One event in the master’s life stands out in contrast to the general sadness. In 1575, the year of Jubilee, fifteen hundred singers, belonging to two confraternities of his native town, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and utilized the occasion to do him honor. Dividing themselves into three choruses, with priests, laymen, boys, and women among their number, and with Palestrina himself at their head, they entered Rome in a solemn and ceremonial procession, singing the music of their great townsman. This was perhaps the only public honor Palestrina received during his lifetime.
Among the friends of his later life were S. Filippo Neri, his confessor, a favorite pupil named Guidetti, Ippolito d’Este, and Giacomo Buoncompagni, a nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. The activity of his early years continued almost to the very end. The record of the second half of his life is but a long catalogue of his publications. Whole collections of magnificent works were dedicated to popes, cardinals, or princes, some of whom returned the honor with scant courtesy. The last of these was a collection of thirtymadrigali spiritualifor five voices, in honor of the Virgin, dedicated to the grand-duchess of Tuscany, wife of Ferdinand de’ Medici. Baini and Dr. Burney are full of praises for these last productions. While he was eagerly at work on another volume—seven masses to be dedicated to Pope Clement VII—he was taken ill and died, February 2, 1594, comforted and cared for to the end, not by his mean and worthless son, but by his saintly friend, Filippo Neri. By order of the Curia he was buried with all the honor of a cardinal or prince in the Basilica of the Vatican, while the citizens of Rome, high and low, followed him in sorrow to his grave.
The immense number of Palestrina’s works is astonishing even in that age of prodigious workers. The list appended to a prospectus of a proposed ‘selected’ edition of his works mentions ninety-three masses, one hundred and nineteen motets, forty-five hymns, sixty-eight offertories, three volumes of Lamentations; of litanies three books, of Magnificats two books, of madrigals four books—all of which are but a portion of his labors. The mass for Holy Thursday,Fratres ego enim accepi, the mass for the assumption of the Virgin,Assumpta est Maria in coelum, the motet,Surge illuminare Jerusalem, and theStabat Materfor two choirs, are still in use in the papal chapel. TheImproperia, (reproaches of the Lord to an ungrateful people), performed for the first time in 1560, immediately obtained a great renown, and were added at once by Pope Pius IV to the collection of the apostolic chapel. This work also has been repeated in the Sistine chapel yearly on Good Friday up to the present time. Its performance made a profound impression upon both Goethe and Mendelssohn. The latter thus describes the singing of the pontifical choristers in the rendition of this work: ‘They understood how to bring out and place each delicate trait in the most favorable light, without giving it undue prominence; one chord gently melted into another. The ceremony, at the same time, is solemn and imposing; deep silence prevails in the chapel, only broken by the reëchoing “Holy,” sung with unvarying sweetness and expression.’
TheMissa Papæ Marcelli, which proved so important an instrument in the history of church music, is written for six voices, soprano, alto, two tenors, and two basses. Immediately upon its production its popularity became very great. Cardinals quoted poetry inits praise; the pope commanded that a special performance be given in the apostolic chapel, and that it be transcribed into the chapel collection in unusually large characters. Baini compares its grandeur to that of Thirty-third Canto of the Inferno. Curious legends as to its origin sprang up, and unauthorized ‘arrangements’ went through several editions. A poor adaptation for four voices was made by Anerio, and others for eight and twelve voices by other followers of the Roman school. It is perhaps the best known example of the celebrated Palestrina style.
In a classification of Palestrina’s work the German writer Hauptmann distinguishes three styles, corresponding generally to the master’s very early, adolescent, and mature years. The first shows markedly the influence of his Netherland predecessors and teachers. The melodies move along independently without ‘melting into chords,’ and the predominating character is fugal and canonic. In this phase of his work he was still influenced by the ‘evil fashion’ of the period, which for the most part subordinated the true meaning of the music to the display of contrapuntal science. This quality is shown occasionally, also, in later compositions, as, for example, in the mass with the well-wornL’omme armétheme, wherein he boldly met the Flemish composers on their own ground and proved that he could write as learned counterpoint as they. In these examples he seems intentionally to have adopted the florid style of his predecessors, overlaying the theme with erudite contrapuntal figures, and rendering it elaborate and difficult.
The massAssumpta est Mariamay be said to illustrate the second style, which is in marked contrast to his preceding work. The music is much less elaborate, the voices proceeding, for the most part, simultaneously in smoothly flowing phrases. The third, that known as the Palestrina style, illustrated so famously by thePope Marcellus mass, is a combination of all that was best in the Netherland and Italian schools. It is a vocal style in simple counterpoint, mostly note against note, with only a moderate use of imitation, and an avoidance of chromatics, violent contrasts, and everything approaching the dramatic. At first he followed the custom of using secular tunes for sacred works; but in his best period he almost invariably employed the ancient plain-song melodies in connection with the proper sacred text. Many of hiscanti firmiare placed in the soprano instead of in the tenor voice. Strict attention is shown to syllabic declamation, and to a simple, singable arrangement of the voice parts, which is frequently based upon a succession of pure triads. The harmony is gentle and serene, and the devices for obtaining contrasts and tone color are conspicuous by their absence; while the whole is imbued with sincerity, devotion, and a great sense of beauty. Thibaut, a Frenchman, says of him, ‘He is so completely master of the ancient ecclesiastical modes, and of the treatment of the simple triad, that repose and enjoyment are to be found in his works in a greater degree than in those of any other master.’
Contrasts and similarities between the lives of di Lasso and Palestrina suggest themselves at once. The one a northerner, aristocratic, famous, successful, rich, welcomed in the most courtly and cultured circles of Europe, encouraged and richly rewarded in all his endeavors: the other a southerner, poor, burdened with sorrows and difficulties throughout his life, pursuing his calling without regard to favor or disfavor. Yet they were alike in their prodigious activity, in their lovable and gentle natures, and in their devotion to the Catholic Mother Church. Both were rich in genius—the northerner more emotional, more sensuous in harmony, more dramatic, the southerner more calm and serene in the beauty of his work. Palestrina seems tohave stood apart, untouched both by the swarming intellectual novelties of the time, and by the revolutionary spirit within the church. Great of intellect indeed he must have been, for he conquered a vast field of learning, and reached a point where his art was objective, universal, and perfect according to its type.
With the death of Palestrina the first great period of what we may call modern music, in distinction from the music of the ancients, which was purely melodic, came practically to perfection which was an end. A few distinguished composers carried on for a while the traditions of the vocal polyphonic style, now perfect, chief among whom were Giovanni Nanino (d. 1607), Thomas Luis de Vittoria (d.ca.1613), Felice Anerio (d. 1614), and Giovanni Anerio (d.ca.1620), possibly the brother of Felice; but new and powerful influences were at work to turn men’s minds from this perfection and rapidly so to modify the style itself that the characteristics and the spirit of it vanished. It had grown up within the church, it was apt only to the expression of exalted religious rapture, and even before the century which brought about its flawless perfection the more passionate spirit of man was seeking to express itself. Such a spirit brought color and fire and dramatic vigor to music, even to music of the church such as we have seen in Venice; and such emotional force the exquisitely adjusted mechanism of polyphony was in no way suited to express. We must remember that it was essentially religious music and that pronounced rhythm and sharp dissonances were consciously avoided; furthermore, that at its best it was to be sung without accompaniment and that a conjunct, smooth movement of the voice parts was necessary since singers in choir without accompaniment cannot be sure to sing wide or unnatural intervals exactly. Since rhythm, dissonance, and sudden leaps or turns in melody are the chief means whereby musiccan express emotional agitation, the Palestrina style was not even remotely suitable to the new and active spirit spread abroad through the influence of the Italian Renaissance, which had discovered new worlds, new arts, new sciences, new life. The delicate and infinitely complicated structure could not but be rent and distorted. Luther with his chorales, the English with their new service and the coming of the Elizabethan age, even Willaert in catholic, rich Venice with his two organs and his double choirs had forecast the end of the Palestrina style.
Several features of this marvellous style were destined to disappear simply with the natural growth of music. In the first place the polyphonic ideal, in its highest, strictest sense—the submersion of many melodies in a river of sound in which no melody is evident, the complete suppression of individual personal utterance—was a mediæval and essentially intellectual ideal. It could not long maintain its hold against the inborn natural desire of the individual to sing out his own personal feelings. For it meant the suppression of melody, an unnatural restraint. In the second place, from the time when two melodies were first joined the knowledge and appreciation of harmony were bound to grow—that is, the knowledge of the effect of dissonances and consonances following each other, and it needed but a matter of time for men to come to plan music with the end of producing such effects in a definite sequence. Now in polyphony the consideration of the progression of chords was entirely secondary to the ideal of writing several independent voice parts. Of course the influence of the church modes was strong in delaying the development of the harmonic bases of music, they were iron bands about harmony and they quite fettered modulation, for it was forbidden to pass in the course of a piece from one mode to another. But here again the Palestrina style is related to thescholasticism of the Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical modes were in general closely connected with the philosophy of æsthetics, on the one hand, and with mathematics, on the other; and all the popular music which has been preserved from the Middle Ages shows an unmistakable and deeply significant choice of those modes only which resemble our own major and minor.
In the suppression of individual emotion, in the banishment of rhythm and other active startling elements of music in order to produce the effect of vagueness and mystery, in the limitation of music to ecclesiastical modes, the Palestrina style is the flower of the spirit of the Middle Ages, of a spirit that in the lifetime of Palestrina himself was already dissipating in thin air. He stands looking backward upon the centuries which had given him birth, while on every hand the activities of man were urging impetuously forward. To the new aims, therefore, we must now turn our attention.
F. B.