Artist Biography by Timothy Dickey

It can be difficult to separate myth from reality in the life of Giovanni Pierluigi da
Palestrina. He was one of the most highly acclaimed musicians of the sixteenth
century, but was not the "Savior of Church Music." He did write a tremendous
number of musical works, refining the very musical style of his time. He did not
single-handedly transmit The Way to Write Spiritual Music, but apparently he was a
diligent and reasonably pious family man, hard-nosed in his business dealings and
savvy in manipulating professional contacts. He was not a priest, though he once
considered Holy Orders after losing a wife and two sons to the plague. The balance
and elegant moderation of his music may derive more from conservative melodic
and harmonic style than from divine mediation. But centuries after his
death,Palestrina's music is still actively serving devotional needs across the world,
and echoes of his first biographer's awe still cling to his name. Palestrina's life is
generally well documented: He spent all of his career around Rome, working in
churches with good archival records. His exact birth date remains unknown, but his
age at death is given in a famous eulogy. Whether he was born in Rome or in the
provincial town of Palestrina, "Gianetto" received his first musical training in Rome
as choir boy at Santa Maria Maggiore by 1537. In 1544, he accepted a post as
organist for the Cathedral of Palestrina. While there, he married Lucrezia Gori and
met the future Pope Julius III (whom Palestrina honored with the dedication of his
First Book of Masses). He returned to Rome in 1551, serving as Master of the Boys
for the Vatican's Capella Giulia and then, at Pope Julius' instigation, singing in the
Sistine Chapel. Fired by a later Pope because of his marital status, he quickly
became choirmaster for Saint John Lateran (a job previously held by Lasso). The
1560s were a time of great professional development for Palestrina: He served the
basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Seminario Romano and the wealthy Cardinal
Ippolito d'Este, published four more books of music, and turned down an offer to
become chapelmaster for the Holy Roman Emperor. His last professional
appointment was a long tenure (1571-1594) as master of the Capella Giulia in St.
Peter's. In addition, he performed freelance work for at least 12 other Roman
churches and institutions, managed his second wife's fur business, and invested in
Roman real estate. Palestrina marketed his immense compositional output in
nearly 30 published collections during his lifetime; many more of his roughly 700
works survive in manuscripts. He is best known for the 104 masses, though he

composed in every other liturgical genre of his day, as well as nearly 100
madrigals. The polished reserve of his style helped fuel the myth first published in
1607 that his Pope Marcellus Mass was written to save polyphony from banishment
in the church; the German theorist Fux enthroned his style for centuries to come in
his 1725 Gradus ad parnassum.

PALESTRINA, GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA (15261594), Italian composer. Giovanni

Palestrina was one of the most important composers of vocal music in sixteenth-century
Italy. His name was synonymous with the Roman polyphonic style of composition that
came to embody the musical goals and aesthetic ideals of the Counter-Reformation and the
Council of Trent. The Palestrina style (stile del Palestrina) is characterized by a perfect
sense of balance and equilibrium, a seamless marriage between intelligible text setting and
rich vocal sonorities. Stress and accent follow the natural rhythms of the words, melodic
motion and dissonance are carefully controlled, and his harmonic language is one of the
finest expressions of the socalled old church modal system that would soon be superseded
by modern tonality. As the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (16851750) serves as the
model for the study of tonal counterpoint, the rules of counterpoint that have been gleaned
from Palestrina's music have been used to teach modal counterpoint to the present day.
Although the name by which he is known comes from the town of his birth (Palestrina,
nearRome), he almost always signed letters with his given name "Giovanni Petraloysio."
His birthdate cannot be definitively documented, but since the eulogy written at the time of
his death in 1594 gives his age as sixty-eight, it can be safely ascribed to 1526.
Palestrina's first appointment was as organist of San Agapito in his hometown, on 28
October 1544. On 1 September 1551 he became magister cantorum (leader of the boy choir
school) of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's in Rome, and he assumed the position
of magister cappellae (leader of the chapel) in 1553. A year later he published the first book
of polyphonic masses ever printed in Rome.

Palestrina was hired by the Sistine Chapel on 13 January 1555, but shortly thereafter the
new pope, Paul IV, decided to reinstate the rule of celibacy for anyone working there, and
Palestrina and two other married singers were forced to leave. On 1 October 1555 we find
Palestrina asmaestro di cappella of San Giovanni in Laterano, but he resigned in 1560. He
then returned to the place of his early training, San Maria Maggiori, and subsequently
became director of the Seminario Romano.
During this period, the musical policies resulting from the Council of Trentin particular
the removal of "impure" or secular elements from the liturgy and the emphasis on
intelligibilityproved to be both a challenge and a stimulus to Palestrina and his
contemporaries. Palestrina's reputation as the savior of polyphonic church music is likely
somewhat exaggerated; nonetheless, at least some of his compositions (perhaps the
famous Missa Papae Marcelli or Pope Marcellus Mass ) were performed for Cardinal
Vitellozzi, one of the overseers of the reform, to see if the words could be easily
understood. His music was also frequently sung in the papal chapel.
Palestina's reputation was such that Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II invited him to act
as imperial choirmaster in Vienna in 1568, but he declined the offer. Palestrina returned to
the Capella Giulia as choirmaster in April 1571 and remained there until his death. This was
a time of personal upheaval for the composer; in addition to losing his two sons and a
brother to the plague, his wife Lucrezia died in 1580, although he married Virginia
Dormoli, the wealthy widow of a furrier, a year later. Nonetheless, the reign of Pope
Gregory XIII (15721585) was particularly rich for the production of sacred music. In
15771578, Palestrina became deeply involved in the revision of the plainsong repertoire
from the Roman Gradual and Antiphoner, a project that he never completed. Palestrina also
assumed an active role in his new wife's businesses, successfully investing in real estate and
even selling altar wine out of his family vineyard.
Palestrina was among the most prolific composers of his age. His more than 300 motets,
140 madrigals, 104 masses, 72 hymns, 68 offertories, and 35 Magnificats far surpassed the
output of his contemporaries. His followers included such masters as Toms Luis de
Victoria and Annibale Stabile, and his preeminence was well recognized during his lifetime.
An anthology of vesper psalms composed by six notable composers was dedicated to him
in 1592, complete with an effusive testimonial about his accomplishments. His

compositions were often reprinted during his lifetime, and he was the first composer of the
sixteenth century to appear in a complete nineteenth-century edition.
Palestrina remained in memory far more prominently and persistently than any of his
contemporaries. His compositions became a permanent part of the repertoire of the Sistine
Chapel, a most unusual practice at that time. His carefully wrought counterpoint became
identified with stile antico (old style)as opposed to the stile modern (modern style)that
came to be associated with notions of purity and spirituality. By the eighteenth century,
Palestrina's reputation was based less on a detailed familiarity with his music than his
mastery of counterpoint. The preface to Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum (1725),
the most important eighteenth-century treatise on Renaissance counterpoint, exemplifies the
awe and devotion that Palestrina's music inspired. Palestrina, the master of counterpoint, is
"the celebrated light of music . . . to whom I owe everything I know of this art, and whose
memory I shall never cease to cherish with feelings of deepest reverence" (Fux, The Steps
to Parnassus, p. 16).

Le opere
La produzione sacra comprende 102 messe (altre sono di dubbia o falsa attribuzione),
oltre 300 mottetti e numerose altre musiche liturgiche (inni, magnificat, lamentazioni,
litanie, offertori, stabat Mater). Assai pi esigua la produzione profana: 140 madrigali,
in parte di ispirazione religiosa. Momento centrale e culminante dell'opera di Palestrina
sono concordemente considerate le messe, in cui rara l'applicazione delle tecniche
pi tipiche della polifonia fiamminga, il cantus firmus e il canone; molto pi frequente
l'uso della parodia e della parafrasi. Padroneggiando con assoluta maestria il linguaggio
polifonico al culmine della fioritura cinquecentesca, Palestrina lo piega a una visione
costantemente rivolta a ideali di equilibrio, di euritmia, di trasparenza, dove i valori
espressivi sono accolti e proposti sempre con sorvegliata misura. Rispetto alla
tradizione franco-fiamminga la scrittura acquista una levigatezza e una trasparenza
che, mentre valorizzano le qualit e gli equilibri timbrico-fonici del complesso vocale cui
sono destinate, puntano a una semplificazione che favorisca la chiarezza e il rilievo
della declamazione del testo. In tal senso Palestrina si mosse soprattutto dal 1560,
facendosi interprete delle esigenze poste dai risultati del Concilio di Trento sul rapporto
musica-testo nelle composizioni sacre ( leggenda che la celebre Missa Papae
Marcelli avrebbe salvato presso i padri conciliari le sorti della musica sacra). Ma in
questo processo la qualit della scrittura polifonica non per nulla sminuita e si
stabilisce un sapiente equilibrio tra dimensione orizzontale e verticale del discorso. E
mentre in un altro grande contemporaneo di Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso (personalit

che a lui pu per molti aspetti essere contrapposta), la ricerca espressiva compiuta
con effetti inconsueti, in senso drammatico e soggettivo, il trattamento della
consonanza e della dissonanza in Palestrina (e nell'insieme i caratteri della melodia e la
condotta delle parti) si mantiene in un ambito di controllata misura, dove il gioco delle
tensioni calibrato con compiuto rigore. Per tali caratteristiche la concezione
palestriniana della musica sacra assurse a un carattere che i posteri ritennero
esemplare: col nome di stile antico lo stile palestriniano rimase modello per lo studio
del contrappunto e nell'Ottocento fu considerato dal movimento movimento
ceciliano come la musica sacra per eccellenza. Anche la produzione profana (i
madrigali) si attiene a una concezione in parte analoga, evitando, come quella sacra, le
ricerche pi inquiete e avanzate che altri compositori compivano nel secondo
Cinquecento.