GIOVAN BATTISTA MARTINI, Liturgische Werke, Liturgical Works, Compositioni liturgiche, for Organ. Doblinger 1301, 1302, 1303 (3 vols.) “Padre Martini” (1706–84) was a veritable one-man institution, known to every cosmopolitan musician of his day through his creative, theoretical, and historical works, and his celebrated library of thousands of volumes, though partly dispersed to Vienna, still forms the core of the holdings of the Civico Museo Bibliographico de Bologna (CMBB). Although his organ works did not circulate as widely, he was nevertheless a dedicated organist, and some half-dozen organ manuscripts, most in his own hand, are preserved in the CMBB, but have never before been published in full. The first volume is based upon a manuscript entitled Versetti e Toccati per Organo. It contains a “Missa solemnis” and a “Messa da Morti,” organ masses whose significance is both stylistic (in the peculiar straddling of galant elegance on the one hand and strict ecclesial style on the other) and historic (in the fact that these works manifest a hitherto unknown extension of the Italian liturgical organ tradition rooted in Cavassoni, Gabrieli, Merulo, and Frescobaldi). Although their liturgical functionality typically calls for alternation with chant, the settings also include such non-chant-bound genres as the Offertorio, Elevazione, Post Communio, and the concluding Toccata, all of which are substantial, musically satisfying pieces in their own right. The second and third volumes contain non-chant-bound genres almost exclusively––including the Toccata per l’Offertorio and the Benedizione (a form in which an extended slow movement segues into a brilliant concluding toccata, and for which Martini sometimes writes two or three alternative toccatas in succession). The deployment of the pedals is elemental, yet obbligato, and the player will find ample opportunity for inventive manual differentiations as well. An objection can be taken to the mannered overuse of the 4–3 suspension in final cadences, but these are readily remediable. The larger-scaled works in all three volumes are full of brio in the fast movements, sentiment in the slow movements, brilliance in the major-key movements, and pathos in the minor-key movements. Their impeccable syntax and distinctive musical personality should earn them a prized and permanent place in the repertoire.