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| Musical Musings: Composers | Page 3 |
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Giovanni Pierluigi da PalestrinaPart III: His Later YearsPius IV created for Palestrina the office of "Composer of the Papal Chapel" with an increased salary. In this office he had only one successor, Felice Anerio. When in 1571 Giovanni Annimuccia, choirmaster at St. Peter's, died, Palestrina became his successor, thus being connected with the papal choir and St. Peter's at the same time. An attempt of his jealous and intriguing colleagues in the papal chapel to have him dismissed by Pius V was unsuccessful. During this year he wrote a number of motets and laudi spirituali for the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Besides the duties of choirmaster at St. Peter's, composer to the papal chapel, director of music at St. Philip's Oratory, he also taught at the school of music of Giovanni Maria Nanini. In addition, Gregory XIII commissioned him to prepare a new version of the Gregorian chant. His exact share in this edition, afterwards published under the name of "editio Medicaea" because it was printed in a press belonging to Cardinal de' Medici, and what was prepared by his pupil Giovanni Guidetti, Felice Anerio, and Francesco Suriano, has long been a matter of controversy. The undertaking was not particularly congenial to Palestrina and kept him from original production, his real field of activity. His wife's death in 1580 affected him profoundly. His sorrow found expression in two compositions, Psalm 136, By the waters of Babylon, and a motet on the words "O Lord, when Thou shalt come to judge the world, how shall I stand before the face of Thy anger, my sins frighten me, woe to me, O Lord". With these he intended to close his creative activity, but with the appointment in 1581 as director of music to Prince Buoncompagni, nephew of Gregory XIII, he began perhaps the most brilliant period of his long life.Besides sacred madrigals, motets, psalms, hymns in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and Masses, he produced the work which brought him the title of "Prince of Music", twenty-nine motets on the words from the Canticle of Canticles. According to his own statement, Palestrina intended to reproduce in his composition the Divine love expressed in the Canticle, so that his own heart might be touched by a spark thereof. For the enthronement of Sixtus V, he wrote a five-part motet and mass on the theme to the text Tu es pastor ovium, followed a few months later by one of his greatest productions, the Mass Assumpta est Maria. Sixtus had intended to appoint him director of the papal choir, but the refusal of the singers to be directed by a layman, prevented the execution of his plan. During the last years of his life Palestrina wrote his great Lamentations, settings of the liturgical hymns, a collection of motets, the well-know Stabat Mater for double chorus, litanies in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the offertories for the ecclesiastical year. His complete works, in thirty-three volumes, edited by Theodore deWitt, Franz Espagne, Franz Commer, and from the tenth volume on, by Haberl, are published by Breitkopf and Hartel; Msgr. Haberl presented the last volume of the completed edition to Pius X on Easter Monday, 1908. Palestrina's significance lies not so much in his unprecedented gifts of mind and heart, his creative and constructive powers, as in the fact that he made them the medium for the expression in tones of the state of his own soul, which, trained and formed by St. Philip, was attuned to and felt with the Church. His creations will for all time stand forth as the musical embodiment of the spirit of the counter-reformation, the triumphant Church.
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