GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA, GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI. — Musician, born in Palestrina to Sante Pierluigi and Palma of uncertain lineage; the majority of scholars, with well-founded arguments, have now agreed to assign his birth to 1525. In his native town it is likely that he received his first musical instruction; he soon went to Rome to continue his studies. He was admitted to the choir of S. Maria Maggiore, of which the cardinal Andrea Della Valle, bishop of Palestrina, was archpriest, and Rubino Mallapert was maestro di cappella; in 1540 Firmin le Bel succeeded Mallapert, and it is believed that he was Palestrina’s teacher.
After his voice changed, he returned to Palestrina, where he took up the post of organist and singing master in the cathedral of S. Agapito. On 12 July 1547 he married Lucrezia Gori, by whom he had three sons—Rodolfo, Angelo (both of whom died before their father without issue), and Igino, some descendants of whom are still traceable in the second half of the 17th century. Little is known about this period, but it is reasonable to suppose that the musician became acquainted with Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte, who, upon being elected pope in 1550, soon summoned him to direct the Cappella Giulia. Palestrina took office on 10 September 1551; in the autumn of 1554 he published his first book of masses, dedicated to his patron, who the following year appointed him a papal singer. When Julius III died in March 1555, his successor, Marcellus II Cervini, maintained his favour, but died after only three weeks; in memory of this pope, Palestrina composed the Missa Papae Marcelli at an unspecified time. The new pope, Paul IV Carafa, who immediately began his rigorous reforming work, revoked the lifetime appointments of married lay papal singers, and thus, together with Leonardo Barré and Domenico Ferrabosco, Palestrina was dismissed. The musician was fortunate enough to be immediately appointed maestro di cappella at S. Giovanni in Laterano on 1 October of the same year, 1555, a post he held, amid various difficulties, until the summer of 1560. The following year he moved to S. Maria Maggiore, again as maestro di cappella.
In 1559 Pius IV Medici ascended the papal throne, during whose pontificate the Council of Trent concluded (1563), whose importance for decisions regarding liturgy and church music is well known. What has universally spread Palestrina’s renown is closely connected with the reforms proposed by that Council; this participation was shrouded in a legendary aura: for a long time it was said that the Pope Marcellus Mass had saved polyphonic music from the Council’s prohibition. That Mass, which in fact represents a new style of which Palestrina was deeply aware, was written according to requirements that the Council’s decrees were to reinforce and give new efficacy. In any case, it is certain that Cardinals Vitellozzo Vitelli and Carlo Borromeo, from January 1565 onwards, set about implementing the Council’s decrees, beginning precisely by reorganising the Papal Chapel. It is recorded that in the house of Cardinal Vitelli some masses were performed for the approval of their style, especially with regard to the intelligibility of the text, in accordance with the Council’s prescriptions. At that time, in 1564, Palestrina entered into relations with Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, who was particularly inclined to promote music as a composer for the famous chapel at the court of Ferrara; these relations continued in 1567 and 1569.
In 1566 Palestrina also became a teacher at the Roman Seminary, under the direction of the Jesuits; the choice was an explicit homage to the great renewal already achieved by the composer. But he resigned from both posts when, succeeding Giovanni Annunciata, on 1 April 1571 he assumed the office of maestro of the Cappella Giulia in St Peter’s. The artist’s fame, which he continued to pursue tirelessly in the creation of his works, was now immense; however, to improve his financial situation, the musician considered returning to S. Maria Maggiore, supported by the offerings of that chapter. Palestrina was granted his request through the direct intervention of Pope Pius V Ghislieri (1566–72), who held him in high esteem and entrusted him with the reform of the musical books of the liturgy, a task that absorbed much of the musician’s time, as is clearly shown by the slowed pace of his compositions during those years, until 1581.
In 1572 Palestrina lost his son Rodolfo; the following year his brother died, in 1575 his second son Angelo, and in 1580 his wife Lucrezia. Deeply shaken by so many misfortunes, he considered retiring into religious life. Having obtained permission to enter the ecclesiastical state by a brief of November 1580, in December he received an annual benefice of twenty-four ducats in the cathedral of Ferentino, but on 28 March 1581 he married the Roman Virginia Dormuli, a wealthy widow of a furrier. This marriage not only freed Palestrina from financial worries but allowed him to dedicate himself to the publication of his works, which were indeed resumed at a much faster pace. In 1583 Palestrina entered into negotiations with Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, who wished to appoint him maestro of his chapel in Mantua. He later regretted the failure of the negotiations due to his high demands when, in the new reorganisation of the Papal Chapel (1586), G. Antonio Merlo was preferred to him as director and he was appointed only composer of the Apostolic Chapel.
Palestrina continued assiduously in his musical creation until, after a brief illness, he died on the morning of 2 February 1594; he was buried in St Peter’s, but the tomb was destroyed during the works of 1606.
Palestrina’s music already seemed to his contemporaries an artistic peak of almost absolute perfection: contributing to this evaluation were several elements not only of an artistic nature but more broadly historical and cultural. However, a few decades after his death, musical taste underwent such a radical change that direct knowledge of his works rapidly declined.
A precise, conscious return to the clarity and simplicity of Palestrinian polyphony occurred through a movement ideally begun by a jurist from Heidelberg, A. F. J. Thibaut, who in 1825 published a small book, later reprinted several times, in which he celebrated the purity of polyphonic music, chiefly seen in Palestrina’s art. To Palestrina, symbol of technical-formal perfection as he had been perceived in previous centuries, there now succeeded the symbol of Palestrina as representative of the purest musical piety, depicted above all in a style that was ‘ancient’, if not indeed primitive. It is beyond doubt that 19th-century historical research continued to place Palestrina at the centre of ‘ancient’ music, now regarded as the highest point of a centuries-old, uninterrupted, progressive conquest of art and style.
To the Italian contribution, mainly represented by Cametti and Casimiri—who reconstructed through painstaking archival research the life and historical environment of the musician (Casimiri also initiated a new edition of Palestrina’s works)—was added the foreign contribution with critical research based on rigorous stylistic method by Jeppesen, alongside other studies.
In the centuries-long historical development of polyphony, no one before Palestrina had succeeded in creating a vocal style so pure, homogeneous, and essential. The most evident qualities of this remarkable vocality are first discernible in the movement of the melody woven on conjunct degrees and intervals of the most natural intonation. The unfolding of the composition is subtly regulated by a rhythmic flow that seems like an alternating breath of accents in the individual voices, and by an expressive sense of harmony in which triadic chords dominate with the fullness of their sonority. By a natural and infallible gift—not by deliberate calculation—the composer avoids everything that might disturb the harmonious arrangement of the details within the clear architectural power of the whole: thus the composition is freed from any contrast that might arise from tension caused by the failure to fuse melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic elements. The result is a limpid atmosphere, devoid of color modulation: a triumph in full light of a plastic and flexible musicality, capable at once of reproducing, as in a language of incomparable clarity, the religious rapture of the imagination.
Palestrina’s texts reveal an immense variety of accents and inflections only to those who would make them their own through diligent, attentive study. In formal analysis, one will be surprised, but even more admiring, of the way in which Palestrina draws from the contrapuntal tradition—primarily represented by Flemish musicians—the most common technical and structural elements. His masses employ procedures of composition on the *cantus firmus*, now rigid, now free; on the strictest canons; on liturgical or popular melodies; on themes borrowed with great freedom from his own or others’ motets and madrigals; on motifs invented by himself or on themes whose source cannot be identified. Yet every element is transfigured by the artist in a manner that appears all the more prodigious the more natural and intense is the musical expression that results. The same may be said of the versatility with which Palestrina, in his motets and numerous similar forms, delineates less expansive settings.