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Introduction & Quick Facts

Life
Music
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

ITALIAN COMPOSER
WRITTEN BY: Denis William Stevens

See Article History
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, (born c. 1525,

Palestrina, near Rome [Italy]—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 Roman

Catholic Counter-Reformation and was a primary
representative of the 16th-century conservative
approach to church music. Giovanni Pierluigi da
Palestrina
Life ITALIAN COMPOSER
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 Santa 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, View All Media
and teaching music. His pay was that of a canon

and would have been received in money and kind. BORN
His prowess at the church there attracted the c. 1525

Praeneste, Italy
attention of the bishop, Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del
Monte, who later became Pope Julius III. DIED
February 2, 1594
Rome, Italy
In 1547 Palestrina married Lucrezia Gori. Three sons
were born to them: Rodolfo, Angelo, and Iginio.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Pierluigi-da-Palestrina Page 1 of 10
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina | Biography & Facts | Britannica.com 9/24/18, 11)36 AM
Only the last outlived his father. In 1551 Palestrina NOTABLE WORKS
returned to Rome, where he assumed the first of “Pope Marcellus Mass”

“Vestiva i colli”
his papal appointments, as musical director of the
“L’Homme armé”
Julian Chapel choir, and thus was responsible for “Ave Maria”
the music in St. Peter’s. Before he was 30 he “Accepit Jesus calicem”

“Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la”
published his first book of masses (1554), “Cum ortus fuerit”
dedicated to Julius III, and the following year he “Veni Creator Spiritus”
“Tu es Petrus”
was promoted to singer in the Pontifical Choir.
“Ecce sacerdos magnus”
About this time he became composer to the papal
chapel. Palestrina repaid the pope’s patronage by MOVEMENT / STYLE
composing a mass in his honour. Yet he did not Renaissance

Renaissance art
neglect the secular side of his art, for his first book polyphony
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 VIEW BIOGRAPHIES RELATED TO
sterner discipline of Paul IV. A decree of the new

CATEGORIES
pope forbade married men to serve in the papal
musical composition
choir, and Palestrina, together with two of his
DATES
colleagues, received a small pension by way of
February 2
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 Santa Maria Maggiore. This post was more
congenial to him and he remained at it for about RELATED BIOGRAPHIES
seven years. At the invitation of Cardinal Ippolito

· Josquin des Prez
d’Este he then took charge of the music at the Villa · Tomás Luis de Victoria
d’Este in Tivoli, a popular summer resort near · Thomas Tallis
Rome. He was in the cardinal’s service for four · Orlando di Lasso
years, at which time he also worked as music · Claudio Monteverdi
master for a newly formed Seminarium Romanum · Andrea Gabrieli
(Roman Seminary), where his sons Rodolfo and · Johann Sebastian Bach
· Nicolas Gombert
Angelo became students.
· William Byrd
Palestrina received an offer in 1568 to become · Cristóbal de Morales
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 FEATURED ON BRITANNICA
Palestrina was commissioned to write special
compositions for the ducal chapel of Santa QUIZ / ANIMALS
Hyenas and Aardwolves: Fact
Barbara. or Fiction?
With the death in 1571 of the composer Giovanni

SPOTLIGHT / SCIENCE
Animuccia, musical director at the Vatican since Smothered in Drought
1555, there was a chance for Palestrina to return to
his old post as musical director of the Julian choir. COMPANION / SCIENCE
The chapter, eager to have him back, increased the What Is the Difference
Between Primary and
salary, and he forthwith returned to St. Peter’s. Secondary Ecological
Succession?
When his growing fame as a composer prompted
Santa Maria Maggiore to rehire him, St. Peter’s LIST / GEOGRAPHY
again raised his salary. In acknowledgment of his San Francisco: 9 Claims to

Fame
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
BRITANNICA LISTS & QUIZZES
intention of becoming a priest, to the delight of
the pope, Gregory XIII. After having been made a SPORTS & RECREATION
QUIZ
canon, however, he renounced his vows in order to
Australian Open
marry (1581) Virginia Dormoli, widow of a wealthy
merchant. Although he spent considerable time ARTS & CULTURE LIST
administering her fortune, he retained his position 10 Famous Artworks

by Leonardo da Vinci
at St. Peter’s and continued to compose.
HISTORY QUIZ
Although an attempt in 1585 to make Palestrina
WWII: Allies, Axis, or
musical director of the Pontifical Choir proved Associates?
abortive, he was considered by all the popes under HISTORY LIST
whom he served as the official composer for the The 6 Nations of the
Iroquois Confederacy
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
Ad
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
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based on sacred texts), masses, and madrigals. He
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also helped to found an association of professional Number INSTALL
musicians called the Vertuosa Compagnia dei
Musici.
TRENDING TOPICS
Two years before Palestrina’s death, the new pope,

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them a motet on the appropriate text: Vos amici
· Wikipedia
mei estis “You are my friends, if you do what I
· Joseph Haydn
teach, said the Lord.”
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Music
Palestrina’s musical output, though vast,
maintained a remarkably high standard in both
sacred and secular works. His 105 masses 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
ingenuity may be appreciated to the fullest extent CONNECT WITH BRITANNICA
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 ARE GOOD TO GO.
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, 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
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
LEARN MORE in these related Britannica

articles:
counterpoint: The Renaissance
…masters were Josquin des Prez, Giovanni Pierluigi da

Palestrina, and Orlando di Lasso. The northern composers in
particular showed a penchant for complex melodic
relationships. Okeghem’s Missa prolationum (Prolation Mass),
for example, involves simultaneous canons in two pairs of
voices. (In a canon, one melody is derived from another. It…
Claudio Monteverdi: The Gonzaga

court
Josquin des Prez and Giovanni

Palestrina. Thus, there were two
“practices,” as he called them; and
that view, which became
immensely influential, was to prove
the basis of the preservation of an
old style in certain types of church
music, as opposed to a modern
style in opera and…
Charles Gounod
…attention to the works of Giovanni

da Palestrina, an Italian
Renaissance composer. From
Rome he proceeded to Vienna,
where a mass and requiem,
composed in Italy, were performed
in 1842 and 1843. Returning to Paris,
he passed through Prague,

Dresden, and Berlin and met Felix Mendelssohn in Leipzig.…
Pope Marcellus Mass
…Missa Papae Marcelli, mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da

Palestrina, the best known of his more than 100 masses.
Published in 1567, the work is renowned for its intricate
interplay of vocal lines and has been studied for centuries as a
prime example of Renaissance polyphonic choral music.…
Tomás Luis de Victoria
…Spanish composer who ranks with Palestrina and Orlando di

Lasso among the greatest composers of the 16th century.…
ADDITIONAL MEDIA
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Palestrina
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Anerio
(In Felice Anerio)
Gounod
(In Charles Gounod)
Monteverdi
(In Claudio Monteverdi: The Gonzaga court)
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(In Tomás Luis de Victoria)
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Introduction & Quick Facts

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

WRITTEN BY: Denis William Stevens

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, (born c. 1525,

Palestrina lived during the period of the Roman

Palestrina was born in a small town where his

and teaching music. His pay was that of a canon

His prowess at the church there attracted the c. 1525

returned to Rome, where he assumed the first of “Pope Marcellus Mass”

the music in St. Peter’s. Before he was 30 he “Accepit Jesus calicem”

composing a mass in his honour. Yet he did not Renaissance

sterner discipline of Paul IV. A decree of the new

For the next five years Palestrina directed the choir

A year passed before Palestrina found

seven years. At the invitation of Cardinal Ippolito

master for a newly formed Seminarium Romanum · Andrea Gabrieli

musical director at the court of the emperor

With the death in 1571 of the composer Giovanni

again raised his salary. In acknowledgment of his San Francisco: 9 Claims to

The series of epidemics that swept through central

administering her fortune, he retained his position 10 Famous Artworks

abortive, he was considered by all the popes under HISTORY LIST

Pope Gregory XIII had commissioned Palestrina

Two years before Palestrina’s death, the new pope,

ingenuity may be appreciated to the fullest extent CONNECT WITH BRITANNICA

in some of his canonic masses (in which one or

By far the greatest number of masses employ ARE GOOD TO GO.

what has come to be known as the parody

Palestrina’s motets, of which more than 250 are

His 29 motets based on texts from the Song of

phrases evoking picturesque features, apparent

Although Palestrina’s madrigals are generally

At the end of the 19th century the view that

Palestrina, unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, did not

Denis William Stevens

LEARN MORE in these related Britannica

counterpoint: The Renaissance

…masters were Josquin des Prez, Giovanni Pierluigi da

Claudio Monteverdi: The Gonzaga

Josquin des Prez and Giovanni

…attention to the works of Giovanni

he passed through Prague,

Pope Marcellus Mass

…Missa Papae Marcelli, mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da

Tomás Luis de Victoria

…Spanish composer who ranks with Palestrina and Orlando di

MORE ABOUT Giovanni Pierluigi da

7 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES

golden age of counterpoint

compositions for mass

“Pope Marcellus Mass”

KEEP EXPLORING BRITANNICA

READ THIS ARTICLE

READ THIS ARTICLE

STAY CONNECTED ! " # $ % *

©2018 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

©2018 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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