Few composers of any era have been more closely associated with a single city than Palestrina with Rome. Aside from a youthful stint as organist at S Agapito in his native town of Palestrina, he never held a position outside the Eternal City. In 1551, aged just twenty-six, he was appointed to lead the Cappella Giulia at the Vatican. In 1555 he was briefly elevated to the elite Papal Cappella Sistina, but his youthful marriage disqualified him under the strict celibacy rules of the new Pope Paul IV, and he was forced to move later that year to become maestro di cappella at S Giovanni Laterano. In 1561 he took the same post at S Maria Maggiore, where he had once sung as a choirboy, returning finally to the Capella Giulia in 1571.
At the Vatican, Palestrina would have assimilated the music of earlier members of the Papal Choir, including the revered Josquin (in Rome from 1489-1494) whose Salve Regina a 5 was copied into a Sistine manuscript as late as 1545. Here Josquin contrives a brilliant synthesis of technical trickery (a pre-composed ostinato motif in the tenor) and rhetorical clarity—a feat which presages Palestrina’s own later achievements. The same Sistine collection includes an eight-voiced Pater noster by Jacques Arcadelt, who was in Rome until 1551. Its dense counterpoint is typical of Flemish music from the first part of the sixteenth century, and contrasts starkly with the clean lines of Tu es Petrus, the festal motet which Palestrina composed in honour of Rome’s patron in 1572, shortly after his return to Papal service.
Palestrina’s music is overwhelmingly sacred, and his career and style were shaped above all by the Counter-Reformation. Whatever the truth of the story about the Missa Papae Marcelli, there is no doubt that it epitomises post-Trent musical ideals, especially in text-heavy movements like the Credo. Here the different voice parts often sing the same words at the same time, especially at the beginnings of phrases, so that the text emerges with clarity despite the rich, six-voiced texture. Only in the opulent Amen does Palestrina allow himself to be caught up in sonority for its own sake.
Though Counter-Reformation strictures may initially have been discouraging to composers, other new currents promoted the use of music as an evangelical tool. Religious devotion became increasingly fashionable during the 1570s, and Palestrina wrote music for the various confraternities which developed in response to figures such as Ignatius Loyola and Filippo Neri. It is likely that the Songs of Songs motets contained in his Canticum canticorum were intended for this purpose; they are models of textual clarity, but also full of variety and lyrical colour, calculated to produce an expressive and devotional response in the listener. Tomás Luis de Victoria, who worked in Rome in this period and who may have studied with Palestrina, is similarly vivid and colourful in his 1587 motet Trahe me post te, which also draws from the Song of Songs.
It was for a confraternity of musicians—the Congregazione dei Signori Musici di Roma— that Palestrina wrote his lavish motet Cantantibus organis, in 1585. The text is appropriate for the feast of St Cecilia, patron saint of music, and we complement it with two other motets in praise of music: the buoyant Exultate Deo and the polychoral Laudate Dominum in tympanis, which calls for three choirs of four voices each. Lassus’s rich motet Musica Dei donum continues this theme; it was published in 1594, the year in which both he and Palestrina died. The two composers likely met when Lassus worked in Rome during the 1550s, and this glorious music seems a fitting epitaph for the Italian.
Palestrina’s example must have been daunting for those who followed, and perhaps not surprisingly, they preferred to strike out in new directions than try to match him. Felice Anerio was his successor as composer to the Papal Choir; his Christus factus est, appropriate to Good Friday, grafts a more frank expressivity onto the fundamentals of Palestrina style. We answer it with a vivacious polychoral Easter motet, Christus resurgens, by Gregorio Allegri, who joined the Papal Choir in 1629 and was seen by his colleagues as a guardian of the stile antico, even revising some of Palestrina’s hymns.
Our program is completed by Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s new work A Gift of Heaven, which draws us back to the Missa Papae Marcelli, setting Palestrina’s own words from the preface to the 1572 volume in which it was published, and quoting music from the Gloria. The composer writes:
"I was delighted to be asked by Stile Antico to write of music for this program, but also rather daunted: responding to a composer of the stature of Palestrina makes one feel doomed to fail. I was therefore thrilled to discover that some of Palestrina’s letters and other writings survive, and it occurred to me that it would be wonderful to set some extracts to music, so that we hear words as well as notes from the master’s pen during this recital.
Palestrina’s dedication to Philip of Austria in his Second Book of Masses especially appealed to me because of its tone, and I immediately felt a kinship with this great composer of centuries past upon reading it. It is tremendously reassuring to know that us composers are all the same, buttering up their patrons in the hope of securing more work and more money!"
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