Following the death of composer Charles Camilleri on Saturday, the main political parties in the country have publicly expressed their grief at the demise of the composer who rediscovered Maltese folk music and exported it to the world.
Education Minister Dolores Cristina paid tribute to the maestro and professor of music; “with the death of Mro Charles Camilleri, Malta lost a son that made a name for her in both the local and international music scene.”
The minister said the cultural world has lost a man that had so much loved it and strived through his life to put it at par with the other, larger countries.
Mro Camilleri started composing music at a tender age, at 11 he wrote a band march, his first works were already being performed in London and the US by the time he was 23.
The first concert of strictly Mro Camilleri’s music took place at London’s Festival Hall in 1968 with his second piano concerto “Maqam” given its world premier at the 1970 Expo in Japan.
In 1972, the prestigious recording company DECCA recorded his Missa Mundi, a five-movement piece for the pipe organ which his publisher nicknamed “the organ’s Rite of Spring. This comparison with Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was elicited with the groundbreaking techniques used by Mro Camilleri in his work for the pipe organ, that were as innovative to the instrument as Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet for the genre.
His third piano concerto was premiered in St Petersburg (at the time Leningrad) in 1987 while his cello concerto was premiered at the Helsinki Festival.
Mro Camilleri, in collaboration with Joe Friggieri, wrote the first opera in Maltese, Il-Weghda, a pastoral opera whose storey is reminiscent of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and its music highly evocative of the Maltese countryside. It was last performed at the Manoel Theatre in 2007. It was intended to celebrate the maestro’s 75th birthday; however, he had suffered a stroke some months earlier.
The duo also wrote the first oratorio in Maltese, Pawlu ta’ Malta, which was premiered at St John’s Co-Cathedral in 1985 and was also broadcast on the Vatican radio. It was last performed last year at St Paul’s Bay parish church. The oratorio Dun Gorg!, also penned by Prof. Camilleri and Prof. Friggieri, celebrated the life of the Maltese saint was premiered in 2001.
Among his, oeuvres which exceed 300 pieces, one cannot but mention the Malta Suite (1946) and The Maltese Cross (1995). Half of his works are recorded in over 35 CDs and sold world wide with works used as examination pieces, as was his laconic Cantilena.
Besides writing music, Mro Camilleri also wrote about music, two of which are Mediterranean Music, written in collaboration with Rev Peter Serracino Inglott, published in 1988 by UNESCO and The Folk Music of Malta published by the University of Malta.
He was awarded Gieh ir-Repubblika and has set on the Malta Arts and Culture board and founded the Malta International Choir Festival.
Labour Party spokesmen Evarist Bartolo and Owen Bonnici paid tribute to one of the country’s greatest composers and said that the party holds his works as a unique Maltese and European patrimony.
Charles Camilleri, said the PL, will be remembered for the way he used Maltese folkloristic music and Maltese legends in his music and for Pawlu ta’ Malta and Cantilena.
Alternattiva Demokratika said it joined the Maltese population in mourning the death of Mro Camilleri.
Party chairman Arnold Cassola said, Prof. Camilleri was fundamental in the revival of Maltese traditional music. “Thanks to him,” he said, “our country rediscovered traditional Maltese music which had been hitherto ignored. Thanks to him, young Maltese musicians and researchers are today recouping our musical identity, which would otherwise have been lost. Thank you Maestro: your music will continue resounding in our hearts and spirit.”