Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi was born around 1525 in Palestrina, a small hill town east of Rome whose name he took. From a modest family, he went to Rome very young: in 1537 he was a choirboy at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he received a solid musical training from masters from the north, heirs to the Franco-Flemish tradition. He hardly ever left the Roman region.

In 1544 he became organist and singing master at the cathedral of his home town, whose bishop was Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte. In 1547 he married Lucrezia Gori, with whom he had three sons. When his patron was elected pope as Julius III in 1550, he called Palestrina to Rome: the young musician was appointed in 1551 master of the Cappella Giulia, the choir of St Peter’s Basilica. In gratitude he dedicated to the pope in 1554 his first book of masses, the first published by an Italian composer.

In 1555 Julius III admitted him to the Sistine Chapel, the pope’s personal choir, without the usual examination. But a few months later the new, very strict Pope Paul IV enforced the rule requiring singers to be celibate: Palestrina, being married, was dismissed with a small pension. He then directed the music of St John Lateran and later Santa Maria Maggiore, and taught at the Roman Seminary founded by the Jesuits.

His name remains linked to the Council of Trent (1545–63), which reformed the Catholic Church in response to Protestantism. Some prelates wanted to ban polyphony in church, accusing it of making the words incomprehensible. A persistent legend says Palestrina “saved” sacred music by composing the Pope Marcellus Mass, published in 1567, which proved that one could write in six voices while keeping the text perfectly clear. The story is probably embellished, but the work illustrates well the ideal of clarity and dignity the council sought.

In 1571 he regained the direction of the Cappella Giulia, which he kept until his death. The 1570s were nonetheless painful: an epidemic took his brother, two of his sons and then his wife in 1580. He considered becoming a priest and received the tonsure, but in 1581 he married Virginia Dormoli, the wealthy widow of a fur merchant. He now also ran that business, which gave him comfort and allowed him to publish his works regularly.

His output is immense: more than a hundred masses, some three hundred motets, hymns, offertories, lamentations, litanies and nearly a hundred and fifty madrigals. His motets on the Song of Songs (1584) and pieces such as Sicut cervus or the double-choir Stabat Mater are among the finest of the Renaissance. His style is recognisable by its supple melodic lines rising and falling in small steps, by dissonances carefully prepared and resolved, and by perfect balance between the voices. Every part sings; none overwhelms the others.

Palestrina died in Rome on 2 February 1594 and was buried in old St Peter’s with the inscription “Prince of Music”. After him his style became a model. In 1725 the theorist Johann Joseph Fux held it up as the absolute example of counterpoint in his treatise Gradus ad Parnassum, studied by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. In the nineteenth century reformers of church music rediscovered him with fervour. Even today composition students learn writing in several voices by imitating his manner.