V
It has already been related how, even as early as 1322, the liberties which careless, ignorant, or sacrilegious singers took with the Roman service had called forth denunciations from the papal chair. The genius of the Netherland schools, dominating church music as it did for a space of two hundred years, was, like Janus, two-faced. On the one hand, it developed a musical technique so complete and perfect in form that any further progress without an entire change of principle seemed impossible; and, on the other, it fostered a dry, mathematical correctness that led, at its worst, to an utter disregard of expression and feeling. Only the genius of a Josquin or a Lasso rendered learning subservient to beauty of expression and carried out the true mission of art.
In Rome, however, no master had yet appeared who was great enough to force into the background all the unsanctioned innovations by which unscrupulous musicians sought to reach the popular taste. From the time of the return of the popes from Avignon (1377) Roman church music had been a continual source of dissatisfaction to the Curia. As has been pointed out, the plain-chant became more and more overladen with contrapuntal embellishments; the mass sometimes exhibited a labored canon worked over a long, slow cantus firmus, the different voices singing different sets of words entirely unconnected with each other. Sometimes, again, the ritual was enlivened by texts beginning with the words Baisez moy; Adieu, mes amours; or the much tortured Omme armé, of which the tunes were as worldly as the text. If these objections were lacking, another was likely to be present in the absurdly elaborate style, which rendered the words of so little importance that they might as well not have existed at all. The mass, ‘bristling with inept and distracting artifices,’ had lost all relation to the service it was supposed to illustrate. ‘It was usual for the most solemn phrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, or Agnus Dei to blend along the aisles of the basilica with the unedifying refrains of the lewd chansons of Flanders and Provence.’[123] In this manner the beautiful ritual was either degraded by pedants into a mere learned conundrum, or by idlers into a sacrilegious and profane exercise; and the reproofs of popes and councils had, so far, not availed to keep out these signs of deterioration, much less to lift church music to the level of the sister arts.
In this situation the Council of Trent was forced to recognize the degradation of music and to take up the question of a thorough and complete reform. In 1564 Pope Pius IV authorized a commission of eight cardinals to carry out the resolution of the council, whose complaints were mainly upon the two points indicated above—first, the melodies of the canti firmi were not only secular, but sung to secular words, while the other parts often sang something else; secondly, the style had become so excessively florid as to obscure the words, even when suitable, and render them of no account. Some of the members of the council, it is claimed, declared that it was better to forbid polyphony altogether than to suffer the existing abuses to continue. In the passionate desire for the purification of the ritual even Josquin’s works had been abandoned, not because of any lack of admiration for them, but because he shared necessarily in the general condemnation of all music not Gregorian. A modest and devoted composer, however, had already attracted the attention of two of the members of the pope’s commission, Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, and it was to him they now turned in their need.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born in 1526[124] of humble parentage in Praeneste, or Palestrina, a town in the campagna four hours from Rome. Early in life he came to the Imperial city, studied with one of the excellent masters resident there, and then returned to his native town to become organist in the cathedral. In 1547 he married the daughter of a tradesman, by whom he had several children. In 1551 Pope Julius III called him to Rome as choirmaster of the St. Giulia Chapel at St. Peter’s, where he succeeded Arcadelt. Three years later, after the publication of a volume of masses, dedicated to the pope, Palestrina received an appointment as singer in the papal choir. He had a poor voice, he was a layman, and married. Each one of these reasons was sufficient, according to the constitution of the Roman College, to forbid his appointment, and Palestrina hesitated in his acceptance of the post. Not wishing, however, to offend his powerful patron, and naturally desirous of obtaining a permanent position, he resigned his office at the St. Giulia chapel and entered the pontifical choir. This appointment was supposed to be for life, and the young singer may well have felt discouraged when, after four years, a reforming pope, Paul IV, dismissed him with two other married men. In place of his salary as singer the pope awarded him a pension of six scudi (less than six dollars) a month. With a wife and family such a reduction of income seemed nothing less than ruin to Palestrina, and, stricken with nervous fever, he took to his bed. A little more courage, however, might have served him better; for his dismissal did not spell ruin. In two months he was invited to fill the post of choir master at the Lateran, and his fortunes again brightened. He was able to keep his pension, together with the salary accorded him in his new position. After six years he was transferred to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained for ten years, his monthly salary being about sixteen dollars. In 1571 he was reappointed to his old office of chapel master at the Vatican.
Palestrina was chapel master at the Santa Maria Maggiore at the time of the appointment of the commission for the reform of church music. The Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, both active members, recommended that one more trial be made to harmonize religious requirements with the better taste of the people. A story has prevailed for centuries that Palestrina was requested to write a mass which should serve as a model of what the music of the sacred office should be, and that he submitted three works, which were first performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, before a group of clergy and singers. There was an immediate and enthusiastic verdict in favor of the compositions. The first two were good, and were sufficiently praised; but the third, the Missa Papæ Marcelli, as it was afterward called in honor of an earlier pope, was felt to be the epitome of all that was noble and dignified in ecclesiastical music, the crown and glory of the service itself. It was first sung in the papal chapel in 1565. In appreciation of the noble work, Palestrina was made official composer to the pontifical choir—a post created especially for him—and succeeding popes confirmed him in his office as long as he lived.
The story of the commission of cardinals and the musical reforms instituted by the Council of Trent has been so emphasized by some historians as to represent Palestrina as the ‘savior’ without whose services church music would virtually have ceased to exist. Such a view, however, requires some modification. Church music was not ‘saved’ by Palestrina in any such sense, though its debt to him is, nevertheless, almost inestimable. There was never any intention on the part of the cardinals to abolish it altogether from the church; but they had long been seeking a form and a style which should be intelligible, acceptable both to the devotee and the layman of cultivated musical taste, and suitable to the office which it holds in the sacred service. Ambros goes so far as to deny that there was any cause for such wholesale purification; but, in view of the facts cited, this is evidently an error. That the evil was widespread is proved by the action that provincial synods took, in following the example of the Council of Trent, Milan and Cambrai in 1565, Constance and Augsburg in 1567, Namur and Mechlin in 1570.
From the time of Josquin attempts had been made by one and another of the masters mentioned in this chapter to make a more suitable connection between text and melody, to simplify the contrapuntal writing, and to put expression into their art. To some extent, as has been seen, they accomplished their purpose. Josquin, Festa, Gombert, Morales, Rore, and especially Willaert and Lasso, have all left evidences of their noble endeavor in this direction. It was left to Palestrina, however, to achieve a high level of style, the excellence of which was reached by the other masters only in isolated instances; and to prove to the cardinals that the music of the church could be lifted to its true dignity. He differs, not in form, but in æsthetic principle, from his contemporaries; but it is precisely that difference which raised Palestrina to the pinnacle of fame.
The outward facts of his later life offer little that need detain the reader. Among his patrons were popes and princes, but they did not, on the whole, distinguish themselves by kindness or generosity to the musician. Jealousy among members of the choir with which he was so long connected was a constant source of unpleasantness, and his faithful work was meagrely rewarded. His largest regular earnings amounted to something like thirty dollars a month, and he apparently never dreamed of any revenue from the sale of his works. Indeed, it is unlikely that any very substantial reward ever came to him with his added honors as a composer. Neither could he have added much to his gains by teaching, for in the whole course of his life he taught but seven private pupils, three of whom were his own sons. Continuous poverty was accompanied by domestic griefs of the deepest kind. Three sons, all giving promise of inheriting the father’s intellect and genius, died one after another; the wife with whom he was especially happy died in 1580; and the one remaining son became a profligate and worthless spendthrift. It may be added that not long after the death of his first wife he married a wealthy widow and so was well provided for till the end of his life.
Pierluigi da Palestrina.
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 thirty madrigali spirituali for 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.