This could be a television mini-series. It is a time of intrigue, poisoning, espionage, torture, bribery, sexual profligacy among religious leaders, popular revolt, and severe crackdown by the powers that be.
A kid from a hick town makes friends in high places, becomes a valued company man and later one of the most influential people in his field, fails to negotiate some sweet deals for himself because his price is too high, but marries a rich widow, takes over her business and dies a prosperous old man.
It's all true, but it has nothing to do with Nicaragua, the Mafia, arms for hostages, Jimmy Swaggart or Ollie North. It's the story of a composer who learned how to get ahead in the papal good ol' boy system during the 16th century.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who took his last name from the town where he was born around 1525, got into the church music business at the height of the Counter-Reformation.
Facing widespread revolt led by Martin Luther and others, the Catholic Church realized it was high time for some damage control in the public relations department - as well as time for asserting more righteous control over its wayward officials and wavering adherents.
Between 1545 and 1563, a council was held in the northern Italian town of Trent. Its purpose was to devise a plan to purge the Church of the abuses - financial, sexual and doctrinal - that had instigated the Protestant movement.
A small part of the plan had to do with church music. Singers were irreverent and inept, there were too many noisy secular instruments involved, and the music itself had become so complicated that nobody could understand the words anymore. The problem was polyphony, music with two or more independent melodic parts performed together.
Legend has it that officials were on the verge of banishing polyphony outright, but Palestrina came along with a six-voice Mass that persuaded the officials that polyphony could be reverent and understandable.
According to this legend, Palestrina singlehandedly saved polyphonic church music.
This is a great exaggeration. The Council of Trent never specifically forbade any technical procedures, and Palestrina's influence grew slowly. But he did make friends with all the right people. And friends certainly advanced the career of this man who was extraordinarily talented in a time when talent alone wasn't enough to get one ahead in the world.
After studying music in Rome, the young Palestrina had returned to his hometown in 1544 to become organist and choirmaster at the local cathedral. As luck would have it, he worked for the bishop who in 1550 would become Pope Julius III.
The papal good ol' boy system soon went to work for Palestrina. Pope Julius appointed him to the pontifical choir - even though Palestrina was a poor singer, was married with two children (violating the choir's rule of celibacy) and had managed to skip the required entrance exam.
Julius died a few months later and was succeeded by Marcellus II. During his three-week reign, Marcellus took the pontifical choir to task for performing the liturgy in a way that could not be understood clearly. Palestrina took Marcellus' admonition to heart.
Sometime between then and 1567 he wrote what is now his most famous work, the ``Missa Papae Marcelli.'' To this day, the Pope Marcellus Mass is regarded as one of the finest examples of the pure Counter-Reformation style. This is the six-voice Mass that legend credited with saving polyphonic church music.
The words of the Mass are always intelligible, at least to people who understand Latin. Polyphony, as you'll see further on in chapters on Monteverdi and Bach, is basically the art of winding separate, independent melodies around each other in a way that creates one complex, pleasing effect. Unfortunately, it can become impossible to sort out the words in polyphonic choral music.
Palestrina's polyphony is less complex than that of his predecessors, more like a suspension bridge than a spider web. Every musical pylon and high tension wire is sleekly functional, free of cluttering irregularities and unnecessary adornment.
Musicologists can demonstrate this by analyzing Palestrina's use of rhythm and harmony. But an easier way to get the point is just to listen to one of Palestrina's Mass movements, and notice how all the singers tend to begin a word at the same time.
This might not seem like an act of genius, but think how complicated such a simple round as ``Row, Row, Row Your Boat'' can become with all the participants singing different words at any given time. Real polyphony can become even more of a babble.
In Palestrina, though, the different voice parts begin, end, and spend a great deal of the time in between together. Often, the low voices sing a line of text very slowly, each syllable drawn out over several beats.
Meanwhile, the higher voices sing the same line, but with more florid melodies.
Of course, there are many passages in which the tenors move ahead of the basses, for instance, and manage to sing a phrase twice in the time it takes the low voices to sing it once. Even so, Palestrina's writing is so measured and clear that it's easy to concentrate on one voice or the other and keep track of the texts.
But the beauty of Renaissance polyphony is its total effect, the grand patterns and weaving of colors rather than the individual stitches. Palestrina's polyphony is as beautiful as any other Renaissance composer's. Rare is the composer who can make such restrained, serene music seem so heart-rending.
Between 1550 and his death in 1594, Palestrina was master of several important Roman choirs, and found time to write more than 100 Masses and about 450 motets and other liturgical compositions. Toward the end of his life, he took on the task of revising the music in the church's official liturgical books, mindful of the vague orders of the Council of Trent.
All of Palestrina's mature works are just what the Establishment wanted - cool, anti-secular, conservative. But they are moving, too, despite their avoidance of dramatic vocal leaps and sexy new harmonies. Many of his Masses are melodically and spiritually modeled on medieval plainchant, about the most purely reverent music ever created.
Despite the purity of his music, Palestrina was no ascetic hermit subsisting on broth in a cold tower. After his first wife died, Palestrina married the widow of a furrier and took up the fur business. He died a prosperous, worldly man who had composed a body of somewhat old-fashioned, ethereal music that for centuries would be regarded as the pinnacle of Counter-Reformation style.
Palestrina listening suggestions
Even though Palestrina is the most studied composer before Bach, only a few of his works are currently available in recordings. Many older LPs contain performances that don't do Palestrina justice, but every compact disc currently available is a safe bet.
An interesting choice for the famous ``Missa Papae Marcelli'' would be the recording by Pro Cantione Antiqua on IMP Classics. It enables you to hear the polyphonic style of the Mass contrasted with Medieval plainchant, which introduces some of the movements.
The disc also contains Palestrina's ``Stabat Mater,'' which is in a simpler style called homophony - a single melody with rather subservient harmonic accompaniment, the technique used in most symphonies and popular songs.