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Updated: June 24, 2025
The only thing I regret is not having heard a little music before I came here. But I've heard of Wagner; you sing Wagner, don't you, Miss Innes?" "Yes, I sing little else. 'Fidelio' " "Ah, I know some of the music. Do you sing " Sister Mary John hummed a few bars. "Yes, I sing that." "Well, I shall hear you sing to-day. I've been wishing to go to St. Joseph's to hear Palestrina.
By the blessed cross, your Lords pay a compliment to our honour, to leave us such lovely hostages, or else, God's truth, they are ungrateful husbands. So, madam," turning sharp round to the wife of Gianni Colonna, "your husband is fled to Palestrina; yours, Signora Orsini, to Marino; yours with him, fair bride of Frangipani, ye came hither to . But ye are sacred even from a word!"
The final decision was made to rest on a new composition of Palestrina, who was permitted to demonstrate that the higher forms of musical art were consistent with the solemnities of church worship. All eyes were directed to the young musician, for the very existence of his art was at stake.
There, absurdly represented in an austere black cassock, he stands in the following frieze of great figures: Dante, Whitman, Molière, Gutenberg, Tyndale, Washington, Penn, Columbus, Moses, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Longfellow and Palestrina. I believe that there was some rumpus as to whether Walt should be included; but, anyway, there he is.
In the Middle Ages the one showed itself in councils like those of Nicea and Ephesus, in political popes like Gregory VII. and Innocent III., in Isidorian decretals, excommunications, interdicts, tortures, indulgences; the other in our mediaeval cathedrals, in the poetry of a Dante, the paintings of a Giotto and a Raphael, the sculpture of a Michael Angelo, the music of a Palestrina, and our politician might then ask himself which he thought had been the more beneficial as a social force.
This showed mainly two tendencies: first, one towards expression of poetic feeling and towards definiteness of that expression, the other towards the entirely new technique which was to supersede the contrapuntal technique of Byrde and Palestrina. This technique proved admirable for vocal polyphony how admirable we have all the Flemish and Italian and English contrapuntal music to show.
"Well," he said, "Monsignor Mostyn, the great Roman prelate, who has just arrived from Rome, and is staying with the Jesuits, shares all my views regarding the necessity of a musical reformation. He believes that a revival of Palestrina and Vittoria would be of great use to the Catholic cause in England.
A positive hum went round, and not an eye but was fixed on the little Orientals. When, however, the organ was for a while superseded and the violas and violins quivered under the plangent melody of Palestrina, our roving attention was fixed and held. I am not sure that the Andrea in the cloisters is not the best of all his work.
In the Sixteenth Century it was not regarded as admissible at all, for one hears the two notes si and fa simultaneously and this seems intolerable to the ear. They used to call it the Diabolus in musica. Palestrina was the first to employ it in an anthem.
A musical historian, Heimsoeth, says of him: "He is the brilliant master of the North, great and sublime in sacred composition, of inexhaustible invention, displaying much breadth, variety, and depth in his treatment; he delights in full and powerful harmonies, yet, after all owing to an existence passed in journeys, as well as service at court, and occupied at the same time with both sacred and secular music he came short of that lofty, solemn tone which pervades the works of the great master of the South, Palestrina, who with advancing years restricted himself more and more to church music."
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