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The utmost liturgical music composer of all time – Giovanni Pierluigi da Palertrina - was born at Palestrina in 1514 and died in Rome on February 1594. Giovanni’s early account is almost unidentified. In accordance with Giuseppe Ottavia Pittoni, a document in Vatican relates that Giovanni used to sing along the streets of Rome when he was a kid; he offered products from his parents’ ranch. Additionally, he was heard on an instance by Santa Maria Maggiore’s choirmaster who was amazed by Giovanni’s remarkable voice and then pronounced musical ability; Giovanni was educated musically.
Several individuals think that Giovanni was taught by the composer and choirmaster Jacques Arcadelt in Rome (1539-1549). The belief, so long held that Claude Goudimel was his primary teacher has currently been ultimately discarded. To the degree that is recognized, Giovanni began in 1544 with his dynamic life in music as choirmaster and organist in his town; his status rising, he was called in Rome, commended with the musical direction and arrangement of the St.
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Peter's choirboys and in very similar year was highly recommended to the position as choirmaster (Benjamin 2005, pp9-11). Giovanni committed to Julius III his first compositions in 1554, a number of masses for 4 voices, and was given with a prior arrangement as a constituent of papal chapel in infringement of the regulations leading that body. The pope set the rule aside necessitating those who have partisanship within the papal choral group to be in the Holy Orders, and also made use of his ability to except him from the typically strict entrance test.
These conditions as well as the further reality that his voice was substandard to those of other singers provoked the resistance, and resentment of the members of the choir. The singers didn’t welcome the objective of the pope that was to protect for the talented young Giovanni the essential free time in composing (Stove 1990, p32). In the same year, Giovanni circulated a compilation of madrigals. The transcripts of a few of these the musician himself within the years afterwards considered too complimentary.
In the commitment of his situation of the Canticle of Canticles (Gregory XIII), Giovanni expresses not just lament but contrition, for causing disgrace by the publication. Cardinal Marcellus II had admired and protected Giovanni, but died following sovereignty of just 21 days. Soon after his attainment, Paul IV strengthened the previous policy for the administration of the papal singers. Besides Giovanni, there were 2 other lay wedded members within the singing group. All were released with a small annuity, despite the knowledge that the singers were forever affianced.
The adversity due to the firing brought a relentless sickness; re-established, the musician took charge of the singing group in St. John Lateran, where he stayed until 1561. Throughout this phase he wrote the well-known Improperia, next to the Lamentations and Magnificats. Their recital via the papal singers on Good Friday was in fact ordered by Paul IV, and they have stayed within its repertoire for the Holy Week. This assembly significantly augmented Giovanni’s reputation. In 1561, Giovanni asked the section of St.
John Lateran for augmentation in salary considering his rising needs and cost of publishing works. Repudiated, he received comparable post in Santa Maria Maggiore that he had until 1571. It was not identified at what time of his vocation Giovanni came under the power of St. Philip Neri, but there is motive to consider it was during his youthful days. As the saint's devout devotee, Giovanni gained that view into the strength of liturgy that permitted his to express in polyphonic melody as it had never been made before.
It was his religious structure more than his creative development that fitted him for the fortunate piece he had in the restructuring of music in church. The duty of speeding up reforms ordered by the Trent Council was assigned by Pius IV to a mission of 8 cardinals. A board of 2 of these, Vitellozzo Vitelli and St. Charles Borromeo, was selected to deem certain development within the regulation and government of papal singers, and to this conclusion they coupled to themselves 8 of the singers.
Cardinal Vitelli made the singers to carry out compositions within his attendance, with the purpose of determining what process could be engaged for the maintenance of the honour and distinctive declamation of the transcript in symphonies wherein the voices were intertwined. Chancellor St. Charles was the benefactor of Giovanni, escalating his retirement fund in 1565. He feted a solemn Mass in attendance of the pontiffs on June, 191565, at which Giovanni’s enormous ‘Missa Papae Marcelli’ was resonated.
This chronological information are the solitary discoverable foundation for the legends, extended and replicated by historians, relating to the assessment prior to the pope and cardinals of the grounds of polyphonic music, and its justification by Giovanni, in the masterpiece and recital of 3 masses (Stewart 1994, p10). The studies of archives of Haberl overwhelmingly pulled down these fictions, but their sustained recurrence for almost 200 years accentuated the actuality of Giovanni’s activity, motivated by St. Charles and by St.
Philip, in the transformation of music in church, an action that embraced his whole profession and antedated in a few years the corrective method of Church establishment. The basis of his restructuring is the 2 principles legally construed from the indications to music in churches in Tridentine diktats:
In this bureau, he had Felice Anerio - only successor. In 1571, the choirmaster at St. Peter’s - Animuccia - died, and Palestrina turned out to be his successor, consequently being associated with the papal singers and St. Peter’s simultaneously. An endeavour of his resentful and intriguing contemporaries inside the papal church to have Giovanni discharged by Pius V was in fact ineffective. Throughout this year, Giovanni wrote several laudi spirituali and motets for St. Philip Neri’s Oratory. Above and beyond the obligations of choirmaster at St.
Peter’s, musician to the chapel, St. Philip Oratory’s principal of music, Giovanni also taught at Maria Nanini’s school of music. Gregory XIII hired him to arrange a new-fangled edition of Gregorian chants. His precise contribution in this version, later published in a name of ‘editio Medicaea’ for the reason that it was printed in a publication that belongs to Cardinal de’ Medici, and what was organized by his pupils Felice Anerio, Giovanni Guidetti, as well as Francesco Suriano, has been a topic of debate.
The commission was not predominantly agreeable to Giovanni Palestrina and reserved him from the original creations, his actual arena of activity. The death of his wife in 1580 extremely affected him. His mourning found expressions in 2 compositions – ‘Psalm 136’ and ‘By the waters of Babylon’ along with a motet on words “O Lord… when Thou shall come to judge the world, how shall I stand before the face of Thy anger, my sins frighten me, woe to me, O Lord” (Haigh 1957, p115).
In these he anticipated to close his imaginative doings, but with an engagement in 1581 as Prince Buoncompagni’s director of music, he began conceivably the most sparkling phase of his existence. Above and beyond Masses, sanctified madrigals, psalms, motets, hymns in respect for the Blessed Virgin, Giovanni produced an effort that brought him the identity of ‘Prince of Music’, 29 motets on words from ‘Canticle of Canticles’.
Along with his personal avowal, Giovanni intended to replicate in his piece of music the Divine worship articulated in the Canticle, with the intention that his heart might be felt by a glimmer thereof. For Sixtus V’s enthronement, Giovanni wrote a 5-part motet as well as mass on the premise to the transcript ‘Tu es pastor ovium’, went behind several months afterwards by one of his furthermost productions, the ‘Assumpta est Maria’ mass.
Sixtus V had projected to employ him as principal of the papal singers, but the negative response of the choral group to be administered by a layman, disallowed the implementation of his preparation. Throughout the preceding years of his Giovanni Palestrina’s life, he wrote his grand ‘Lamentations’, a compilation of motets, settings of liturgical chants, the famous ‘Stabat Mater’ for twofold chorale, litanies in respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as offertories for religious years.
His absolute works, in 33 volumes, edited by Franz Commer, Franz Espagne, Theodore deWitt, and from the 10th volume - by Haberl, are in print by Hartel and Breitkopf. Haberl presented the final volume of the concluded version to Pius X on Easter in 1908 (Gauldin 1995, pp. 45-46). Giovanni Palestrina was a tough and distinguished musician, demonstrating a pinnacle of technical faultlessness, but accentuates that there were also other composers working simultaneously with uniformly individual voices and somewhat diverse styles, even in the boundaries of soft polyphony, like Victoria and Lassus.
Giovanni’s implication lies not greatly in his unparalleled gifts of heart and mind, his imaginative and productive powers, as in the reality that he prepared them the means for expression in manners of the status of his individual spirit. Giovanni’s creations will forever stand out as a musical personification of the character of the victorious Church.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. (2016, Dec 15). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/giovanni-pierluigi-da-palestrina-essay
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