Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1593)

We mark the presumed birth on February 3, 1525 – 495 years ago today – of the Rome-based Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Unlike virtually every other great composer of the Renaissance, a list of which includes such formidable names as Josquin des Prez, William Byrd, Giovanni Gabrieli, Guillaume Dufay, Orlande de Lassus, and Johannes Ockeghem, Palestrina’s name, reputation, and music have never faded from view since his death in 1593. The staying power of his name, reputation, and music can be attributed to three of factors, all of which will be explored in today’s Music History Monday post and tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post (which can be accessed at Patreon.com/RobertGreenbergMusic). These factors are, one, Palestrina’s posthumous reputation as the ostensible “savior” of Catholic church music during the conservative, austere artistic climate of the Counter Reformation (which will be discussed in tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes); two, his personal compositional style, which was (and still is) embraced as a paradigm of utopian perfection and has thus been employed in teaching counterpoint since the early seventeenth century; and three (and most importantly), the fact that he wrote a tremendous amount of first rate music, the great bulk of which is sacred. 

His collected works include 104 Masses (an extraordinary number and by strange coincidence the same number of symphonies attributed to Joseph Haydn); well over 300 motets (which are vocal liturgical works of varying length); over 140 madrigals (secular vocal works of varying length); 68 offertories (that is, music that accompanies the procession of the faithful bearing the bread and wine – the symbolic body and blood of Christ – as well as other gifts/offerings for the Church); 35 magnificats (which means “magnifies”, as in “My soul magnifies the Lord”), a setting of the “Song (or canticle) of Mary”, the text of which comes from the Gospel of Luke; 72 hymns; 11 litanies; numerous sets of lamentations; etc.; all told, a lot of music. 

Giovanni Pierluigi was born in Palestrina, an ancient city in the Sabine Hills 22 miles (or so) east-southeast of Rome. While his earliest education took place there in Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi (or “Gianetto” as he was nicknamed) spent the great bulk of his student days, apprenticeship, and career within the confines of the three most important churches in the holy city of Rome:  Santa Maria Maggiore, Saint John Lateran, and Saint Peter’s.

Pope Julius III, born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte (1487-1555), pope from 1550-1555

In 1554, the 29-year-old Palestrina dedicated his first published book of masses to Pope Julius III, who had previously been known to Palestrina as the Bishop of Palestrina. (The truism holds: it’s not just what you know, but who you know.) The dedication to Pope Julius was clearly the politic thing to do, because just a few months later, on January 13, 1555, Palestrina was appointed as a chorister in the single most prestigious choir in Christendom: that of the Sistine Chapel, the pope’s “personal” chapel. Palestrina’s hiring was controversial: he was neither a priest nor even celibate, but rather married (*gasp!*). According to the “Diarii Sistina” – the diaries of the Sistine Chapel – Palestrina was hired:

“on the orders of His Holiness Pope Julius, without any examination and without the consent of the singers.” 

We can safely assume that Palestrina’s extraordinary talents quickly overcame any residual resistance from his fellow choristers.