Please turn to number 90 and join with the clarinets in “The Strife is O’er”.
First Line: The Strife is O’er
Meter: 8 8 8. With Alleluias.
Tempo: Broadly, with dignity
Music: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrini, 1525-94
Adapted by William Henry Monk, 1823-89
Alleluias by William Henry Monk, 1823-89
Text: Latin, XVII cent.
Tr. Francis Pott, 1832-1909
Clarinet Arrangement: 090-TheStrifeIsOer
Wow, William Henry Monk gets a special credit just for his “Alleluias” on this tune!
We’ve finished up with the delightfully minor hymns of Good Friday and are now moving on to Easter. Alleluias will abound.
Palestrina, on the other hand, was a very important composer of the Italian Renaissance.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
One of the hallmarks of Palestrina’s music is that dissonances are typically relegated to the “weak” beats in a measure. This produced a smoother and more consonant type of polyphony which is now considered to be definitive of late Renaissance music, given Palestrina’s position as Europe’s leading composer (along with Orlande de Lassus) in the wake of Josquin des Prez (d. 1521). The “Palestrina style” now serves as a basis for college Renaissance counterpoint classes, thanks in large part to the efforts of the 18th-century composer and theorist Johann Joseph Fux, who, in a book called Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus, 1725), set about codifying Palestrina’s techniques as a pedagogical tool for students of composition. Fux applied the term “species counterpoint“, which entails a series of steps whereby students work out progressively more elaborate combinations of voices while adhering to certain strict rules. Fux did make a number of stylistic errors, however, which have been corrected by later authors (notably Knud Jeppesen and Morris). Palestrina’s own music contains ample instances in which his rules have been followed to the letter, as well as many where they are freely broken.
According to Fux, Palestrina had established and followed these basic guidelines:
- The flow of music is dynamic, not rigid or static.
- Melody should contain few leaps between notes. (Jeppesen: “The line is the starting point of Palestrina’s style.”)
- If a leap occurs, it must be small and immediately countered by stepwise motion in the opposite direction.
- Dissonances are to be confined to passing notes and weak beats. If one falls on a strong beat, it is to be immediately resolved.