Celebrating 500 Years of Palestrina
This year marks the 500th birthday of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Although we do not know his exact date of birth, we can place it somewhere between February 3, 1525, and February 2, 1526. We know this because a eulogy by a younger colleague stated Palestrina was 68 years old when he died on February 2, 1594. Thus, February 2025 marks the beginning of a year of celebrations in honor of the best-known composer of the Italian Renaissance.
Palestrina is so called because he was likely born in the town of Palestrina in the Sabine Hills north of Rome. However, he spent most of his career in Rome, where he served as maestro di cappella at some of the oldest and most important churches in the city, including a short stint at the Sistine Chapel. (The married composer was dismissed in 1555 when the reigning Pope decreed that all papal musicians had to be celibate clerics, though he continued to compose works for performance there.) Palestrina’s compositional output was substantial, comprising 104 masses, over 300 motets, 68 offertories, 72 hymns, 35 Magnificat settings, 11 Litanies, four or five sets of Lamentations, and over 140 secular madrigals.
Palestrina is known for deftly assimilating the rich polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school and the new expectations for sacred music set forth by the Catholic church during the Counter-Reformation, which emphasized greater clarity of text over dense polyphony. Working in the heart of the Catholic church after the Council of Trent concluded in 1563, Palestrina was in an advantageous position to revitalize Roman sacred music.
Because of his success, aided by being at the right place at the right time, a myth arose that Palestrina “saved” Catholic church music. This legend caused Palestrina’s music and reputation to endure over the centuries, while his predecessors and contemporaries largely fell into oblivion. However, the image of Palestrina that proliferated was not necessarily the most representative of reality. Musicologist Jane A. Bernstein explains, “His reputation rests ironically not on widespread knowledge of his music, the vast bulk of which still remains unheard, but primarily on two deeply rooted beliefs that he rescued polyphony from being banned by the Catholic church and that his music embodied the ideal for the stile antico [old style].”
The mythologizing of Palestrina can be traced to a 1607 treatise by Agostino Agazzari, which calls Palestrina the “hero of church polyphony.” Agazzari claims that Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass single-handedly convinced church authorities that polyphonic music could still maintain textual clarity and appropriate reverence. This grossly exaggerates the situation, but the myth stuck and became further embellished over time. In addition, theorists upheld a small subset of Palestrina’s music as the ideal example of 16th-century strict diatonic counterpoint, which has been circulated as a pedagogical method for teaching generations of composers up to the present day.
As a consequence, musicologist Noel O’Regan writes, “For most of the past 400 years Palestrina has enjoyed the status of a musical icon, being regarded more as a great religious composer, working only for God and the church, than as a mortal musician having to make his living in the market-place of Rome’s musical world.” In reality, Palestrina was a pragmatic man. The society in which he lived provided few safety nets, and he was an outsider among the Roman musical élite, which favored foreign composers and clerics. Plus, he was at the mercy of changing tastes depending on who the Pope was. Therefore, to make ends meet, he sold wine from his family vineyard and balanced composing with helping manage his second wife’s fur business later in life.
A broader examination of Palestrina’s compositional output and historical context can reveal a more balanced understanding of his role in music history and peel back the myth that has distorted our view of him. While he has long been pinned as a musical conservative who perfected one style, the diversity within his compositions demonstrates he was more adventurous than our historically narrow view of his output has led us to believe.
Palestrina’s first book of four-voice motets (published in 1563) contains prime examples of the style for which he became renowned. Melodic motion is well-balanced in all voice parts, creating a pure and consistent texture. Motivic segments that are largely similar to one another gradually unfold to create an organically unified whole. His next three books of motets (published between 1567 and 1575) mark a change of approach. Written for between five and eight voices, they are more richly sonorous and contain more diverse textures in response to the text. These include numerous polychoral motets, where two or more choirs operate largely independently of one another. Most begin with imitative opening sections for individual choirs, followed by antiphonal dialogue between the choirs and increased homophony. Largely neglected compared to his most famous works, these polychoral motets are more innovative and look to coming trends of the 17th century.
Also underperformed are Palestrina’s secular madrigals. Appropriately for the genre, they are largely lighter in texture, more rhythmically flexible, and have sharper contrasts than his sacred motets. However, they demonstrate the same clarity of texture that characterizes Palestrina’s music. Peter Phillips, director of the illustrious vocal ensemble the Tallis Scholars, writes, “The conditioning which has consigned Palestrina’s madrigals to the scrap-heap, and which has taught us that his polyphony was perfect while being without that human spark possessed by riskier composers such as Lassus, has ignored the pieces which show him to have been as lively and up-to-date as any of his contemporaries.”
Understandably given his role as a church musician, liturgical mass settings comprise a large proportion of his output. These run the stylistic gamut as well. Many are “parody” or “imitation” masses, which are based on a preexisting piece. Most of Palestrina’s imitation masses are based on works by other composers, though some are based on his own motets. His choice of works by largely French, Flemish, and Spanish composers reveals his absorption of these traditions into his style. In addition to highly contrapuntal masses, he wrote largely homophonic but texturally varied masses (such as the famous Pope Marcellus Mass) and antiphonal polychoral masses.
Perhaps this quincentenary will lead to further demystification of Palestrina and a greater appreciation of the entire scope of his output. Regardless, it gives us a chance to revisit this seminal figure’s soul-stirring music.
