Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - Biography
Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina was born in either February of 1525 or 1526 in the town of Palestrina and died on February 2nd 1594 in Rome. Palestrina has been since his era in all probability the most famous of Renaissance composer and the model for all Catholic liturgical composers. He became a choir boy in St. Maria Maggoire in 1537.Whilst a chorister he received a thorough musical education from the various maestros at the church. His first appoint in 1544 was as organist and choir master at the Cathedral of St. Agapito for seven years in his birth place of Palestrina. In 1547 he married Lucrezia Cori with whom he had three children. Palestrina had some good fortune when the Bishop of his hometown was elevated to Pope Julius the Third in 1550. In 1551 he appointed Palestrina as the music director of the Cappella Giulia, the papal choir at St. Peters. His first published works in gratitude for his position was a book of Masses dedicated the Pope. Even though Papal positions within the Vatican were given only to men who had taken clerical vows the Pope was so impressed by his work that he elevated him once more in 1555 to the membership of the Cappella Sistana. In the same year the Pope was convinced that he should not have made the exception and dismissed Palestrina giving him small pension as recompense. Palestrina quickly found a prominent position in the church of St. John in Laetern where he remained for the next five years. Palestrina during these middle years became extraordinarily prolific and was well onto his way of producing more than one hundred Masses and hundreds of Motets and Madrigals.
The most famous incident regarding Palestrina may be apocryphal, a Papal conclave the Council of Trent met to codify a number a proposed Church reforms, among the edicts was that complex sacred music that used polyphony (multiple voices) was not intelligible to the lay parishioner and should be banned. Legend has it that Palestrina composed his most famous work Missa Papae Marcelli was written to show that music of mastery could be composed while being faithful to Church doctrine (modern scholarship has seemed to prove that the work was written well before the Council).After a period of returning to his old Church St. Maria Maggiore he took up a position of musical director for an influential Cardinal, Ippolito in Tivoli which he kept for four years. His fame now had spread throughout Europe an Emperor Maximilian of Austria offered him a major musical position in Vienna but evidently Palestrina’s demands were too high and the offer was withdrawn. Coincidentally Palestrina was again offered a papal position at the Julian Chapel where he was to remain for the balance of his life. There were multiple outbreaks of the plague that occurred during the 1570’s that took the life of a number of family members including his wife and two of sons. Palestrina was despondent enough to seriously contemplate entering the priesthood; he changed his mind and married a wealth widow Virginia Dormoli. In 1577 a new Pope Gregory the Thirteenth commissioned Palestrina to supervise a thorough revision of the plainsongs of the Roman Liturgy used during Mass (He didn’t live to complete the project which was completed in 1613).In 1583 he was offered the prominent position of music director for the Duke of Mantua, even though his second marriage made him financially secure he was rejected due to his demands. The following year he composed his celebrated setting of The Song of Solomon Palestrina continued to compose prolifically until his death on February 2nd 1594. He was given the honor of being buried in the chapel of the old St. Peter’s Church.
Palestrina’s style of counterpoint a smooth flowing one had an enormous influence on sacred composition to this day and even influenced the sacred music such nineteenth h century late Romantics as Franz Liszt and Anton Bruckner. Palestrina even was the inspiration of well known German opera by Hans Pfitzner entitled Palestrina written in 1910’s and whose plot revolves around the supposed events of the Council of Trent.
Palestrina’s music has been well covered by the record companies (though much remains unrecorded). The Archiv label and the Gimell label have made particularly fine recordings.
