By Marco della Sciucca
Sometimes it seems like chasing ghosts when reconstructing the life story of a sixteenth-century character, even when that character has the proportions of a giant.
Such is the case of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. His exact date of birth is uncertain — there were still no parish baptismal registers — but from other documents we can deduce that he was born between 1525 and the first days of 1526.
Giovanni was his first name, Pierluigi his surname (in reality, a patronymic, or ancestral name), and Palestrina, the toponym (place name) which seems to establish his birthplace in the ancient city of Palestrina, just east of Rome.
His mother died soon after his birth, in January 1536; we know nothing about his period as a motherless child. The little Giovanni’s first musical apprenticeship might have been right within the city walls of Palestrina, but some documents suggest that he had also been a putto cantore (“singing cherub”) in Rome: in October 1537, in the choir of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, a “Ioannem de Palestrina” was present among the Pueri Cantores – the boys’ choir.
It was likely our musician, but the question is: how long did the child spend in that institution, with its tradition of accompanying the musical training with a complete cultural training? Which teachers did he have? Perhaps the well-known Rubino Mallapert, the basilica’s Chapel Master, or musicians of Northern European origin among the Flemish and French masters frequenting Rome in those years?
The city, although possessing a strong conservative tradition, was still an unrivaled crossroads of artists and other men of culture who frequented the courts of the powerful, in a movement of ideas perhaps unique in the world.
But the first certain document in Pierluigi’s biography takes us back to Palestrina, on October 28, 1544, when in the Cathedral of Sant’Agapito he signs his first working contract as a musician.
In short, it is a good opportunity for Giovanni to work in his own city, and a precious opportunity for the cathedral to have, for the first time, a teacher who could start a real music school there. The economic stability of that employment allows Palestrina to contract marriage to Lucrezia de Goris, of the Prenestina area east of Rome, with whom he will have three children.
Despite the contract stipulation as enduring “throughout life,” this work comes to an end. But then on February 8, 1550, an exceptional event occurs, for the city and for Giovanni: the bishop of Palestrina, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, is elected to the papal throne, taking the name of Giulio III (Julius III).
We may conjecture that Palestrina’s appointment, just the following year, as Director of the Music Chapel of St. Peter’s in Rome, the Giulia Chapel, was linked to a previous relationship with the former bishop of his home city.
Otherwise, why would the Pope have named a young musician with neither experience in Rome nor published compositions as the head of one of the most important musical institutions of the Catholic world — second only to the Sistine Chapel? And such an appointment would fit with Julius’ capricious favoritism and frequent nepotism.
Three years later, in 1554, we witness a gesture of gratitude — striking for its dramatic form, and also showing the musician’s competence in the role entrusted to him.
In the pioneering Roman typography of the Dorico brothers, Palestrina printed his first book of Masses — a sumptuous, large-format volume full of friezes and symbolic engravings, but above all, with the dedication to “his” Pope, Julius III, accompanied by a woodcut image on the cover depicting the musician kneeling to offer his volume to the pontiff, seated imposingly on the papal throne.
If the beautiful typography and sumptuousness of the volume’s design inspire amazement, its musical contents arouse no less amazement. They contain not only strong references to the Roman musical tradition (for example, with the presence of “Messe-Parodia” – a reworking of a previous musical fragment into a new composition), but also employ a large number of counterpoint writing techniques — a sign of musical wisdom and compositional authority.
Palestrina adds to all this a sweet and “cantabile” (singing-like) melodic flow that seems to evoke Palestrina’s Spanish contemporary Cristóbal de Morales; and a sense of melodic reiteration, of always varied repetition of the melodic ideas, which recalls another of his French-Flemish contemporaries, Josquin des Prez.
But above all, Palestrina innovatively uses an unpredictable “fantasy” – a musical form free from strict rules – from time to time as a compositional resolution.
I was also somewhat amazed at the already-imposing maturity of this debut work, which hints at the size of the Palestrinian creativity; and also its stature as a true aesthetic manifesto of his compositional thought, which forms a whole substantially homogeneous and compact productive arc throughout his life.
Furthermore, we detect in it a distance from the musical avant-gardes to which, strange to say, Rome was among the most receptive cities. A constant throughout Palestrina’s life was an aura of auctoritas — authority and reputation — of both the man and his works themselves. In short, the legend of Palestrina was then born, and on January 13, 1555 the composer (by mandate of Julius III) was admitted among the musicians of the pontifical chapel — without the consent of the singers, as underlined by the writer of the Sistine diary.
On March 23 of that same year, Julius III dies and the much more austere Marcellus II (to which the composer will dedicate post mortem the best known of his Masses, the Missa Papae Marcelli) succeeds him.
The papacy of Marcellus II would only last twenty-three days, and on May 23 yet another new Pope is elected, the severe and inflexible Paul IV.
With a July 30 Motu proprio, perhaps urged by several Sistini singers who resented his presence, Palestrina is fired by the Pope from the papal chapel along with two others, because they were married. (They were granted a lifetime pension of about 6 scudi in recompense.)
However, throughout his life Palestrina continued to write music for the pontifical chapel: his manuscripts remain preserved there today.
Meanwhile, the composer also is involved with other, not strictly religious, institutions — academies, cardinal and secular courts — and he creates a secular composition: in 1555 the first book of four-voice madrigals comes out (as usual, printed by the Dorico brothers). Even in the “profane” tradition, Palestrina infuses an aesthetic of sobriety, of metaphysical catharsis of the world, which does not oppose the “sacred” Palestrina at all.
Meanwhile, in October, a new role for the chapel of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, that of Maestro di Cappella, is created specifically for Palestrina (adding another 6 scudi a month in income). In 1560, however, the composer abandons this assignment to take another in 1561, with a monthly salary of 16 scudi — that of Master of the Chapel Choir in St. Mary Major Basilica, an institution that was reorganizing its choir music after the dark period of the occupation of the Papal States by the Duke of Alba.
Palestrina continues the publication of Masses, motets, other sacred forms (hymns, the Magnificat, etc.) and, in a more limited way, of madrigals, always dedicating them to characters of very high rank, from cardinals and nobles to Popes and kings.
Around 1565, Palestrina becomes more closely involved in events stemming from from the Council of Trent’s discussions on sacred music; in particular, on the problem of the intelligibility of the verbal texts amid the complex contrapuntal musical intonations in the Mass.
On April 28, 1565, in the house of Cardinal Vitellozzo Vitelli (Cardinal Charles Borromeo certainly was also present), the pontifical singers sang some of the Mass so the clergymen could verify for themselves whether the words could be clearly understood. Almost certainly, it was Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli they heard.
Palestrina published the entire Liber Secundus Missarum (1567), in which the Missa Papae Marcelli is contained, in the middle of this heated musical controversy. He dedicated it to Pope Marcellus and King Philip II of Spain, no doubt intending it to be an authoritative contribution to the debate; it reaffirmed the inalienable role of the polyphonic tradition, albeit revised in service of greater comprehensibility of the text.
Sometime between 1565 and 1567 the musician would become a teacher at the Roman seminary, bringing his children Angelo and Rodolfo as students, but continuing to render outside services, including at the court of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este.
Under the next Pope, Pius V — who had little interest in music — Palestrina searches for other work. Between 1567 and 1568, he begins negotiations with the court of Vienna, though his high demands (35 gold scudi per month) render them unsuccessful.
In 1571 he returns to the Giulia Chapel – the choir of St. Peter’s — where he remains for the rest of his life.
In 1577 he is commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to revise, together with Annibale Zoilo, the Gregorian chant books, that were finished only in part and never published.
In 1580 his wife dies; it is a moment of crisis for Palestrina, which he nevertheless overcomes when in 1581 he marries Virginia Dormoli, daughter of wealthy Roman furriers, allowing him to resume a series of publications with great vigor and speed: from then until his death, he gave to the printers in Rome around 17 works.
In total, including his lifetime and posthumous publications, Palestrina has left us as many as thirty-two volumes of his own works.
Today his music remains as vital as ever, holding its preeminent place in the musical patrimony of the Catholic Church.
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