Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

From 1544 to 1551, Palestrina was organist of the cathedral of St. Agapito, the principal church of his native
city. His rst published compositions, a book of Masses,
had made so favorable an impression with Pope Julius III
(previously the Bishop of Palestrina) that in 1551 he appointed Palestrina maestro di cappella or musical director of the Cappella Giulia, (Julian Chapel, in the sense
of choir), the choir of the chapter of canons at St. Peters Basilica. This book of Masses was the rst by a native composer, since in the Italian states of Palestrinas
day, most composers of sacred music were from the Low
Countries, France, Portugal,[3] or Spain. In fact the book
was modeled on one by Cristbal de Morales: the woodcut in the front is almost an exact copy of the one from
the book by the Spanish composer.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 2 February

1594)[1] was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred
music and the best-known 16th-century representative of
the Roman School of musical composition.[2] He has had
a lasting inuence on the development of church music,
and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Facade of St John Lateran, Rome, where Palestrina was musical
director
Renaissance polyphony.[2]

During the next decade, Palestrina held positions similar to his Julian Chapel appointment at other chapels and
churches in Rome, notably St John Lateran, (15551560,
a post previously held by Lassus) and St Mary Major
(15611566). In 1571 he returned to the Julian Chapel
and remained at St Peters for the rest of his life. The
decade of the 1570s was dicult for him personally: he
lost his brother, two of his sons, and his wife in three
separate outbreaks of the plague (1572, 1575, and 1580,
respectively). He seems to have considered becoming a
priest at this time, but instead he remarried, this time to a
wealthy widow. This nally gave him nancial independence (he was not well paid as choirmaster) and he was
able to compose prolically until his death.

Biography

Palestrina was born in the town of Palestrina, near Rome,

then part of the Papal States. Documents suggest that he
rst visited Rome in 1537, when he is listed as a chorister
at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica. He studied with
Robin Mallapert and Firmin Lebel. He spent most of his
career in the city.

Palestrina came of age as a musician under the inuence of the northern European style of polyphony, which
owed its dominance in Italy primarily to two inuential
Netherlandish composers, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin
des Prez, who had spent signicant portions of their ca- He died in Rome of pleurisy in 1594. As was usual,
reers there. Italy itself had yet to produce anyone of com- Palestrina was buried on the same day he died, in a plain
parable fame or skill in polyphony.[2]
con with a lead plate on which was inscribed Libera me
1

2 MUSIC AND REPUTATION

Domine. A ve-part psalm for three choirs was sung at have been quite conscious of the need for intelligible text;
the funeral.[4]
however, this was not to conform with any doctrine of
the Counter-Reformation,[8] because no such doctrine exists. His characteristic style remained consistent from the
1560s until the end of his life. Roches hypothesis that
2 Music and reputation
Palestrinas seemingly dispassionate approach to expressive or emotive texts could have resulted from his havSee also: List of compositions by Giovanni Pierluigi da ing to produce many to order, or from a deliberate deciPalestrina and Counterpoint
sion that any intensity of expression was unbecoming in
church music, has not been conrmed by historians.[2]
Palestrina left hundreds of compositions, including 105
masses, 68 oertories, at least 140 madrigals and more
than 300 motets. In addition, there are at least 72
hymns, 35 magnicats, 11 litanies, and four or ve sets
of lamentations.[2] The Gloria melody from a Palestrina
magnicat is widely used today in the resurrection hymn
tune, Victory (The Strife Is O'er).[5]
His attitude toward madrigals was somewhat enigmatic:
whereas in the preface to his collection of Canticum canticorum (Song of Songs) motets (1584) he renounced
the setting of profane texts, only two years later he
was back in print with Book II of his secular madrigals (some of these being among the nest compositions
in the medium).[2] He published just two collections of
madrigals with profane texts, one in 1555 and another in
1586.[2] The other two collections were spiritual madrigals, a genre beloved by the proponents of the CounterReformation.[2]

One of the hallmarks of Palestrinas music is that dissonances are typically relegated to the weak beats in
a measure.[9] This produced a smoother and more consonant type of polyphony which is now considered to
be denitive of late Renaissance music, given Palestrinas position as Europes leading composer (along with
Lassus) in the wake of Josquin (d. 1521). The Palestrina style now serves as a basis for college Renaissance
counterpoint classes, thanks in large part to the eorts of
the 18th-century composer and theorist Johann Joseph
Fux, who, in a book called Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps
to Parnassus, 1725), set about codifying Palestrinas techniques as a pedagogical tool for students of composition.
Fux applied the term "species counterpoint", which entails a series of steps whereby students work out progressively more elaborate combinations of voices while adhering to certain strict rules. Fux did make a number
of stylistic errors, however, which have been corrected
by later authors (notably Knud Jeppesen and Morris).
Palestrinas own music contains ample instances in which
his rules have been followed to the letter, as well as many
where they are freely broken.

Palestrinas masses show how his compositional style developed over time.[2] His Missa sine nomine seems to have
been particularly attractive to Johann Sebastian Bach,
who studied and performed it while writing the Mass in B
minor.[6] Most of Palestrinas masses appeared in thirteen According to Fux, Palestrina had established and folvolumes printed between 1554 and 1601, the last seven lowed these basic guidelines:
published after his death.[2][7]
The ow of music is dynamic, not rigid or static.
One of his most important works, the Missa Papae Mar Melody should contain few leaps between notes.
celli (Pope Marcellus Mass), has been historically asso(Jeppesen: The line is the starting point of Palestciated with erroneous information involving the Council
rinas style.)[9]
of Trent. According to this tale (which forms the basis of Hans Ptzner's opera Palestrina), it was composed
If a leap occurs, it must be small and immediately
in order to persuade the Council of Trent that a dracocountered by stepwise motion in the opposite direcnian ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred
tion.
music (as opposed, that is, to a more directly intelligi Dissonances are to be conned to passing notes and
ble homophonic treatment) was unnecessary.[8] However,
weak beats. If one falls on a strong beat, it is to be
more recent scholarship shows that this mass was in fact
immediately resolved.
composed before the cardinals convened to discuss the
ban (possibly as much as ten years before).[8] Historical data indicates that the Council of Trent, as an o- Much research on Palestrina was done in the 19th cencial body, actually never banned any church music and tury by Giuseppe Baini, who published a monograph in
failed to make any ruling or ocial statement on the sub- 1828 which made Palestrina famous again and reinforced
ject. These stories originated from the unocial points- the already existing legend that he was the Saviour of
of-view of some Council attendees who discussed their Church Music during the reforms of the Council of
ideas with those not privy to the Councils deliberations. Trent.[7] The 19th century proclivity for hero-worship is
Those opinions and rumors have, over centuries, been predominant in this monograph, however, and this has retransmuted into ctional accounts, put into print, and of- mained with the composer to some degree to the present
ten incorrectly taught as historical fact. While Palest- day. Hans Ptzners opera Palestrina shows this attitude
rinas compositional motivations are not known, he may at its peak.[7][8]

3
It is only recently, with the discovery and publication of
a great deal of hitherto unknown or forgotten music by
various Renaissance composers, that it has been possible to properly assess Palestrina in a historical context.[2]
Though Palestrina represents late Renaissance music
well, others such as Orlande de Lassus (a Franco-Flemish
composer who also spent some of his early career in
Italy) and William Byrd were arguably more versatile.[2]
20th and 21st century scholarship by and large retains the
view that Palestrina was a strong and rened composer
whose music represents a summit of technical perfection,
while emphasizing that some of his contemporaries possessed equally individual voices even within the connes
of smooth polyphony. As a result, composers like Lassus and Byrd as well as Tomas Luis de Victoria have increasingly come to enjoy comparable reputations.
Palestrina was famous in his day, and if anything his
reputation increased after his death. Conservative music of the Roman school continued to be written in his
style (which in the 17th century came to be known as the
prima pratica) by such students of his as Giovanni Maria
Nanino, Ruggiero Giovanelli, Arcangelo Crivelli, Teolo
Gargari, Francesco Soriano and Gregorio Allegri. It is
also thought that Salvatore Sacco may have been a student
of Palestrina, as well as Giovanni Dragoni, who later went
on to become choirmaster in the church of S. Giovanni in
Laterano.[4]
Palestrinas music continues to be regularly performed
and recorded, and to provide models for the study of
counterpoint. There are two comprehensive editions of
Palestrinas works: a 33-volume edition published by Breitkopf and Hrtel, in Leipzig Germany between 1862 and
1894 edited by Franz Xaver Haberl, and a 34-volume edition published in the mid twentieth century, by Fratelli
Scalera, in Rome, Italy edited by R. Casimiri and others.

[6] Christoph Wol, Der Stile Antico in der Musik Johann Sebastian Bachs: Studien zu Bachs Sptwerk (Wiesbaden:
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1968), pp. 224225.
[7] James Garrat, Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
[8] John Bokina, Opera and Politics (New York: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 129131.
[9] Knud Jeppesen, Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style
of the Sixteenth Century, trans. Glen Haydon (with a
new foreword by Alfred Mann; New York: Prentice-Hall,
1939, repr. New York: Dover, 1992).

4 Sources
5 External links
Free scores by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in
the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Free scores by Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina at the
International Music Score Library Project
Palestrina Foundation
recording of Palestrinas Sicut Cervus from Coro
Nostro, a mixed chamber choir based in Leicester,
UK. Accessed 2010-04-17
audio of songs Accessed 2010-04-17
Palestrina, princeps musicae Film by Georg Brintrup (2009) (IMDb)

"Palestrina, Giovanni Pietro Aloisio da". The

American Cyclopdia. 1879.

References

[1] A eulogy gives his age as 68, and on that basis Grove
gives a birthdate almost certainly between 3 February
1525 and 2 February 1526 (The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., s.v. Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da by Lewis Lockwood, Noel O'Regan,
and Jessie Ann Owens).
[2] Jerome Roche, Palestrina (Oxford Studies of Composers,
7; New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), ISBN 019-314117-5.
[3] Manuel Mendes, Antnio Carreira, Duarte Lobo, Filipe
de Magalhes, Fr. Manuel Cardoso, Joo Loureno and
Pero do Porto, among many others.
[4] Zoe Kendrick Pyne, Giovanni Pierluigi di Palestrina: His
Life and Times (London: Bodley Head, 1922).
[5] Brink, Emily; Polman, Bert, eds. (1998). The Psalter
Hymnal Handbook. Retrieved 26 January 2015.

Texts on Wikisource:

"Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina". University

Musical Encyclopedia. New York: University
Society. 1912.
"Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina". Catholic
Encyclopedia. 1913.

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