Palestrina - Missa Dum complerentur (Martin Baker) (2003)

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Palestrina - Missa Dum complerentur (Martin Baker) (2003)

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Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (his name derives from a town not far from Rome) was probably born in 1525 or 1526. After seven years as maestro di cappella at the cathedral of his native town, he went to Rome at the summons of Pope Julius III to become chapelmaster of the Cappella Giulia at St Peter’s. He later became a singer at the Sistine Chapel but was dismissed by Paul IV on account of his unacceptable married status. After other appointments, Palestrina returned to the Julian Chapel in 1571 as chapel­master. He died in 1594.
Though he is still frequently thought of today as the grand master of the polyphonic style, as Christopher Reynolds has pointed out, it is wrong to view him as a conservative: ‘Neither his contemporaries, nor musicians of the following generation, perceived him as such. Agostino Aggazzari went so far as to name Palestrina and the Council of Trent as sources of the seconda prattica (1607), a claim endorsed by Michael Praetorius (1619)’ (see Christopher Reynolds: ‘Rome: a City of Rich Contrast’, Man and Music, volume 2, The Renaissance, London, 1989, pp. 95–96). Palestrina was highly regarded and much published in his own lifetime. His total output comprises a hundred and four certainly attributed Masses, over three hundred and seventy-five motets, sixty-eight offertories, at least sixty-five hymns, thirty-five Magnificats, four (possibly five) sets of Lamentations for Holy Week, and over a hundred and forty madrigals, both secular and spiritual. His publi­cations bear dedications to men of great power: discerning and wealthy patrons of the arts such as Guglielmo Gonzaga, foreign princes and potentates (there are two books of Masses inscribed to Philip II of Spain) and, increasingly in his later years, popes.
This album is built around the theme of Pentecost, for which Palestrina wrote some of his most lyrically exuberant music. The celebrated motet Dum complerentur was pub­lished in the Liber primus motettorum, containing works for five to seven voices, printed at Rome in 1569. It is a vivid pictorial evocation of the ‘rushing wind’ of Pentecost, the sudden outpouring of the Holy Spirit described in the Acts of the Apostles. Palestrina uses the repeated ‘Alleluias’ of the text as a cue for a flowing musical figure precisely suggestive of this, and the exultant abundance of musical ideas during the course of the motet—each phrase has its own distinctive musical motive—similarly reflects the Spirit ‘blowing where it listeth’…