Latest news with #Palestrina
Spectator
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The Renaissance master who rescued polyphonic music
Last month I watched conductor Harry Christophers blow through what sounded like an arthritic harmonica but in fact was a pure-toned pitch pipe, which handed the singers of his vocal group the Sixteen their starting notes. Then the Kyrie from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Regina coeli unfolded inside the resonant splendour of St James's Church in Mayfair and, 500 years after his birth, I grasped why Palestrina, maestro di cappella of St Peter's Basilica in Rome from 1551-5, still has the capacity to surprise. Christophers and the Sixteen are celebrating this greatest of the late Renaissance composers in his anniversary year with three concerts promoted by the Wigmore Hall but held at St James's: this music lives or dies by the acoustic in which it is heard. That first concert returned me to my days as a music student trying my best to unpick, then put back together, Palestrina scores, always with a sinking feeling that I might as well be unscrambling Einstein's theory of relativity; this was advanced mathematics, not music. The point was never made that Palestrina laid down rules because he had listened carefully to the acoustics of churches not dissimilar to St James's, then conceived a compositional approach that led him to create music of unfailing luminosity. A second anniversary concert on 18 June will focus on Palestrina's music depicting the Last Supper, and then there's a gap until the final instalment of the series on 22 October. The very idea that anyone attending these concerts might have heard weak links in his robust chains of sound would have filled Palestrina with dread and that's where those rules came in. In a Palestrina score every note in every chord needed to have its function; notes had to arrive from somewhere and land somewhere else. Doubling the same dissonance across different voices – which would have temporarily dimmed a chord – was banned. Notes moving in consecutive sequence between different voices – diluting the rich texture by having one part existing as a mini-me shadow of another – was similarly banned. It's a checklist of compositional terms and conditions that goes on and on, but out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom. Lassus and Victoria – also associated with Rome and the papal chapel – composed magnificent music, but no composer of the period wrote as prolifically and with such consistent finesse as Palestrina. He matters historically, too, because, without his brilliance, Renaissance choral music might have been allowed to wither away. Growing up in Rome, he had his first musical training in the city, and the Catholic church formed him as composer and thinker. By the time of the Council of Trent – which, beginning in 1545, was intended to give church orthodoxy a spring-clean in the light of the Protestant Reformation – the fear was that church music had become too fancy for its own good. People were in danger of enjoying the sound of the music at the expense of engaging with its liturgical texts. Deep in the mythology is the suggestion that, in 1564, Palestrina wrote his Pope Marcellus Mass in response to a papal request for something that might prove otherwise. Everything came out right. Palestrina's pristine vocal lines didn't strain any voices and, most importantly, allowed for easy comprehension of the text. Had he failed, the church might have stopped polyphonic music altogether – but instead his piece became the prototype for choral music of which the church could approve. For his efforts, Palestrina became known as 'the saviour of music'. Out of this intense discipline Palestrina found enormous creative freedom Today Pope Marcellus Mass, and his Stabat Mater setting, remain Palestrina's most popular and often performed works. When we spoke a few weeks after that first anniversary concert, Harry Christophers was keen to emphasise just how much Palestrina exists – 'there are 104 masses, but only three or four of them are regularly performed'. There are currently nine Palestrina CDs on the Sixteen's own Coro label, with more in the pipeline. But even Christophers took time to work Palestrina out. 'For years I didn't touch his music,' he confides, somewhat to my surprise, 'because as a conductor you want to interpret. This music was intended originally to adorn the liturgy, but now we're taking it out of its liturgical context, presenting it as great music. Palestrina is the master craftsman and I couldn't impose myself on it too much. I had to learn to keep out the way and let the music speak for itself.' Soprano Kirsty Hopkins, who has been a mainstay of the Sixteen for the past 16 years, remains in awe of Palestrina's empathy for voices. 'He tops my list of composers who make singing incredibly easy,' she tells me. 'He understood instinctively how long a phrase can be and how much breath you need in between phrases, so as not to be forced to snatch a sneaky breath. This means we can focus entirely on giving texts their meaning.' As a listener the challenge, and indeed the joy, of Palestrina lies in tracking how his weave of interlinking voices, moving inexorably through time, keeps turning on its axes. It's tempting to categorise Palestrina as a 'classical composer', forgetting that he was writing two centuries before Haydn and Mozart, and that his musical vocabulary inhabits whole other worlds. Abrupt shifts of harmony and key changes, the narrative juice of 18th- and 19th-century music, are entirely absent from Palestrina. His rhythms roll out of the stresses and inclines of liturgical text; you'll never hear dislocating rhythmic jolts or, heaven forfend, any beat-shifting syncopations. The fascination lies almost entirely in following the network of association between intertwining vocal lines as they imitate each other's paths. But Palestrina often feels like a kindred spirit to the free flow of sound that emerged from 20th-century composers such as Cage and Ligeti. The stylistic distance from the dominant 18th- and 19th-century compositional traditions has often led to nods of recognition between the early-music and modern-music ghettos. Think about how that supposed 1950s enfant terrible Peter Maxwell Davies built compositions around Henry Purcell, or of David Munrow – the nearest thing the British early-music scene had to a rock star – recording Rattlebone and Ploughjack in 1976 with Ashley Hutchings of folksy rock group Fairport Convention. Christophers helps clarify the reasons for this closeness. Ligeti – who heard music as continuums of jittery, snaking texture – often noted in his scores that bar lines were strictly for the practicality of rehearsal so that musicians could find their place. Palestrina didn't use bars either, albeit because the convention didn't exist. Christophers tells me that modern editions come with added bar lines, but merely as a rehearsal guide, which leads me to ask about the material the Sixteen use to perform from. Is finding reliable sources the stuff of nightmares? 'In Victorian times, editors would take out clashes between major and minor chords, which was a real feature of his style, assuming they were a mistake,' he winces. 'Modern editions tend to be very good though. Some things singers would have done naturally back in the day, like automatically flattening or sharpening notes, because they knew the language of the music, mean that sometimes we must experiment: did he want A flat there? Or an A? But the thing I say to the choir more than anything else – never become a slave to the bar line. The shape of the words, that's what matters.' Kirsty Hopkins reminds me that this music has been part of the DNA of British choirs for centuries and that the key to successful Palestrina is twofold: breath and blend. Choirs like the Sixteen do use vibrato, but not in the manner of a Wagnerian singer. To hear that all-important weave, their vibrato must be finely mingled. 'Breathing properly means making sure we're heading for the right moment in a word. A word like 'Hallelujah', measured against the bar line could sound very square, but the point is to get the word stress right.' There's a whole PhD thesis to be written, you feel, on breath control in Palestrina, but both Christophers and Hopkins agree with my hunch that if singers are breathing in a natural way, determined by the words, then the music can start to breathe naturally across its structure. And Palestrina's music maps out the dimensions of those majestic acoustics, testament to, depending on how you hear it, the glory of physics – or God.
Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Ian Hislop: I wasted an evening watching With Love, Meghan
The instrument I play I don't play any instruments. I am very jealous of anyone who can play anything. I went to a baroque concert recently where a man was playing an enormous sort of lute and thought I would like to be able to say: 'Oh yes I play the theorbo.' Or the sackbut or crumhorn. The music that cheers me up Dolly Parton or Palestrina. Depending on how much I need cheering. There was a great BBC TV series called Sacred Music in which the choir the Sixteen were singing Palestrina. The presenter, Simon Russell Beale, just walked up and joined in. Now that was impressive. ALAMY If I could own one painting it would be Hogarth's Election Series. I have some large copies in my office, but quite fancy having the real thing on the wall. This satirical masterpiece is currently in the Soane Museum, but if they won't sell it then anything by Hogarth would do. A Rake's Progress or Marriage a la Mode would be fine or the portrait of his servants or the self portrait with the dog. I would be happy with any of those. My favourite author Apart from my wife [the author Victoria Hislop], obviously. This changes all the time. Recent favourites include James by Percival Everett, a funny and savage retelling of Huckleberry Finn. I am keen to tell people that I had read his satirical novel about race and the literary world, Erasure, long before it was turned into the popular film American Fiction. Then there is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which is a retelling of David Copperfield and is an extraordinary tour de force about the American opioid crisis. Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow is an absolute delight that feels like a retelling of a great Russian novel, but is actually original. And for an insight into modern Russia, The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli is extraordinary. I also love Cloud Cuckooland by Anthony Doerr, which is an erudite classics based sci-fi thriller and is a hopeful tribute to the power of the written word. At least I think that is what it was. • The best paperback books of 2025 — April's picks The book I'm reading I am re-reading the medieval Mystery Plays as research for my Radio 4 series Ian Hislop's Oldest Jokes. These short plays performed in the street are vernacular versions of the Bible stories and were produced by the craft guilds. The combination of the sacred and the profane, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and the ridiculous is extraordinary. No wonder they were banned. BRYN COLTON/GETTY IMAGES The book I wish I had written The Complete Beyond the Fringe, the collected sketches from the 1960s revue by Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore. I was lucky enough to work with Cook at Private Eye when he was the most hands-off proprietor in publishing history. It is not always true that you shouldn't meet your heroes. I have this slim volume on my shelf next to AG Macdonell's England, Their England, the collected plays of Oscar Wilde and quite a large number of other works of comic genius. My favourite film Toy Story, with Toy Story 2, 3 and 4 as very close runners-up. Wise, witty and wonderful. They really do make one think about infinity and beyond. Or on second thoughts it should probably be The Court Jester with Danny Kaye, which is the film I have seen more often than any other and enjoyed the most. My favourite play I recently went to see Tom Stoppard's Invention of Love with Simon Russell Beale as AE Housman. I had seen the original version in 1997 and thought it was brilliant. On seeing it again 28 years later I thought it was even better. The other play I saw when it first appeared and twice again since — once as a student production — is Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem. It is magic every time and Mark Rylance's performance is simply the best thing I have ever seen on stage. The box set I'm hooked on Bad Sisters by Sharon Horgan. Beautifully written, compelling and really funny. ALAMY My favourite TV series I enjoyed the recent Wolf Hall series with Mark Rylance hugely. I read the Hilary Mantel novels over lockdown, which was a good time to read very long novels and also to be reminded that things have been quite frightening in our history before. Detectorists is also terrific. Funny and melancholy and reassuring about unfashionable England. I found a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon coin in a field when making a documentary for Radio 4 and was so excited I could hear the Detectorist theme tune in my head. My favourite piece of music Handel's Messiah. I first came across it at school and thought I knew it backwards, but then I heard it again in Hampstead Church a few months ago with a cut-down choir and an orchestra with period instruments directed by Geoffrey Webber and was overwhelmed. The play I walked out on I try not to do this, although someone recently walked out of a play I wrote. The lady in question did have medical assistance and they did have to stop the performance. It was The Autobiography of a Cad at the Watermill in Newbury and I am pretty sure that the paramedics said the problem was that the play was just too funny. The poor theatregoer was overcome with mirth and her sides threatened to split. Fortunately she recovered and was fine and the play restarted allowing a triumphant, hilarious performance by James Mack as the Cad, the ultimate Tory politician, to the delight of the audience.
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Tallis Scholars review – inspired pairing of Palestrina and Pärt brings shining warmth and clarity
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Palestrina, the Italian composer who took the name of his native town, just east of Rome, now part of the metropolitan city. In director Peter Phillips's inspired pairing of Palestrina with the music of Arvo Pärt in the year of his 90th birthday, there was a particular frisson in knowing that in January, the Tallis Scholars had sung this very programme in the cathedral of Sant'Agapito Martire in Palestrina, where the young Giovanni Pierluigi may have been a chorister and was certainly organist from the age of 19. Phillips has described Palestrina as the 'most consummate of renaissance composers': it may surely be said that the Tallis Scholars are the consummate vocal ensemble. Opening with his motet Surge Illuminare, the 10 Scholars immediately brought a shining warmth to the St George's auditorium, the clarity of the polyphonic lines as notable as their impeccable diction. This was followed by the Missa Brevis, only marginally shorter than the hundred plus others and exemplifying the infinite care with which Palestrina set the words of the Ordinary, the Scholars' use of dynamic and tonal colour, as well the attention to changes of metre, vividly achieved. After the Kyrie's gentle plea for mercy, the Gloria was indeed gloriously rich. Three solo voices – soprano, alto and tenor – brought a serene calm to the Benedictus, contrasting with the then full-bodied and joyous Hosanna, before the heartfelt plea for peace of the Agnus Dei. Their singing of Pärt had the same implicit authority. His Da Pacem written in response to the terrorist bombings in Madrid in 2004 attuned the ear to his tintinnabuli style, transparent yet resonant. And presenting settings by both Palestrina and Pärt of the Nunc Dimittis, highlighting their expressivity and the common commitment to the meaning of the text, made for a symbolic connection. Given the austere beauty of Pärt's music, so characteristic and unmistakable, the notion of his having fun with the music seems unlikely, but in the Scholars' rendering of Which Was the Son of … a litany of names tracing the lineage of Jesus, an almost mischievous playfulness emerged, with syncopations and the occasional feel of gospel-singing. By way of encore, a Pärt setting in his native Estonian added a final celebratory touch.
