Non solo ceciliani. Le due anime della musica sacra a Milano a fine Ottocento

This essay examines the landscape of sacred music in Milan during the final decades of the nineteenth century, challenging the conventional opposition between operatic liturgical practice and the Cecilian reform movement. Drawing upon music periodicals, publishing catalogues, and organ repertories, it demonstrates the long-standing coexistence of two distinct aesthetic and liturgical paradigms sustained by parallel editorial, professional, and cultural networks. Particular attention is devoted to the role of Milanese music publishers and specialized journals, which promoted both the dissemination of operatically inspired sacred repertories and the gradual consolidation of the reformist agenda that culminated in Pope Pius X's Inter sollicitudines (1903). The study argues that the persistence of the traditional repertory depended on its communicative effectiveness and extensive editorial circulation, whereas the success of the Cecilian movement resulted from a broader cultural and normative strategy. The essay ultimately portrays Milan as a crucial laboratory in which continuity and reform shaped modern Italian sacred music.