Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Nationality: Italian

Born: Praeneste, (Modern Palestrina), c.1525

Died: Rome, 2 February 1594

Type of music: Polyphonic Sacred music

Main works: Missa Papae Marcelli (1567), Missa assumpta est Maria (1567), Missa brevis (1570), Stabat Mater (1590)

Pierluigi left Praeneste as a child for nearby Rome and became a choirboy at the Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggoire. He also studied music here between 1537 and 1539. Pierluigi's career then properly began in Rome where he was an Organist and choir master. In 1552, he became the choir master at the Julian chapel, the training school for the Sistine choir. After 3 years he was dismissed by a new pope because he was married, so he then succeeded Lassus as the choir master at the church of St John Lateran.

Pierluigi's musical output includes 105 masses, together with roughly 375 motets for between 4 and 12 voices and many other liturgical works.

He is another composer who achieved the balance between sacred and secular music. His secular music includes two books of Madrigals (One published in 1555 and the other in 1586).

A trademark of Pierluigi's music was the use dissonant notes on the weak beats in a bar. This produced an overall sound of consonant polyphony and given that Palestrina was a leading composer in Europe, this sound is considered to be definitive of late Renaissance music. His continual development in compositional style is shown in his masses. The mass 'Missa sine nomine' was influential to J.S.Bach who studied and performed it while writing his own mass in B minor.

'The most frivolous and gallant words are set to exactly the same music as those of the bible, the truth is he could not write any other kind of music” - Berlioz, Memoirs.




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