APS Bank from Malta and Gega New publishing house continue with their project to record and feature leading Maltese composers and works. The albums released up to now include eight programs with Maltese liturgical music from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
This release concentrates again on 19th century music, when the composers in Malta created music which conformed to the church canons. Giuseppe Spiteri Fremond (a monk, composer and teacher) was among the most noted and renowned composers. When he was 18 he joined the Augustinian Order. In Italy, he was for a time organist of the Augustinian Church in Genoa and on his return to Malta, he served in his order’s convent in Valetta, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was appointed maestro di cappella of his order's conventual church in the town. In 1846, his Order instituted a free school for boys in its Valetta convent, where Fremond began to teach music and singing. He soon formed a boys’ choir and composed numerous works for it. His works include 139 pieces, most of them in the liturgical genre. In 1873, he was elected member of the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna for his merits as a composer.
He composed the Messa Grande during various periods of his creative life, and the Sinfonia chosen for the present recording was written in 1833. His approach to composing provides an example of the compositional method of 19th-century Maltese maestro di capella. The consuetude during the 19th century was to precede a Messa Grande by a sinfonia. The Sinfonia chosen for the present recording was written by Giuseppe Spiteri Fremond in 1833.