Palestrina left a great mass of compositions, all glowing with the
fire of genius, only part of which have been published. His simple
life was devoted to musical labour, and passed without romance,
diversion, or excitement. His works are marked by utter absence of
contrast and colour. Without dramatic movement, they are full of
melody and majesty--a majesty serene, unruffled by the slightest
suggestion of human passion. Voices are now and then used for
individual expression, but either in unison or harmony. As in all
great church music, the chorus is the key of the work. The general
judgment of musicians agrees that repose and enjoyment are more
characteristic of this music than that of any other master. The choir
of the Sistine chapel, by the inheritance of long-cherished tradition,
is the most perfect exponent of the Palestrina music. During the
annual performance of the "Improperie" and "Lamentations," the altar
and walls are despoiled of their pictures and ornaments, and
everything is draped in black. The cardinals dressed in serge, no
incense, no candles: the whole scene is a striking picture of trouble
and desolation. The faithful come in two by two and bow before the
cross, while the sad music reverberates through the chapel arches.
This powerful appeal to the imagination, of course, lends greater
power to the musical effect. But all minds who have felt the lift and
beauty of these compositions have acknowledged how far they soar above
words and creeds, and the picturesque framework of a liturgy.
Mendelssohn, in a letter to Zelter on the Palestrina music as heard in
the Sistine chapel, says that nothing could exceed the effect of the
blending of the voices, the prolonged tones gradually merging from one
note and chord to another, softly swelling, decreasing, at last dying
out. "They understand," he writes, "how to bring out and place each
trait in the most delicate light, without giving it undue prominence;
one chord gently melts into another. The ceremony at the same time is
solemn and imposing; deep silence prevails in the chapel, only broken
by the re-echoing Greek 'holy,' sung with unvarying sweetness and
expression." The composer Paer was so impressed with the wonderful
beauty of the music and the performance, that he exclaimed, "This is
indeed divine music, such as I have long sought for, and my
imagination was never able to realise, but which, I knew, must exist."
Palestrina's versatility and genius enabled him to lift ecclesiastical
music out of the rigidity and frivolity characterising on either hand
the opposing ranks of those that preceded him, and to embody the
religious spirit in works of the highest art. He transposed the
ecclesiastical melody (_canto fermo_) from the tenor to the soprano
(thus rendering it more intelligible to the ear), and created that
glorious thing choir song, with its refined harmony, that noble music
of which his works are the models, and the papal chair the oracle. No
individual pre-eminence is ever allowed to disturb and weaken the
ideal atmosphere of the whole work. However Palestrina's successors
have aimed to imitate his effects, they have, with the exception of
Cherubini, failed for the most part; for every peculiar genus of art
is the result of innate genuine inspiration, and the spontaneous
growth of the age which produces it. As a parent of musical form he
was the protagonist of Italian music, both sacred and secular, and
left an admirable model, which even the new school of opera so soon to
rise found it necessary to follow in the construction of harmony. The
splendid and often licentious music of the theatre built its most
worthy effects on the work of the pious composer, who lived, laboured,
and died in an atmosphere of almost anchorite sanctity.
The great disciples of his school, Nannini and Allegri, continued his
work, and the splendid "Miserere" of the latter was regarded as such
an inestimable treasure that no copy of it was allowed to go out of
the Sistine chapel, till the infant prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, wrote it
out from the memory of a single hearing.
_PICCINI, PAISIELLO, AND CIMAROSA._