Composer
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
1525–1594
371 works in the index
The precise birth date of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is unknown, but the year was either 1525 or 1526.
His name and reputation are bound up with that of the Council of Trent, the great series of gatherings of the archbishops and bishops of the Catholic Church that began in 1545 and continued until 1563, and that defined the Counter-Reformation.
One question that this Council faced involved the use of polyphonic music in the context of the mass. There is a legend that Palestrinaâs music saved polyphony for the mass, and perhaps even for southern Europe. The legend exaggerates, as legends do.
But what it exaggerates is a truth: some Catholic prelates saw polyphony as a threat, as tainted by the Protestant schism, and Palestrina worked against that backdrop of suspicion.
He died in 1594. Attached to his coffin was a plate with the words: Libera me Domine (Deliver me, oh Lord).
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