Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da

born с 1525, Palestrina, near Rome

died Feb. 2, 1594, Rome

Italian composer.

He sang in Rome as a choirboy, then worked as an organist in his nearby hometown of Palestrina. He was appointed director of the Vatican's Cappella Giulia by Pope Julius II in 1551, and he later worked at the other great Roman churches. He worked for the d'Este family in Tivoli for four years but returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained there the rest of his life. Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Palestrina to restore the plainchant (a traditional liturgical chant sung in unison) to a more authentic form. The task proved too great, and his editorial work gave way to a flow of creative music, including volumes of masses, motets, and madrigals. After his death, his superbly balanced and serene music was proclaimed as a model for composers in the Roman Catholic church. The modern study of counterpoint dates from the codification of his practice in the 18th century.

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▪ Italian composer

Introduction

born c. 1525, Palestrina, near Rome

died February 2, 1594, Rome

 Italian Renaissance composer of more than 105 masses and 250 motets, a master of contrapuntal composition.

      Palestrina lived during the period of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and was a primary representative of the 16th-century conservative approach to church music (liturgical music).

Life

      Palestrina was born in a small town where his ancestors are thought to have lived for generations, but as a child he was taken to nearby Rome. In 1537 he was one of the choirboys at the basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore, where he also studied music between 1537 and 1539. In 1544 Palestrina was engaged as organist and singer in the cathedral of his native town. His duties included playing the organ, helping with the choir, and teaching music. His pay was that of a canon and would have been received in money and kind. His prowess at the church there attracted the attention of the bishop, Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, who later became Pope Julius III.

      In 1547 Palestrina married Lucrezia Gori. Three sons were born to them: Rodolfo, Angelo, and Iginio. Only the last outlived his father. In 1551 Palestrina returned to Rome, where he assumed the first of his papal appointments, as musical director of the Julian Chapel choir, and thus was responsible for the music in St. Peter's (Saint Peter's Basilica). Before he was 30 he published his first book of masses (1554), dedicated to Julius III, and the following year he was promoted to singer in the Pontifical Choir. About this time he became composer to the papal chapel. Palestrina repaid the Pope's patronage by composing a mass in his honour. Yet he did not neglect the secular side of his art, for his first book of madrigals (secular and spiritual part-songs) appeared in 1555, unfortunately at a time when the lenient regime of Julius III had given way to the sterner discipline of Paul IV. A decree of the new pope forbade married men to serve in the papal choir, and Palestrina, together with two of his colleagues, received a small pension by way of compensation for their dismissal.

      For the next five years Palestrina directed the choir of St. John Lateran, but his efforts were continually thwarted by singers whose quality was almost as limited as their number, which was restricted because very little money was available for music. Nevertheless, he gained admission for his eldest son, Rodolfo, then about 13, as a chorister. Eventually he broke away from this uncongenial milieu. The chapter archives of St. John Lateran record that in July 1560 he and his son suddenly departed.

      A year passed before Palestrina found employment. In March 1561 he accepted a new post at Sta. Maria Maggiore. This post was more congenial to him and he remained at it for about seven years. At the invitation of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este he then took charge of the music at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, a popular summer resort near Rome. He was in the Cardinal's service for four years, at which time he also worked as music master for a newly formed Seminarium Romanum (Roman Seminary), where his sons Rodolfo and Angelo became students.

      Palestrina received an offer in 1568 to become musical director at the court of the emperor Maximilian II in Vienna. He refused the position because of the low salary and a disinclination to leave Rome. Palestrina's terms were also too high when he was invited to the court at Mantua in 1583. The composer and the duke of Mantua, Guglielmo Gonzaga, an amateur musician of some pretensions, did become friends, however, and Palestrina was commissioned to write special compositions for the ducal chapel of Sta. Barbara.

      With the death in 1571 of the composer Giovanni Animuccia, musical director at the Vatican since 1555, there was a chance for Palestrina to return to his old post as musical director of the Julian choir. The chapter, eager to have him back, increased the salary, and he forthwith returned to St. Peter's. When his growing fame as a composer prompted Sta. Maria Maggiore to rehire him, St. Peter's again raised his salary. In acknowledgment of his position as the most celebrated Roman musician, he was given in 1578 the title of master of music at the Vatican Basilica.

      The series of epidemics that swept through central Italy in the late 1570s carried off his wife and his two elder sons, both of whom showed great musical promise. He himself fell seriously ill. Grieving over his wife's death, he announced his intention of becoming a priest, to the delight of the pope, Gregory XIII. After having been made a canon, however, he renounced his vows in order to marry (1581) Virginia Dormoli, widow of a wealthy merchant. Although he spent considerable time administering her fortune, he retained his position at St. Peter's and continued to compose.

      Although an attempt in 1585 to make Palestrina musical director of the Pontifical Choir proved abortive, he was considered by all the popes under whom he served as the official composer for the choir, and it is recorded that he marched at the head of the pontifical singers on the occasion of erecting the great Egyptian obelisk in the piazza of St. Peter's.

      Pope Gregory XIII had commissioned Palestrina and Annibale Zoilo to restore the plainchant, or plainsong (a traditional liturgical chant sung in unison), then in use to a more authentic form. The task proved too great, and Palestrina's editorial work gave way to a flow of creative music. Much of it was published during the last 12 years of his life, including volumes of motets (choral compositions based on sacred texts), masses, and madrigals. He also helped to found an association of professional musicians called the Vertuosa Compagnia dei Musici.

      Two years before Palestrina's death, the new pope, Clement VIII, increased his pension, and the same year, in a singular mark of respect and admiration, fellow composers paid their elderly senior the compliment of writing 16 settings of the Vesper Psalms to his praise. In return, Palestrina sent them a motet on the appropriate text: Vos amici mei estis “You are my friends, if you do what I teach, said the Lord.”

Music

      Palestrina's musical output, though vast, maintained a remarkably high standard in both sacred and secular works. His 105 masses (mass) embrace many different styles, and the number of voices used ranges from four to eight. The time-honoured technique of using a cantus firmus (preexistent melody used in one voice part) as the tenor is found in such masses as Ecce sacerdos magnus; L'Homme armé; Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la; Ave Maria; Tu es Petrus; and Veni Creator Spiritus. These titles refer to the source of the particular cantus firmus. Palestrina's mastery of contrapuntal (counterpoint) ingenuity may be appreciated to the fullest extent in some of his canonic masses (in which one or more voice parts are derived from another voice part). His ability to ornament and decorate a solemn plainchant, making it an integral part of the texture and sometimes almost indistinguishable from the other, freely composed parts, is evident from some of his masses based on hymn melodies.

      By far the greatest number of masses employ what has come to be known as the parody technique, by which a composer made use either of his own music or that of others as a starting point for the new composition. Many other masses derive from musical ideas by Palestrina's predecessors or contemporaries. Yet another type of mass is demonstrated by the nine works written for Mantua; in these the Gloria and Credo sections are so arranged that plainsong and polyphony alternate throughout. Finally, there is a small but important group of masses that are in free style, the musical material being entirely original. Perhaps the best known example is the Missa brevis for four voices.

      Palestrina's motets (motet), of which more than 250 are extant, display almost as much variety of form and type as do his masses. Most of them are in some clearly defined form, occasionally reflecting the shape of the liturgical text, though comparatively few are based on plainsong. Many of them paraphrase the chant, however, with an artistry that is every bit as successful as that of the masses. On the same level as the canonic masses are such motets as Cum ortus fuerit and Accepit Jesus calicem, the latter apparently a favourite of the composer's—an assumption justified because he is depicted holding a copy of it in a portrait now in the Vatican.

      His 29 motets based on texts from the Song of Solomon afford numerous examples of “madrigalisms”: the use of suggestive musical phrases evoking picturesque features, apparent either to the ear or to the eye, sometimes to both. In the offertories, Palestrina completely abandons the old cantus firmus technique and writes music in free style, whereas in the hymns he paraphrases the traditional melody, usually in the highest voice. In the Lamentations of Jeremiah he brings effective contrast to bear on the sections with Hebrew and Latin text, the former being melismatic (floridly vocalized) in style and the latter simpler and more solemn. His Magnificats (Magnificat) are mainly in four sets of eight, each set comprising a Magnificat on one of the eight “tones”: alternatim structure is used here as in the Mantua masses.

      Although Palestrina's madrigals are generally considered of less interest than his sacred music, they show as keen a sense for pictorial and pastoral elements as one finds in any of his contemporaries. Over and above this, he is to be remembered for his early exploitation of the narrative sonnet in madrigal form, notably in Vestiva i colli, which was frequently reprinted and imitated. His settings of Petrarch's poems also are of an exceptionally high order.

      At the end of the 19th century the view that Palestrina represented the loftiest peak of Italian polyphony was in some ways detrimental to his reputation, for it cast his music into rigid preconceptions. Even more unfortunate was the insistence on “counterpoint in the style of Palestrina” in the examination requirements of academies and universities, for such requirements stultified a style that Palestrina had used with great flexibility. Generations of fledgling composers were taught to revere the music of Palestrina as a symbol of all that was pure in ecclesiastical counterpoint. Indeed, the greater part of his musical output, and in particular his masses (where his unerring sense of tonal architecture may be heard at its best), still remains worthy of admiration.

      Palestrina, unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, did not have to be rediscovered in the 19th century, though the dissemination of his achievement was helped by the interest of Romantic composers. There always was a Palestrinian tradition, mainly because his music supplied the need for a well-regulated formal system to be used by the embryonic composer in presenting himself to the musical world. Strict counterpoint was associated with a technique acquired in this way. In his day, Palestrina was a senior figure who, utilizing the dominant style of his time, created works notable for their spiritual qualities and technical mastery.

Denis William Stevens

Additional Reading

Henry Coates, Palestrina (1938, reprinted 1979), is the standard English-language study of the life and works of Palestrina and contains a complete list of works. Jerome Roche, Palestrina (1971), is a brief, up-to-date biography useful for new details about Palestrina's life. Zoë Kendrick Pyne, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1922, reprinted 1970), in English; and Ethel King, Palestrina, the Prince of Music (1965), are also useful. Knud Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance, 2nd ed. (1946, reissued 1970), is a specialized but thoroughgoing study of the technical aspects of the composer's contrapuntal style.

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