Palestrina
NAME: Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Renaissance liturgical composer of the first rank.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: Johannus Petrus Aloysius Praenestinus
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: ?Feb. 3, 1525 - February 2, 1526, in Palestrina, Italy
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: February 2, 1594 in Rome. Aged 68.
DISCIPLINE: Music.
FIELD: Composer
LANGUAGE: Italian, Latin.
PARENTS: Sante Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Palma Veccia
SIBLINGS: brothers: Bernardo, Silla, one other
SPOUSE: Lucrezia Gori, then Virginia Dormoli.
CHILDREN: Rudolfo, Angelo, Iginio.
EDUCATION: choir-school at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Robin Mallapert and Firmin Le Bel, directors
MAJOR WORK: 400 masses, motets, and madrigals for unaccompanied choir, mostly sacred, including the masses Missa Papae Marcelli, Assumpta est Maria, and Te Deum laudamus, motets Sicut cervus and Super flumina Babylon, and the Improperia (still used each Holy Week in the Vatican)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Giovanni Luigi da Palestrina became known by the name of his home town, Palestrina (ancient Praeneste), about twenty miles from Rome. We can assume that at the local cathedral young Giovanni heard much of the French and Flemish schools of early polyphonic music: Josquin des Pres, Pierre de la Rue, Jean de Okeghem, and Guillaume Dufay.
From the ages of about 9 to 15, Giovanni was in the choir and school of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. His teachers were the French musicians Robin Mallapert to 1540, and Firmin Le Bel to 1544. He also studied organ, and at age 19 returned to Palestrina as organist and choir director.
At Palestrina he married Lucrezia Gori. Normally, his role at the cathedral would have been a lifetime appointment, but the bishop, Cardinal Giovanni del Monte (later, Pope Julius III), recognized Palestrina's extraordinary gifts as a musician, and upon his elevation to the papacy in 1551, sent for Palestrina to direct the Julian Choir at the basilica of St. Peter's, still under construction.
This tremendous stroke of good fortune put Palestrina in command of a small but professional choir, at the capital of liturgical music. He immediately set about to compose a mass dedicated to his patron, and to revise masses composed earlier, for publication. Working slowly and carefully, he completed this work in three years, and his first volume of five masses was published by the famous Dorici brothers in Rome in 1554, at Palestrina's expense. Given the difficulty and cost of music printing, this was a watershed event for the 30-year-old composer.
Pope Julius expressed his appreciation by appointing Palestrina as a singer in the pontifical choir, a position in which he could compose music for that august group. Within three months, Palestrina's patron was dead. His successor, Pope Marcellus II, served only for three weeks, and the next pope, Paul IV, enforced the requirement that members be unmarried and suddenly Palestrina was out of a job, with a modest pension.
He soon became music director at the basilica of St. John Lateran, succeeding <succeeded> De Lassus*, who had vacated the post a year earlier. After serving at St. John Lateran from 1555 to 1560, Palestrina returned as choir master to Santa Maria Maggiore until about 1567.
He also found other work: from 1564 to 1568, he organized summer concerts for immensely wealthy Cardinal Ippolito II of Este, at the cardinal's recently-constructed <gave concerts at> Villa d'Este gardens*. Palestrina dedicated his first collection of motets to the cardinal.
From 1566 he served as master to the choir at the new Roman seminary. In 1571 he returned as master of the Julian choir, a post he held until his death (when his successor became <pupil and successor was> De Victoria*).
In 1577, Pope Gregory XIII commissioned him to prepare a new version of the Gregorian chant. After a couple of years' work, he set aside this monumental task to be completed by others long after his death.
Plagues of influenza swept through Italy in the 1570's and 1580's, taking two of Palestrina's three sons, leaving Palestrina himself quite sick from time to time, and claiming his beloved wife Lucrezia in 1580.
He took the first steps to enter the priesthood, but suddenly reversed course and married the widow Virginia Dormoli in 1581. Thanks to her wealth and the successful operation of her furrier business with a partner, Palestrina was more free than ever to compose and publish, releasing 16 books of music from 1581 until his death in 1594, still leaving many great works unpublished at his death.
In 1588, some of Palestrina's motets were published in England in the book 'Musica Transalpina' by Thomas East, who with Thomas Tallis held the royal music publishing monopoly. Palestrina's music was used at major church events; it was his Vexilla Regis that was sung by the Papal Choir in 1585 as the great obelisk brought from Egypt to Rome by the Emperor Caligula was raised in the plaza of St. Peter's.
ASSESSMENT: In his sacred music, Palestrina refined polyphonic techniques to produce a 'seamless' texture, noble and restrained, with all voices perfectly balanced. His music has been studied through the centuries as a model of counterpoint.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He influenced <influenced> Monteverdi*, <influenced> St. Teresa of Avila* and <influenced> Debussy*
ONELINER: Giovanni da Palestrina, pioneer polyphonic composer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Coates, Henry, Palestrina, J. M. Dent and Sons, London, 1938.
Grove's Concise Dictionary of Music