The Cecilian Movement of church reform was centered in Italy but received great impetus from Regensburg

Regensburg

Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...

, Germany, where Franz Xaver Haberl

Franz Xaver Haberl

Franz Xaver Haberl was a German musicologist, friend of Liszt, Perosi, and Singenberger, cleric, and student of Proske....

 had a world-renowned Kirchenmusicschule. (Haberl was also the Regensberg Domkappellmeister, where he directed a choir highly skilled in polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 and chant

Chant

Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures Chant (from French chanter) is the rhythmic speaking or singing...

.) The Cecilian Movement was a reaction to the roughly hundred years (c.1800 to c.1900) when Gregorian Chant

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

 all but vanished from Catholic Masses.

In many serious church musicians, there was a deep-seated desire to revive Chant as well as the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 polyphony of Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

, Lassus, Victoria

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Tomás Luis de Victoria, sometimes Italianised as da Vittoria , was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, and one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Giovanni da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso. Victoria was not only a composer, but also an...

, Anerio

Anerio

The brothers Anerio were two notable composers of Italy:*Felice Anerio *Giovanni Francesco Anerio These two brothers born at Narni, were great Roman masters of 16th century polyphony. Felice, the elder, was born about 1560, studied under G. M. Nanino and succeeded Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina...

, et al., and to rid Masses of the more entertaining, operatic style of music. Before Lorenzo Perosi, it may be said that Giovanni Tebaldini

Giovanni Tebaldini

Giovanni Tebaldini was an Italian composer, organist and musicologist- Life :He studied with Amilcare Ponchielli at the Conservatory of Milan and later withFranz Xaver Haberlin Regensburg...

, Perosi's predecessor at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 was one of the leaders of this movement named for St. Cecilia, patroness of music. But by Tebaldini's own admission, it was Perosi who brought these hopes to fruition—albeit with the backing of the future Pope Pius X

Pope Pius X

Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...

 and his motu proprio

Motu proprio

A motu proprio is a document issued by the Pope on his own initiative and personally signed by him....

, Tra le sollecitudini of 1903. The influence of Perosi, as well as Pius, was so strong that not only did chant and polyphony re-enter the Catholic repertory, but Perosi's works—from the 1890s until World War I and beyond—were by far the most widely performed contemporary works in the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

. (Vide Lorenzo Perosi.)