Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria, Palestrina is considered the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe.
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond. The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts".
In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose name has been associated for four hundred years with smooth, clear, polyphonic perfection. However, there were other composers working in Rome, and in a variety of styles and forms.
Passiontide is a name for the last two weeks of Lent, beginning on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, long celebrated as Passion Sunday, and continuing through Lazarus Saturday. It commemorates the suffering of Christ. The second week of Passiontide is Holy Week, ending on Holy Saturday.
A responsory or respond is a type of chant in western Christian liturgies.
The year 1603 in music involved some significant events.
Juan [de] Esquivel Barahona was the most prominent of the last generation of Spanish church composers of the Renaissance era. Although he never served in one of the major Spanish cathedrals, his music was known throughout Spain during the early seventeenth century.
Psalm 42 is the 42nd psalm of the Book of Psalms, often known in English by its incipit, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks". The Book of Psalms is part of the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and a book of the Christian Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 42 opens the second of the five books (divisions) of Psalms, also known as the "Elohistic Psalter" because the word YHWH is rarely used and God is generally referred to as "Elohim".
The righteous perishes are the words with which the 57th chapter of the Book of Isaiah start. In Christianity, Isaiah 57:1–2 is associated with the death of Christ, leading to liturgical use of the text at Tenebrae: the 24th responsory for Holy Week, "Ecce quomodo moritur justus", is based on this text. More generally, the text is associated with the death of loved ones and is used at burials. As such, and in other versions and translations, the Bible excerpt has been set to music.
Missa Tu es Petrus is a parody mass for six voices (SSATBB) by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina first printed in the Missarum, Liber 15 (1887) of Franz Xaver Haberl's edition. The eponymous model Tu es Petrus is one of three motets by Palestrina, all on the same text, intended “for the Feast of St. Paul and St. Peter” ; the other two are for 5 and 7 voices. In fact there are three Missae Tu es Petrus, the less well-known being a six-voice paraphrase mass on the gregorian antiphon posthumously published in Missarum, Liber 12 (1601), and a polychoral mass for 18vv of doubtful authenticity that like the other parody mass adapts the music of the same 1572 motet to the texts of the Ordinary of the Mass.
O magnum mysterium (1569) is a six-part motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, based on the responsorial chant of the same name, and was written for the celebration of Christmas. The piece is intended to express the joy and awe that was felt by the shepherds as they celebrated and worshiped the Christ-child in the manger on Christmas Eve. Palestrina took the text for this piece from the first half of the third and fourth Responsories of Matins on Christmas Day. The text has been set many times by numerous composers, such as Palestrina, Poulenc, Lauridsen, and Morales.
Canticum Canticorum from 1584 is a cycle of 29 motets by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Originally titled Motettorum - Liber Quartus, this Renaissance work is one of Palestrina's largest collections of Sacred motets.
