Читать книгу The Love Affairs of Great Musicians (Vol. 1&2) - Hughes Rupert - Страница 12

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Almost exactly a century before Purcell died in England, there died in Italy, at Rome, a composer who has made his birthplace immortal, though his own name has almost been lost to public recognition in the process. That is the man whose name in English would be John Peter Lewis, or as his father called him, Giovanni Pier Luigi, who was born at Palestrina, at some date between 1514 and 1530, and who died in the fulness of his fame February 2, 1594, when Shakespeare was thirty years old, and was, it seems, just getting into print for the first time.

The man whom all posterity knows by the name of his birthplace, as Palestrina, was the greatest composer the Catholic Church ever had. He was a younger contemporary of Willaert's, but was born an Italian. And all his glory belongs to Italy. Of his youth nothing is known. He first appears as the organist and director at the chief church in Palestrina from 1544 to 1551.

Of his early love-making nothing is known; it is only certain that he married young, and it would seem very happily. Yet this marriage brought him the greatest shock of his life. His wife's name was Lucrezia, "his equal and an honest damsel" (donzella onesta e sua para), according to the biographer Baini, who adds:

"With her, Giovanni divided the pleasure of seeing himself elected the first Maestro of the Vatican; with her he suffered the most strait penuries of his life; with her he sustained the most cruel afflictions of his spirit, and with her also he ate the hard crust of sorrow: yet with her again he rested in the sunlight that beamed from time to time to his glory and to his gain. And so they passed together, these two faithful consorts, nearly thirty years."

Lucrezia bore him four children, all sons, Angelo, Ridolfo, Silla, and Igino. The first three died in early manhood, after showing themselves in some sort heirs of their father's genius: in the second book of his motets Palestrina has included some of their compositions. The last son, Igino, outlived his parents and his own welfare; he was "un' anima disarmonica" After his father's death he attempted to complete and market an unfinished and rejected composition of his father's, but he was legally restrained. He lost some of his father's unpublished works, while certain noddings of genius, better lost, and refused even by the Pope, Palestrina dedicated them to, still remain, with a dedication to yet another Pope, put on them by the scapegrace Igino.

A certain writer Pitoni, by a bit of careless reading, multiplied Palestrina's wives by two, and divided his sons by the same number, claiming that Lucrezia, the first wife of Palestrina, was the mother of Angelo, that after her death he married one Doralice, and that she was the mother of Igino. But Baini exposes Pitoni's carelessness, proves the existence of Ridolfo and Silla by the inclusion of their works in the father's book, and shows that Doralice was the wife of Palestrina's son Angelo.

It being established, then, that Palestrina was married but once, and it being assumed that he was happily married, it is strange to see how this happy marriage came near proving fatal to him. Palestrina, who was, like Michelangelo, intimate with various Popes, dedicated in 1554 his first printed book of masses to Pope Julius III. As a reward, the careless pontiff made him one of the singers of his Sistine Chapel, omitting the usual severe examination, and overlooking as a small matter the fact that Palestrina was so far from being a priest that he was very much married and very much the father, and furthermore had no voice. But Palestrina resigned his post as maestro at Saint Peter's and entered the chapel. The Pope died shortly afterward and was succeeded by a cardinal who was a patron of Palestrina's and continued his favour as Pope Marcellus II. Three weeks later this Pope also died, and was followed by Paul IV.

Unfortunately for Palestrina, the new Pope was a strict constructionist, and he found it "indecent that there should be married men (ammogliati) interfering in holy offices." In spite of the action of the two previous pontificates, he determined to expel the three Benedicks who had entered the choir, Leonardo Barè, Domenico Ferrabosco, and Palestrina, "uomini ammogliati, e chi con grandissimo scandalo, ed in vilipendio del divin culto, contro le disposizioni dei sagri canoni, e contro le costituzioni e le consuetudini della cappella apostolica cantano i medesimi tre ammogliati imitamente ai capellani cantori." He then declares that, after mature deliberation, "cassiamo, discacciamo, e togliamo" from the list of chappellary singers these three, and that they ought to be "cassati, discacciati, e tolti dalla cappella," and that after the present order they "cassino, discaccino, e tolgano." And excommunication was threatened if any more married men (uxorati) were received in the chapel.

This was on the 30th of July, 1555, just six months after Palestrina had resigned his important post at Saint Peter's. He was a young man with a family, and apparently keenly sensitive, for when this sonorous thunderbolt was launched at his head, he immediately fell ill of a fever and came nigh to death. But he recovered, and two months later found another post as canon of the Lateran, of which by the 1st of October, 1555, he was maestro. Eleven years later, a year after he had written his immortal Improperia, we find him begging on account of the needs of his family to be given an increase of salary, or the acceptance of his resignation. They gave him the acceptance. Again he found another post, and ten years later was back again as maestro of the Vatican after his many wanderings and vicissitudes.

In the meanwhile he had written his famous mass named after his old friend, Pope Marcellus II. The ten years between 1561 and 1571 had marked an epoch not merely in the life of Palestrina, but in the history of religious music.

The reform Palestrina undertook, or was entrusted with, was the ending of the old scandal brought upon the Church by the elaborate lengths to which contrapuntal composers had gone in using popular melodies, and often even street songs of an obscene nature, as a foundation melody or cantus firmus for their vocal gymnastics. The churchmen of that day did in a more elaborate fashion what Wesley did in his day and the Salvation Army in ours for the popular ballad of the streets. The trouble was that many of the congregation would think only of the original words of these catchy tunes, and in the general uproar some of the priests would sing the actual texts, thinking that the people would not hear them, and forgetting that they were supposed to be for an all-hearing ear.

I find an interesting example of this custom in the career of a musician, a contemporary of Palestrina's mentioned by Van der Straeten; his name was Ambrosio de Cotes. He was the Maestro de Capilla of the King's Chapel at Grenada; he was of either Flemish or English birth, and, though he was a churchman, was a gambler and drunkard; he kept a mistress, who ought to have been pretty to fit her pretty name, Juana de Espinosa. Besides, De Cotes caroused miscellaneously, he ran the streets at night, in bad company, and singing bad songs. In 1591 he was officially reproved for these habits, and for singing improper words to sacred music (y cantan muchos rezes letras profanas, yndecentes).

So great was the scandal throughout the whole world of church music that contrapuntal music came near being abandoned entirely. It was given a last chance in a proposition to Palestrina to see if it were worthy and capable of redemption. He composed three masses, and the third of them, dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II., was accepted, not only as the rescue of the old school of vocal worship, but also as the final word and ultimate model for future church music.

Some years later, at the very height of his glory, Palestrina's heart suffered its final blow. In the words of Baini, "Lucrezia, la sua dolce consorte, after having piously accompanied the solemn procession for the transport of the body of Saint Gregory Nazianzeno from the church of the monks of S. Maria Campa Marzo to the Vatican the fourth of June, 1580, was assailed by a most oppressive malady."

The attentions of her husband and the remedies of the medical art of that day kept her alive up to the first of July. Then the sickness began anew and "neither the tears nor the voice of the loving companion prevailed against the inexorable scythe of death." On the 21st of July Lucrezia died. The next day her body was received at the Vatican, Giovanni watching in the schoolroom of the chapel.

It is easy to picture the wild grief of this man, whom a previous anxiety had thrown into an almost mortal fever. Yet he lived fourteen busy years, and in his old age he felt both fatigue and want, and was compelled to join the long list of those musicians who have appealed to their patrons for charity. But at least his life, like Bach's and that of many another, had proved that marriage is not always and necessarily a failure when set to music.