Palestrina Revealed: Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College released a CD presenting previously unrecorded works from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
Thanks to pope Clemens VIII
We can still enjoy the works of Palestrina all thanks to an intervention from Pope Clemens VIII, so the story goes.
On February 9th 1594, the singers of the Cappella Sistina assembled in the papal appartments to perform a motet to entertain Pope Clement VIII (r. 1592–1605) and his guests. According to the chapel diarist, the pope complained that the chosen motet, Giovanni Maria Nanino’s double-choir In diademate capitis, was set to an obscure text and the words could not be understood. He enquired what had become of the unpublished works of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–94), who had died exactly a week previously. On learning that the composer’s papers were in the care of his surviving son, Iginio Pierluigi, the pope expressed a wish that Palestrina’s published music be reprinted and unknown works brought to light.
Dirigent Graham Ross (photo: Benjamin Ealovega)
Just three weeks later, the Roman printing house of Francesco Coattino published Palestrina’s Seventh Book of Masses (1594), which had been finalised and in production at the time of the composer’s death. Among the masses in this first posthumous collection is Palestrina’s four-voice Missa Emendemus in melius.
Memor esto verbi tui
Among those published in the Eighth Book of Masses (1599) is the five-voice Missa Memor esto verbi tui, a parody mass based on Palestrina’s own motet, a setting of Psalm 119: 49–56 (published in the Second Book of Motets, 1572).
The motet Ad te levavi oculos meos is one of Palestrina’s eight surviving triple-choir motets, one for the Cappella Giulia and the other probably for the Chiesa Nuova, the headquarters of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Like many Roman polychoral motets, Ad te levavi begins with long paragraphs from each choir in turn, followed by faster exchanges and different vocal groupings.
Giulia Chapel
The album opens with a five-voice setting of the Magnificat, the canticle sung daily at Vespers. This is one of sixteen alternatim settings transmitted in a manuscript choirbook copied for use by the Cappella Giulia, the choir of the Vatican basilica, probably in the 1580s during Palestrina’s long tenure as maestro di cappella. This exquisite setting demonstrates some of the finest qualities of Palestrina’s later period, combining the clarity and simplicity of the psalm-tone cantus firmus with extraordinarily rich and varied textures.
CD “Palestrina Revealed” HMM 905375
Playlist
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca. 1525-1594)
1 | Magnificat secundi toni a 5
William Byrd (ca. 1539/40-1623)
2 | Emendemus in melius a 5 3’57
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Missa Emendemus in melius a 4
3 | I. Kyrie
4 | II. Gloria
5 | III. Credo
6 | IV. Sanctus – Benedictus
7 | V. Agnus Dei I 1’58
8 | VI. Agnus Dei II a
Robert Whyte (ca. 1538-1574)
9 | Ad te levavi oculos meos a 6 6’53
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
10 | Ad te levavi oculos meos a 12 * 3’52
William Mundy (ca. 1529-1591)
11 | Memor esto verbi tui a 6
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
12 | Memor esto verbi tui a 5 *
Performing: Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, conducted by Graham Ross
