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Updated: June 24, 2025
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.
At any rate he twice went to Germany without being at any pains to meet him, and once, if not twice, refused Bach's invitation. ii Rockstro says that Handel keeps much more closely to the old Palestrina rules of counterpoint than Bach does, and that when Handel takes a licence it is a good bold one taken rarely, whereas Bach is niggling away with small licences from first to last.
Later Bach developed counterpoint very much more in the modern way. He did with polyphony for the piano and organ much the same as Palestrina did for the voice. There have never lived greater masters than these in the art of polyphonic music. There is still another form of writing which is neither strictly harmonic, nor strictly contrapuntal, it is a combination of both.
That is the man whose name in English would be John Peter Lewis, or as his father called him, Giovanni Pier Luigi, who was born at Palestrina, at some date between 1514 and 1530, and who died in the fulness of his fame February 2, 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty years old, and was, it seems, just getting into print for the first time.
Palestrina lived at a time when the music of the church was very poor, so poor, indeed, that the clergy could no longer endure it. Palestrina, however, devoted himself earnestly to composing music strictly adapted to the church use. The parts were all melodic, and woven together with such great skill that they yet remain masterpieces of contrapuntal writing.
On this subject he says: "Where shall we find the quickening life that will give us fresh forms and formulas? The source is not really difficult to discover. Do not let us seek it anywhere but in the decorative art of the plain-song singers, in the architectural art of the age of Palestrina, and in the expressive art of the great Italians of the seventeenth century.
"Now that we have met," said Adrian, filling up the silence, "wouldst thou say further, 'that we should not part? Trust me, dearest, that is the hope that animates my heart. It was but to enjoy these brief bright moments with thee, that I delayed my departure to Palestrina. Could I but hope to bring my young cousin into amity with thy brother, no barrier would prevent our union.
She thought of the organ, and descending to the art gallery, played Bach, Palestrina, and Stainer for an hour; then suddenly she started from the console, with a sharp, impatient movement of her head. "Why do I play this stupid music?" she exclaimed. She called a servant and asked: "Has Mr. Jadwin come in yet?" "Mr. Gretry just this minute telephoned that Mr. Jadwin would not be home to-night."
She had cheered him when he came home depressed after a talk with the impossible Father Gordon, as she had since cheered Wotan in his deep brooding over the doom of the gods predicted by Wala, when the dusky foe of love should beget a son in hate. Wotan had always been her father; Palestrina, Walhalla, and the stupid Jesuits, what were they? She had often tried to work out the allegory.
Parker's quasi-operatic tendency. Now he is a modern. He has shown in this very work his appreciation and his mastery of antique religious musical art. But as a modern he is compelled to feel the force of the dramatic in religious music.... But his most far-reaching, his most exalted and rapt conception of the bliss beyond compare is expressed in the language of Palestrina and Bach."
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