Later generations of Catholic Church leaders continually held up Palestrina’s music as the model for what sacred music should be. Whenever church music seemed in a rickety state—as in the semi-operatic effusions of the Victorian era, or the folky derivatives of the late 20^th century—Palestrina was always there as a lighthouse to guide us back to safe harbor.

This year the musical world commemorates the 500^th birth anniversary of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who has been called “the most famous name in music before Bach.”

Palestrina’s name (derived from the town near Rome where he was born in 1525) is synonymous with sacred music, particularly the Roman Catholic sacred choral music of the Renaissance. More specifically, Palestrina’s music sums up the attitudes and ideals of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Yet his work has transcended its historical circumstances as a timeless artistic expression of Catholic Christianity. Palestrina’s serene choral polyphony is the epitome of what people traditionally think of as “Catholic music,” a distinction rivaled only by Gregorian chant. His 104 Masses, 250 motets, and 50 spiritual madrigals have been admired for centuries as sublime examples of musical technique. And in places where traditional Catholic music is still performed (peace be upon them), Palestrina’s concords can still enrapture the listener, drawing him out of the workaday world into a state of beauty and contemplation.

A lifelong resident of the Eternal City, Palestrina directed the choirs of such key churches as Santa Maria Maggiore, St. John Lateran, and most notably the Julian Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica. He was, essentially, the chief music man in the headquarters of the Catholic Church until his death in 1594.

Later generations have tended to deify Palestrina, treating him with a kind of hero worship. An opera about his life by a late Romantic German composer depicts him singlehandedly “saving” music (more about that popular legend anon). Of all the classical composers, Palestrina is the one around whom a virtual halo seems to shine. Later appraisals have put Palestrina into better context, showing that he was one of a constellation of musical geniuses in the Renaissance, including Tallis, Byrd, Josquin, Orlando de Lassus, and de Victoria (who was notably influenced by Palestrina).

Yet Palestrina’s excellence remains beyond dispute, and speaks (or rather sings) for itself. The magic of the Palestrina Style is derived from a number of elements. He started with the balanced four-part choir of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass (in Palestrina’s day, the soprano and alto parts would have been sung in church by boys or countertenors rather than women). He crafted serene melodies in stepwise motion—similar to those in Gregorian chant—rising and falling in a steady arc, and wove those melodies together in all the vocal parts, answering and “imitating” each other so as to produce a euphonious harmony. Dissonances that result when the voices intertwine are quickly resolved into consonance, and the whole music proceeds in a natural ebb and flow.

My parish choir, in which I participate as a tenor, was recently rehearsing the Palestrina motet Super flumina Babilonis, set to the stirring psalm about the Israelites’ captivity (“By the waters of Babylon”). We were getting all the notes right and navigating the river to the end, but something was missing. The editor had added some helpful dynamic markings to Palestrina’s notes, and we were not observing them. As a result, the music sounded flat: devoid of dimension, of contour. When well performed, polyphony should sound richly textured, yet lucidly clear: we should hear how the various melodic lines enter, intertwine, and dovetail.

Our choir director summed it up well: Palestrina understood the human voice. That is a profound insight. The Italian musical tradition is strongly tied to the voice: Italy is the land of singing, of opera. (The great opera composer Giuseppe Verdi described his countrymen as “sons of Palestrina.”) Palestrina’s liturgical music is tied in with the history of song itself—song of divine praise as well as song of secular joy. Palestrina himself wrote a good many love madrigals in his youth, works of which he later felt ashamed.

I mentioned the famous legend that Palestrina “saved” church music, and thereby all of Western art music as a whole. Like all legends, it has a kernel of truth. In Palestrina’s day, polyphony had developed into a high art, the mark of a sophisticated composer. But polyphonic writing became overly complicated, showing off the skill of the composer but obscuring the words—when many voices enter at different times, it causes the words to overlap, making them hard to understand. Composers often based their sacred pieces on popular secular tunes like L’homme armé (The Armed Man) or even “profane” love songs. The church authorities objected to these practices, and said so in a number of official pronouncements. When the Council of Trent convened, the reform of church music was on the agenda. Music, the council fathers declared, was to serve the text and the liturgy, not be a vehicle for self-centered display on the part of the composer or musicians. The music was to be the obedient servant of the text, never calling undue attention to itself.

A generation after Palestrina, a musical scholar asserted that the Roman master had persuaded the council fathers not to outlaw polyphony by writing the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass). The work showed that polyphony could be written in a way so that the words were intelligible and the music enhanced the meaning of the text.

Did Palestrina really influence the Council? Perhaps the reality was not so dramatic as the legend, but we can say with certainty that Palestrina, obedient son of the Church that he was, embodied and carried out the directives of Trent with fidelity, showing forth the potential of polyphony in a Mass dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II (whose reign lasted less than a month in 1555).

With this Mass, Palestrina cemented his place in history. Later generations of Catholic Church leaders continually held up Palestrina’s music as the model for what sacred music should be. Whenever church music seemed in a rickety state—as in the semi-operatic effusions of the Victorian era, or the folky derivatives of the late 20^th century—Palestrina was always there as a lighthouse to guide us back to safe harbor.

Palestrina’s other compositions beside the Pope Marcellus Mass include a moving Stabat mater and countless motets; the latter are short compositions on short Latin texts, well in the reach of good parish choirs and always ripe for placement during Communion. Among the more famous motets are Tu es Petrus (Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I shall build my Church), Sicut cervus (Psalm 42, on the deep longing for God), the Salve Regina (Hail, Holy Queen), and the aforementioned Super flumina Babylonis. In all of this music Palestrina remained scrupulously pure and otherworldly, avoiding secular references as well as showy displays of compositional skill. Everything is in service to a higher order.

Like Bach, Brahms, and a number of others, Palestrina was a musical conservative, preserving and consolidating the best of the musical practices of his day. By doing so he provided a perfect classical model of art, and in the process allowed music to, as we say, “progress,” both inside and outside of the church.

Palestrina’s name lives on mostly in traditional ecclesiastical circles and, I fear, in the pages of musical textbooks. To this day college music students often take a course in Palestrina Counterpoint, learning how to combine voices in euphony according to the Renaissance master’s principles. But more general listeners should give the music of Palestrina a try. In doing so they will understand what an enchantment of serenity music can bring, and the simple but powerful means that one musical genius used to achieve it. What he gave to Renaissance Rome, and what he gives today, is quite simply a balm for the soul.

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The featured image is a portrait of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.