How Palestrina Became The Savior of Western Music?

Imagine a world without Western Music!

According to legends, if it weren't for Palestrina, we would have never known Western music. In this blog, we are going to discuss who was Palestrina and how he became a legend who saved western music. 

If you are looking forward to attending Western Music Classes, you must, at least, know this legend. 

Who was Palestrina? 

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, an Italian Renaissance composer, was known as the 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. His work was considered as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony, and he had a great influence on the development of music in Europe; be it church music, secular music, or counterpoint.

Palestrina devoted most of his life working for the Catholic church. However, during his last years, he was able to publish many of his compositions. He was regarded as one of the most prominent singers of his time, but he became more popular when his story was circulated as a legend. 

It was only after his death that people started discussing how he was responsible for saving polyphonic music from being condemned by the Council of Trent. It is due to these discussions that Palestrina went down in history as being the saviour of polyphony. In some cases, he is also referred to as the saviour of church music, and even the saviour of Western music.

To understand how he attained this reputation, we must have a basic understanding of a few related aspects:

Musical Terms

To fully understand the importance of Palestrina's legend, we must know the following musical terms:

Tonal Harmony

Formation of chords and chord progressions that have a tonal center through simultaneous pitches.

Homophony

The rhythmic movement of a group of musical voices that usually move together. 

Polyphony

The rhythmic movement of a group of musical voices that usually move independently of each other.

If we look at the history of Western Music, we will realize that Polyphony gave birth to Homophony, which in turn, gave birth to Tonal Harmony. In short, Tonal Harmony was the ultimate result that arose from Polyphony. 

The reason that we are discussing Tonal Harmony is that it is still widely used, and most of the harmonies that we hear today were based on Tonal Harmony. Another interesting fact about Tonal Harmony is that its use is not just limited to using harmony in classical music. Instead, it also encompasses using harmony in Jazz, Latin, and Rock Music among several other genres. 

The Council of Trent

The Reformation of the Church was a major historical event that was also affecting Palestrina's life. The members of the catholic church began to meet in 1545 to discuss the Protestant reformation while also planning a counter-reformation to slow Protestant growth. 

Apart from the above purposes, several other topics related to church were discussed during these meetings. One of the many topics was church music!

There were many members of the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent who wanted to get rid of Polyphony, which was the primary compositional style of Renaissance church music. Instead, they wanted to refer back to writing chants.

The main reason behind the collective dislike for Polyphony was that the text in the music cited rhythmically independent voices which were quite complex and difficult to understand.

The Legend 

While this was happening, Palestrina was a choirmaster or organist in Rome, and he got the information that the church was planning to condemn Polyphony because the sacred texts are difficult to understand in Polyphonic music. 

To this, Palestrina argued that obscurity was the fault of composers and not Polyphony. He even wrote Missa Papae Marcelli (The Pope Marcellus Mass) to prove his point. In fact, he even convinced Pope Marcellus Mass to perform for certain members of the council. The performance of the Pope convinced the council to not condemn Polyphony and instead ask composers to write music in the new style created by Palestrina. 

This is how Palestrina became the “Savior of Western Music”. Now, if you wish to enroll your child for live western singing classes, PiggyRide is a great option to consider because we offer multiple sessions where your child can learn western singing.