Palestrina: Missa L'homme Arme / Cavazzoni: Ricercari

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Cat No: 8553315

Release Date: 01 December 2000

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099431521

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: PALESTRINA

Description
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/6-1594) Missa L'homme armé (a 5 voci)Girolamo Cavazzoni (c. 1525-after 1577): RicercariGiovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina occupies an unrivalled position in the history of music and in particular in Catholic church music. His style of counterpoint, taken as a model for imitation by later generations, epitomized the aesthetic aims of the Counter-Reformation, the perfection of the stile antico, and has had an even wider influence as an essential element in the traditional teaching of compositional technique.Palestrina, his name taken from his presumed place of birth in 1525 or 1526, spent the greater part of his life in the nearby city of Rome. His early training was as a chorister at the basilica of S Maria Maggiore, where he had a chance to learn something of the current Franco-Flemish musical tradition at first hand. By 1544 he was serving as organist in Palestrina but in 1551 he returned to Rome, through the agency of Pope Julius III, previously Bishop of Palestrina. Here he was appointed director of music at the Cappella Giulia at St Peter's, established by Pope Julius II. His first book of Masses was published in 1554, with a dedication to the Pope Julius III, and the following year he joined the Cappella Sistina, but the death of the Pope and three weeks later of his successor Pope Marcellus was followed by the enforcement of the rule of celibacy for members of the Sistine Chapel, under the rule of Pope Paul IV, and Palestrina's dismissal, with other married members of the chapel. He now became maestro di cappella of St John Lateran, retaining his position until his resignation in 1560. A period of employment at S Maria Maggiore followed, with the opportunity to undertake further work in the service of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este and to enhance still further his reputation as a composer. From 1571 until his death in 1594 he was again at the Cappella Giulia, remaining there in spite of attempts by other patrons to induce him to enter their service.The Council of Trent, assembled in 1545 to bring about a reformation of ecclesiastical and liturgical practice, reflected common humanist aims in its insistence on the clarity of words in liturgical music. In popular legend Palestrina has been credited with saving polyphony, against its opponents in the Council who favoured plainchant, by his composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli. Whatever the truth of the story, the Mass certainly demonstrates the possibility of intelligibility of the familiar words in liturgical music in more florid styles. His knowledge of and interest in the traditional plainchant of the Church is exemplified in the task he undertook in 1577 of revising the chant of the Graduale Romanum and the Antiphonale, work that he left unfinished at his death.The fifteenth-century secular song L 'homme arme had particularly wide currency over a period from the middle of the fifteenth century until the early seventeenth century as a cantus firmu
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