Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Italian composer

• Born: c. 1525
• Birthplace: Palestrina, near Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)
• Died: February 2, 1594
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Palestrina, a leading, prolific composer of masses and motets for the Roman Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation, brought the musical art of Renaissance counterpoint to its full perfection.

Early Life

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (joh-VAHN-nee pyehr-lew-EE-jee dah pah-lay-STREE-nah) is known by the name Palestrina from the place of his birth. His early music training began as a choirboy at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in 1537. Most of his career was spent in Rome in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Between 1544 and 1551, he returned to the city of Palestrina as organist, singer, and music teacher at its cathedral. Here he married Lucrezia Gori and began a family with three sons.

Life’s Work

Palestrina must have immersed himself in the great Renaissance masses and motets of his predecessors and begun composing his own masses and motets while in Palestrina. Masses are musical settings of the liturgy of the Eucharist. Motets are sacred polyphonic compositions sung in Latin.

Palestrina’s compositions are in the Renaissance polyphonic or contrapuntal style. Usually unaccompanied by instruments, the four or more voices sing independent melodic lines simultaneously; compositions usually begin with voices entering one after another until all voices are singing together. Frequently, the voices merge into a homophonic (or chordal) texture, where they sing the same words note against note, creating chordal passages.

In 1551, Palestrina returned to Rome, where he was appointed, by Pope Julius III, maestro di cappella (choir master) of the Cappella Giulia (Julian Choir) at the Basilica of San Pietro (St. Peter’s) in the Vatican, where his duties included teaching singing to the choirboys. In 1554, he dedicated his first published book of masses to Pope Julius. The wood-cut illustration on its title page shows Palestrina kneeling and presenting the book to the pope.

Perhaps as a result of the dedication, on January 13, 1555, Palestrina was appointed a member of the Cappella Sistina (choir of the Sistine Chapel), even though he was married. Three months later, Julius died and was succeeded by Pope Marcellus II, who was pope for three weeks only. Palestrina’s most famous mass was later to be named after Marcellus. The next pope, Paul IV, was so strict about the Sistine Chapel’s rule on celibacy that Palestrina was dismissed in September. The following month, he became maestro di cappella of San Giovanni Laterano (Saint John Lateran) but left suddenly in 1560 because of a dispute over needed funds for the musicians. The following year, Palestrina returned to Santa Maria Maggiore for four years, and then took a post in 1566 at the new Seminario Romano (the Roman Seminary). During this appointment, he also directed concerts at Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este’s famous Villa d’Este at Tivoli until 1571.

By the 1560’s, Palestrina’s reputation had spread. In 1568, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II offered him a post in Vienna as imperial choirmaster, but Palestrina’s salary demands were too high, and the offer fell through. He also was corresponding with and writing masses for some of Italy’s great noblemen and published additional books of masses and motets. His second book of masses, published in 1567, included his famous Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass).

In 1571, Palestrina returned to his previous post as choirmaster at the Capella Giulia; he also had resumed a post at the Sistine Chapel. In these positions, he remained secure for the rest of life. The years, though, brought him some personal losses. The plague took his brother and two sons in 1572 and 1575; he was seriously ill in 1578; and two years later, his wife died. He began steps to join the priesthood, but in 1581, he married a wealthy widow of a fur merchant, which provided financial security. He combined productive years as a composer with activities as a businessman and investor.

As a church musician, he still had the duties of his fixed appointments, but he also received numerous commissions for other churches or confraternities (devotional societies). These commissions included music for Lenten devotions on Good Friday, special processions, and special holy days. The output of his compositions is staggering, even in an age of prolific composers. He wrote more than 100 Latin masses, more than 300 motets and 200 other sacred pieces, and more than 140 madrigals (sacred or secular polyphonic vocal compositions). In his compositions, Palestrina avoided some of the arid, complex canons and part writing of his predecessors and achieved smooth vocal lines with clear rhythms and melodies that matched the text effortlessly. His music contains less dissonance, more homophonic passages, and rich sonorities.

Even before his death in 1594, Palestrina was being praised as the greatest composer of his age. In 1575, he had been described as “the very first musician in the world.” Although his music circulated in manuscript copies during his lifetime, his music was widely known through his published music, which especially increased with the financial security of his marriage.

A great part of Palestrina’s reputation as “the savior of Church music” comes from the place of his work in the reforms of Catholic Church music in the wake of the Council of Trent. Much of this reputation has, unfortunately, been shown to be myth or exaggeration. The Council of Trent met intermittently between 1545 and 1563 and set off the Counter-Reformation. In response to challenges of the Protestant Reformation, the council enacted a series of sweeping self-reforms to purge the Catholic Church of those abuses that motivated the Protestant Reformation. The council clarified Church doctrine and practices and developed guidelines about proper Church music. They sought to purge it of anything that seemed lascivious, impure, or similar to secular music, or that appeared to be Church music performed merely for pleasure. Music for church services had to show clarity, simplicity, and an element or realism and emotion, and the words had to be intelligible to the listener. This meant that composers had to avoid long florid lines (where a syllable or word was stretched out over many notes) or different voices singing different words simultaneously.

It is unlikely, as a seventeenth century legend tells it, that Palestrina’s composing of Pope Marcellus Mass proved that Catholic Church music could avoid the excesses and abuses condemned by the Protestants and the Council of Trent, thereby saving polyphonic music from official prohibition. There is, though, a more likely possibility that the mass (though published in 1567) does have a connection with Pope Marcellus. On the third day of his papacy, Good Friday in 1555, the pope called together the singers of his private chapel to tell them that the music for the following Holy Week must be more in keeping with the solemn character of the occasion and that the words of the music must be understood clearly. The mass might then refer to this event.

The mass, however, was most likely written later (in about 1562, when it was copied into a choirbook at Santa Maria Maggiore). After the Council of Trent, two cardinals were to oversee musical reform, Carlo Borromeo and Vitellozzo Vitelli. Borromeo was archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Palestrina was serving, and Vitelli had a private musical establishment. It is recorded that on April 28, 1565, Vitelli assembled the singers of the papal chapel at his home to sing some masses as a test to see whether the words could be understood. Since Palestrina served under Borromeo, it is highly likely that some of Palestrina’s music, and perhaps the Pope Marcellus Mass, was sung on that occasion.

Significance

Palestrina’s music, with its pure textures, rich sonorities, full harmonies, smooth melodic lines, careful treatment of dissonance, and intelligibility of words, did meet the new Church demands for clear text declamation and music.

Palestrina took the Renaissance vocal polyphony of the previous generation of Franco-Flemish masters and refined, purified, and polished the style. With smooth vocal lines, full harmony, and careful setting of texts, he brought the vocal polyphony of the Renaissance Counter-Reformation to that state of perfection, which has remained a model of counterpoint ever since.

Bibliography

Coates, Henry. Palestrina. London: J. M. Dent, 1948. A classic and very readable account of Palestrina’s life and works.

Grout, Donald J., and Claude V. Palisca. A History of Western Music. 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Standard textbook account of Palestrina and his place in Western music history.

Palestrina. Pope Marcellus Mass. Edited by Lewis Lockwood. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Contains the score of Palestrina’s most famous mass, with contemporary documents and modern essays about the mass.

Reese, Gustave, et al., eds. The New Grove High Renaissance Masters: Josquin, Palestrina, Lassus, Byrd, Victoria. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Presents a biography of Palestrina and discussion of his works from an authoritative English-language music encyclopedia.

Roche, Jerome. Palestrina. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Concise discussion of Palestrina’s musical style, with numerous musical examples.

Sadie, Stanley, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 20 vols. London: Macmillan, 1980. 2d. ed. 29 vols. London: Macmillan, 2001. Excellent articles on Palestrina, mass, motet, and other related topics in an excellent English-language music encyclopedia.