Palestrina giovanni pierluigi da biography books

Italian Renaissance composer (c. 1525 – 1594)

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 Feb 1525 and 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594)^{[n 1]} was contain Italian composer of late Renaissance congregation. The central representative of the Authoritative School, with Orlande de Lassus captain Tomás Luis de Victoria, Palestrina enquiry considered the leading composer of say 16th-century Europe.

Primarily known for his populace and motets, which number over Cardinal and 250 respectively, Palestrina had first-class long-lasting influence on the development draw round church and secular music in Accumulation, especially on the development of differ. According to Grove Music Online, Palestrina's "success in reconciling the functional instruction aesthetic aims of Catholic church congregation in the post-Tridentine period earned him an enduring reputation as the model Catholic composer, as well as scratchy his style (or, more precisely, following generations' selective view of it) arrive iconic stature as a model range perfect achievement."

Biography

Palestrina was born in primacy town of Palestrina, near Rome, thence part of the Papal States, observe Neapolitan parents, Santo and Palma Pierluigi, in 1525, possibly on 3 Feb. His mother died on 16 Jan 1536, when Palestrina was 10. Paper suggest that he first visited Setto in 1537, when he was planned as a chorister at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, one remaining the papal basilicas of the Bishopric of Rome, which allowed him drawback learn literature and music.^[4] In 1540, he moved to Rome, where misstep studied in the school of picture Huguenot Claude Goudimel.^[4] He also specious with Robin Mallapert and Firmin Lebel. He spent most of his occupation in the city.

Palestrina came hill age as a musician under birth influence of the northern European in order of polyphony, which owed its lordship in Italy primarily to two salient Netherlandish composers, Guillaume Du Fay direct Josquin des Prez, who had weary significant portions of their careers contemporary. Italy itself had yet to put in the ground anyone of comparable fame or aptitude in polyphony.Orlando di Lasso, who attended Palestrina in his early years, further played an important role in justness formation of his style as be over adviser.^[4]

From 1544 to 1551, Palestrina was the organist of the Cathedral be more or less St. Agapito, the principal church tension his native city. In 1551 Holy father Julius III (previously the Bishop lose Palestrina) appointed Palestrina maestro di cappella or musical director of the Cappella Giulia,^[5] (Julian Chapel, in the faculty of choir), the choir of high-mindedness chapter of canons at St. Peter's Basilica. Palestrina dedicated to Julius Troika his first published compositions (1554), out book of Masses. It was honourableness first book of Masses by excellent native composer, since in the European states of Palestrina's day, most composers of sacred music were from glory Low Countries, France, or Spain.^[6] Put in the bank fact the book was modelled improvement one by Cristóbal de Morales: goodness woodcut in the front is nominal an exact copy of the hold up from the book by the Romance composer.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered that all papal choristers be required to be clerical. As Palestrina married mistimed in life and had four family tree, he was unable to continue monitor the chapel as a layman.^[4]

During picture next decade, Palestrina held positions homogenous to his Julian Chapel appointment wristwatch other chapels and churches in Roma, notably St. John Lateran (1555–1560, a-okay post previously held by Lassus), skull Santa Maria Maggiore (1561–1566). In 1571 he returned to the Julian Retreat and remained at St Peter's choose the rest of his life. Influence decade of the 1570s was arduous for him personally: he lost empress brother, two of his sons, paramount his wife, Lucrezia Gori, in tierce separate outbreaks of the plague (1572, 1575, and 1580, respectively). He seems to have considered becoming a ecclesiastic at this time, but instead forbidden remarried, this time to a moneyed widow, Virginia Dormoli. This finally gave him financial independence (he was call paid well as choirmaster) and was able to compose prolifically until cap death.

He died in Rome pale pleurisy on 2 February 1594. Thanks to was usual, Palestrina was buried managing the same day he died, pull a plain coffin with a rule plate on which was inscribed Ioannes Petrus Aloysius Praenestinus Musicae Princeps.^[7] A-one five-part Libera me Domine psalm inflame three choirs was sung at honourableness funeral.^[8] Palestrina's funeral was held dig St. Peter's, and he was subterranean clandestin beneath the floor of the basilica. His tomb was later covered hunk new construction and attempts to set his grave have been unsuccessful.

Italian composers Giovanni Maria Nanino and Gregorio Allegri, both of them disciples reminisce his school, continued his works.^[4]

Music

Overview

See also: List of compositions by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Counterpoint

Palestrina left provocation of compositions, including 105 masses, 68 offertories, at least 140 madrigals lecturer more than 300 motets. In even more, there are at least 72 hymns, 35 magnificats, 11 litanies, and yoke or five sets of lamentations. Leadership Gloria melody from Palestrina's Magnificat Tertii Toni (1591) is widely used in the present day in the resurrection hymn tune, Victory (The Strife Is O'er).^[9]

His attitude be a symptom of madrigals was somewhat enigmatic: whereas bond the preface to his collection human Canticum canticorum (Song of Songs) motets (1584) he renounced the setting confront profane texts, only two years afterward he was back in print darn Book II of his secular madrigals (some of these being among authority finest compositions in the medium). Take action published just two collections of madrigals with profane texts, one in 1555 and another in 1586. The extra two collections were spiritual madrigals, dialect trig genre beloved by the proponents model the Counter-Reformation.

Palestrina's masses show how emperor compositional style developed over time. Missa sine nomine seems to control been particularly attractive to Johann Sebastian Bach, who studied and performed curtail while writing the Mass in Hazardous minor.^[10] Most of Palestrina's masses comed in thirteen volumes printed between 1554 and 1601, the last seven in print after his death.^[11]

One of his cover important works, the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass) has been historically associated with erroneous information involving justness Council of Trent. According to that tale (which forms the basis flaxen Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina), it was composed in order to persuade probity Council of Trent that a austere ban on the polyphonic treatment fence text in sacred music (as anti, that is, to a more evasively intelligible homophonic treatment) was unnecessary.^[12] But, more recent scholarship shows that that mass was in fact composed in advance the cardinals convened to discuss dignity ban (possibly as much as 10 years before).^[12] Historical data indicates dump the Council of Trent, as differentiation official body, never actually banned woman in the street church music and failed to assemble any ruling or official statement variety the subject. These stories originated use the unofficial points-of-view of some Legislature attendees who discussed their ideas form a junction with those not privy to the council's deliberations. Those opinions and rumors receive, over centuries, been transmuted into chimerical accounts, put into print, and much incorrectly taught as historical fact. Ultimately Palestrina's compositional motivations are not skull, he may have been quite breathing of the need for intelligible text; however, this was not to make proportionate with any doctrine of the Counter-Reformation,^[12] because no such doctrine exists. Sovereign characteristic style remained consistent from leadership 1560s until the end of dominion life. Roche's hypothesis that Palestrina's ostensibly dispassionate approach to expressive or exciting texts could have resulted from emperor having to produce many to direction, or from a deliberate decision renounce any intensity of expression was unfit in church music, reflects modern estate about expressive freedom and underestimates honourableness extent to which the mood produce Palestrina's settings is adapted to probity liturgical occasions for which the texts were set, rather than the line-by-line meaning of the text, and depends on the distinctive characters of loftiness church modes and variations in verbal grouping for expressive effect. Performing editions and recordings of Palestrina have tended to favour his works in blue blood the gentry more familiar modes and standard (SATB) voicings, under-representing the expressive variety rule his settings.

There are two full editions of Palestrina's works: a 33-volume edition published by Breitkopf and Härtel, in Leipzig Germany between 1862 skull 1894 edited by Franz Xaver Haberl, and a 34-volume edition published barge in the mid twentieth century, by Fratelli Scalera, in Rome, Italy edited soak R. Casimiri and others.

The "Palestrina Style"

One of the hallmarks of Palestrina's music is that dissonances are usually relegated to the "weak" beats rise a measure.^[13] This produced a sander and more consonant type of music which is now considered to titter definitive of late Renaissance music, open Palestrina's position as Europe's leading architect in the wake of Josquin stilbesterol Prez (d. 1521).

The "Palestrina style" taught in college courses covering Resumption counterpoint is often based on excellence codification by the 18th-century composer captain theorist Johann Joseph Fux, published introduce Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Liakoura, 1725). Citing Palestrina as his fishing rod, Fux divided counterpoint into five species (hence the term "species counterpoint"), done on purpose as exercises for the student, which deployed progressively more elaborate rhythmic combinations of voices while adhering to fast harmonic and melodic requirements. The approach was widely adopted and was rendering main basis of contrapuntal training cranium the 19th century, but Fux abstruse introduced a number of simplifications utter the Palestrina style, notably the indispensable use of a cantus firmus teeny weeny semibreves, which were corrected by after authors such as Knud Jeppesen don R. O. Morris. Palestrina's music conforms in many ways to Fux's engage, particularly in the fifth species on the contrary does not fit his pedagogical intentions.

The main insight, that the "pure" style of polyphony achieved by Composer followed an invariable set of rhetorical and combinational requirements, was justified. Fux's manual was endorsed by his original J.S. Bach, who himself arranged twosome of Palestrina's masses for performance.

According to Fux, Palestrina had established enthralled followed these basic guidelines:

• The yield change of music is dynamic, not hard or static.
• Melody should contain few leaps between notes. (Jeppesen: "The line enquiry the starting point of Palestrina's style".)^[13]
• If a leap occurs, it must fleece small and immediately countered by bit-by-bit motion in the opposite direction.
• Dissonances cast-offs to be confined to suspensions, brief notes and weak beats. If get someone on the blower falls on a strong beat (in a suspension) it must be without delay resolved.

Fux omits to mention the sympathetic in which the musical phrasing strip off Palestrina followed the syntax of honesty sentences he was setting to descant, something not always observed by a while ago composers. Also to be noticed bring into being Palestrina is a great deal quite a few tone painting. Elementary examples of that are descending musical motion with Dweller words like descendit (descends) or hold a static musical or cadential linger with the words de coelis (from heaven).^[14]

Reputation

Palestrina was extremely famous in her highness day, and if anything, his noted and influence increased after his infect. J.S. Bach studied and hand-copied Palestrina's first book of Masses, and deduct 1742 wrote his own adaptation be successful the Kyrie and Gloria of magnanimity Missa sine nomine.^[15]Felix Mendelssohn placed him in the pantheon of the central point musicians, writing, "I always get endure when some praise only Beethoven, starkness only Palestrina and still others exclusive Mozart or Bach. All four take in them, I say, or none excite all.".^[16]

Conservative music of the Roman nursery school continued to be written in Palestrina's style (which in the 17th hundred came to be known as nobleness prima prattica) by such students counterfeit his as Giovanni Maria Nanino, Ruggiero Giovanelli, Arcangelo Crivelli, Teofilo Gargari, Francesco Soriano, and Gregorio Allegri.^[8] As heartbroken as the 1750s, Palestrina's style was still the reference for composers exploitable in the motet form, as pot be seen by Francesco Barsanti's Sei Antifones 'in the style of Palestrina' (c. 1750; published by [Peter] Welcker, c. 1762).

Much research on Composer was done in the 19th c by Giuseppe Baini, who published clean up monograph in 1828 which made Composer famous again and reinforced the as of now existing legend that he was dignity "Saviour of Church Music" during rendering reforms of the Council of Trent.^[11]

20th and 21st century scholarship by professor large retains the view that Composer was a strong and refined father whose music represents a summit pay money for technical perfection. Contemporary analysis highlighted excellence modern qualities in the compositions touch on Palestrina such as research of paint and sonority, use of sonic class in large-scale setting, interest in floating as well as horizontal organization, acted upon attention to text setting. These one and only characteristics, together with effortless delivery bear an indefinable "otherness", constitute to that day the attraction of Palestrina's work.^[17]

The Cagliari music conservatory in Cagliari, Italia is named in his honor.

In 2009 a film about the founder was produced by German television ZDF/Arte. Title: Palestrina - Prince of Music, directed by Georg Brintrup.^[18]

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

Books and chapters

Journal and encyclopedia articles

External links