas – in the words of Curt Lange – without any living being able to boast of having heard it. In 1997, the Commercial Association of Diamantina was looking for ways to restore this musical gem, as the article ‘Wounded Bird’ (page 05 of this issue) addressed to the Roberto Marinho Foundation attests. But the valuable work developed by Handel Cecílio Pinto da Silva, organist and professor at the Baptist College of Belo Horizonte, in 2006, presented in Brasilia at the XVI Congress of the National Association for Research and Postgraduate Studies in Music, was the touchstone for such an important rescue. Marco Antônio Brescia, then titular organist of the Capilla Choir of the Pontifical Basilica of San Miguel, in Madrid, embraced the challenge of the selfless researcher to make the organ sound again and, together with him, formed the Friends of the Lobo de Mesquita Organ Association, which started to manage the project based on the agreement signed by Dom Paulo Lopes de Faria on behalf of the Archdiocesan Miter of Diamantina, the sponsorship of BNDES and the support of Iphan and the Third Order of Carmo.
passadico-virtual-diamantina-mg-resultados-da-pesquisa-handel-cecilio-destaque
