Palestrina was a singer in, or choirmaster of, many of Rome’s most famous churches and chapels, including the Sistine (Papal) Chapel. He lived in the repressive atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation movement, launched by the pope in 1545 to combat a growing revolt in northern Europe against Catholicism as then practiced. (That revolt was the Protestant Reformation.) In his youth Palestrina wrote secular compositions, some of which were widely popular, but later he recanted and apologized for them. He composed over a hundred Masses; some of the earliest of them were published with a highly symbolic illustration of the kneeling composer presenting his music to the pope.

Because singing is so powerful a force in religion, as we noted on page 44, societies have felt a need to control it carefully. Christianity has witnessed periodic reforms to prune church services of musical features that came to be seen as extravagant. The Counter-Reformation staged just such a reform. Palestrina’s most famous composition, the Pope Marcellus Mass, was supposed to have convinced the pope and his council that composers of complicated polyphonic church music could still set the sacred words clearly enough that the congregation could hear them. Partly because of this legend, and partly because of the serenity and careful control of his musical style, Palestrina became the most revered Renaissance composer for later centuries. His works are still treasured by Catholic choir directors today.

Gloria A section from the Gloria of the Pope Marcellus Mass, the “Qui tollis,” shows how the High Renaissance a cappella style changed after the time of Josquin. Compared with Josquin’s setting of these same words in his Pange lingua Mass (see page 65), Palestrina’s setting employs much more homophony. Apart from some fuzziness on a few individual words, only the last and longest line of Palestrina’s composition uses polyphony; this contrast makes for a fine climax.

Beyond this, we notice at once that vocal sonority is of major importance in Palestrina’s setting. He uses a larger and richer choir than Josquin — six vocal parts, rather than four — and keeps alternating between one and another subgroup, or semichoir, drawn from the total choir. Thus the first phrase, in high voices, is answered by the second, in low voices, and so on. The whole choir does not sing all together until the word suscipe.

What matters most to Palestrina are the rich, shifting tone colors and harmonies, which he uses to produce a generalized spiritual aura, sometimes ethereal, sometimes ecstatic. And with the aims of the Counter-Reformation in mind, he is certainly careful to declaim the words very clearly.