Transcript CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 25
ROME AND THE MUSIC
OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
THE RENAISSANCE COMES TO ROME
• During the fifteenth century the papacy reversed
the death spiral into which the city of Rome had
plunged. The pope returned to Rome and began to
resurrect and rebuild the antiquities of the ancient.
Pope Sixtus IV built the Sistine Chapel at the
Vatican between 1477 and 1481. Later popes
(Julius II, Leo X, and Paul III) began to erect a
new St. Peter’s Basilica, which took more than a
century to complete.
A joust in progress inside the gardens of the
papal apartments at the Vatican
The Sistine Chapel is at the top. Workers constructing the new St.
Peter’s Basilica can be seen in the background at the upper right.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
• The established Roman Catholic Church was shaken
to its very foundation by the Protestant Reformation.
In response, it began to reform itself, curtailing the
sale of church offices and indulgences. Nudity in
religious art, musical instruments within the church,
secular tunes in the middle of polyphonic Masses, and
married church singers were now deemed
inappropriate to a truly pious environment. The
movement of spiritual and administrative reform by
the Catholic Church is called the CounterReformation. Its spirit was institutionalized in the
Council of Trent (1545-1563), a congress of
reforming bishops and cardinals held at Trento, Italy.
The Council of Trent prescribed a more restrained
style of religious music, one in which the sacred text
was clearly audible.
GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA PALESTRINA
• No music better represents the spirit of the
Counter-Reformation than that of Giovanni Pierluigi
da Palestrina (1526/1526-1594). Palestrina sought
to effect in music the dictates—careful, restrained
part-writing and clear declamation--of the Council
of Trent, most notably in his Mass for Pope
Marcellus (1567).
The interior of the Sistine Chapel
The high altar and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment are at the far end;
the balcony for the singers, which at various times included Josquin
des Prez and Palestrina, is at the lower right, just on the other side of
the choir screen.
PALESTRINA’S STYLE
• For part of his career Palestrina was employed in
the pope’s private chapel, called the Sistine
Chapel. Here no instruments, not even an
organ, were used to accompany religious singing.
Thus the style of unaccompanied vocal music
came be called “a cappella Sistina” (in the style of
the Sistine Chapel) and eventually simply a
cappella. Palestrina’s music is invariably
performed a cappella. Palestrina usually assigns
each phrase of text its own musical motive, which
is given, in turn, to each voice. A motive used in
this fashion is called a point of imitation.
Here Palestrina concludes a section based on one point of imitation
and begins another point with the text “Pleni sunt coeli.”
THE VATICAN AND ST. PETER’S BASILICA
• The Vatican, the compound in which the pope
resides today, derives its name from the old Roman
name of the hill (mons Vaticanus) on which it sits.
The largest church in the Vatican, indeed anywhere
in the world, is St. Peter’s Basilica (a basilica is
an especially important church that happens not to
be a cathedral). The present St. Peter’s Basilica
was built during the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. It honors and protects the relics of St.
Peter, the founder of the Catholic Church in Rome.
The Gospel declaration (Matthew 16:18-19) “Tu es
Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam
mean” (“You are Peter and upon this rock I will
build my church”) was played out at the Vatican in
art, architecture, and music.
The high altar of St. Peter’s
Basilica and, above it, the
Latin inscription beginning Tu
es Petrus (You are Peter).
The same theme was
incorporated in a Mass and
three motets by Palestrina.
PARODY TECHNIQUE
• Composers of the sixteenth century including
Palestrina often looked for a musical model to serve
as a point of departure for a new composition.
Borrowing not merely a pre-existing melody from
another work, but a polyphonic complex of several
measures is called parody technique. Here the
composer who borrows is simply doing honor to, or
emulating, the work of a previous master. In his
Missa Tu es Petrus (c1585) Palestrina builds upon
his own six-voice motet Tu es Petrus. In this case,
Palestrina is simply emulating himself.
The beginning of Palestrina’s six-voice motet Tu es Petrus and the
Kyrie of the parody Mass that he based upon it, his Missa Tu es
Petrus.
SPANISH MUSIC DURING THE
COUNTER-REFORMATION
• The country besides Italy that experienced the
Counter-Reformation most intensely was Spain.
Many important Spanish composers of the
sixteenth century worked in Rome for part of their
careers: Cristóbal de Morales (c1500-1553),
Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), and Tomás Luis
de Victoria (1548-1611). Victoria is the Spanish
Counter-Reformation composer par excellence. His
dark, austere, somewhat mysterious sound
provides a musical equivalent to the paintings of
his exact contemporary, El Greco (1541-1614).
Like El Greco, who painted almost no secular
subjects, Victoria wrote no secular music.
El Greco’s “Christ Clasping the Cross”
(1600-1605)
The austere, mystical style of El Greco embodies
the spirit of the Counter-Reformation.