Essential Palestrina
When Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina died on 2 February 1594 his coffin bore just two words: "Princeps Musicae" – the foremost man of music. One of the greatest composers of his age, Palestrina perfected renaissance polyphony, taking Franco-Flemish counterpoint and smoothing out its distinctive harmonic kinks and corners to create a balanced and even style that is pure Italy.
Read more…A career spent in Rome, much of it in the service of the Papal Choir, placed Palestrina at the heart of Catholicism and the Counter-Reformation. Much has been made of the composer's role in "saving" church music from the reforms and edicts of the period, which rejected complex counterpoint – the interweaving of multiple musical strands – in favour of simpler settings that placed text front and centre. Historical fact has been amplified and exaggerated, but the clean lines, graceful clarity and elegant counterpoint of Palestrina's music are beyond question. His gift was in presenting the musical wide-shot, while his English or Flemish contemporaries preferred the detailed, emotional close-up.
Extremely prolific, at his death Palestrina left well over 100 Mass settings, more than 300 motets, as well as a significant number of madrigals – both sacred and secular. His influence was as great as his output, extending not only through the 17th-century Italian composers who followed him, but also to Bach (who famously studied his 'Missa Sine Nomine' while composing his own B minor Mass), Mendelssohn, Bruckner and today's choral composers.
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