Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Source: Wikipedia

St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City

Symbolic Center of the Counter-Reformation

Palestrina's environment most of his career

Egyptian obelisk added in 1585

Source: Here I Am Lord

Born sometime between February 1525 and February of 1526 in Palestrina, Italy, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was a pinnacle figure in Italian sacred music during the high to latter Renaissance. Though his proper name is Pierluigi he comes down to us by the name of his birthplace. Palestrina would have been heavily influenced by the Franco-Flemish school during studies as a young musician, but by the end of his career the conservative Roman school would come to exist in its own right. Among the more prolific of Renaissance composers, Palestrina left behind at least 105 masses, 68 offertories (Eucharistic), 300 motets, 72 hymns, 35 Magnificats, 11 litanies, several lamentations and twenty madrigals. Hymns included antiphons (lyrics borrowed from 'Psalms') and canticles (lyrics borrowed from the Bible excepting, in Catholicism, 'Psalms'). Palestrina wrote a good number of profane (secular) madrigals as well. As a Catholic guided by the Council of Trent during the Counter-Reformation his were conservative polyphonies avoiding excessive display of counterpoint. Due piety in music was also emphatic in Protestant composition of the period, simplicity absent of clever tricks held an ideal oft to a degree of austerity. There was as well a reconnoitering in humanist attention to the classical Greeks, such as monody versus polyphony, which made the latter musical Renaissance a sober period compared to its beginnings in the Burgundian school a hundred or so years prior. The baroque period just ahead developed much of an ascetic clearing of the slate all around upon a disciplined return to rigid basics, erasing frills and lace from the chalkboard to unveil pure or true music.

Earliest records find Palestina in Rome singing in the choir at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in 1537. He was an organist from 1544 to 1551 at the cathedral of St. Agapito in Palestrina where he'd begun composing. Pope Julius III appointed him maestro di cappella at the Julian Chapel of St. Peter's Basilica in 1551. Three years later Palestrina dedicated his first volume of compositions to Julius, his 'Missarum liber primus' published in Rome by Valerio and Aloysio Dorico in 1554, that containing five masses: No.1 'Missa Ecce sacerdos magnus', No.2 'Missa O regem coeli', No.3 'Missa Virtute magna', No.4 'Missa Gabriel archangelus' and No.5 'Missa Ad coenam agni providi'. No.6 'Missa Sine nomine' and No.7 'Missa pro defunctis' were appended in the 1591 edition. Palestrina completed fifteen books of masses to as late as 1590. From 1555 to 1571 Palestrina held positions at other churches in Rome including St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore. He also served at the Sistine Chapel. In 1571 he succeeded Giovonni Animuccia as maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia (Julian Chapel), remaining in the vicinity of St. Peter's for above another twenty years.

As Palestrina was a largely a sacred composer, I begin and end this presentation with missea. As dates of composition can be obscure, stacking is oriented by publishing dates. Among Palestrina's earlier masses was 'Missa Papae Marcelli' estimated to be of about 1562. Though written in honor of Marcellus II, who was Pope for three weeks in 1555, it is dedicated to Philip II of Spain. 'Papae Marcelli' was copied into several manuscript compilations (MSS): the E-Bbc MS 859 of Barcelona originally collected between 1550 and 1600, and the V-CVbav MS Capp. Sist. 22 transcribed from 1563-68. Though DIAMM lends the V-CVbav MS S. Maria Maggiore 29 transcription dates of circa 1577-78, Wikipedia mentions 'Papae Marcelli' copied into that as early as 1562. The work saw the printing press in 1567 as No.7 of 'Missarum liber secundus'. Though 'Papae Marcelli' wasn't based on any prior sacred work, it was deemed by the Council of Trent, which held polyphony to be impious in comparison to plainchant, to be a model of polyphonic composition. This work thus set the pace for Church music to follow and is widely regarded to be Palestrina's foremost masterpiece.