the Editio Medicaea and put back the “barbarisms, obscurities, inconsistencies, and superfluities”
Gregory XIII had ordered pruned away.^1 By then, of course (and under the influence of Romanticism), the
“Gothic impurities” had taken on the aura of authenticity.
EX. 16-1 Responsory Angelus Domini, in Medicean and Solesmes (Roman) versionsBoth the Medici and the Solesmes editions carried the papal imprimatur, and so each in its respective
time carried the only authority that mattered so far as the church was concerned. What was different was
the source of authority the editors themselves relied upon to guide their work. In the nineteenth century it
was “scientific” philological method: historical evaluation and comparison of sources. In the sixteenth
century the authority came from within: from the religiously informed musical sensibility of the editors,
especially the one originally appointed to execute the task, who had become something like the gatekeeper
of the church’s musical utopia.
That same status as a virtual musical pope—the musical head of what Catholic reformers pointedly
referred to in those days of religious unrest as the Hierarchical Church—made Palestrina the most prolific
composer of Masses that ever lived. Complete settings of the Ordinary securely attributed to Palestrina
number 104 (exactly the same number, by bizarre coincidence, as that of symphonies traditionally
attributed to Haydn) and another dozen or so survive with disputed attributions to the composer, whose
fame, like Josquin’s before him, had made him a brand name. Forty-three were published during his
lifetime, in six volumes beginning in 1554. Another forty were posthumously issued, in another six
volumes, the last appearing in 1601. The resurgence of the Mass as dominant genre is striking after such a
long period—beginning with Josquin and Mouton and encompassing all the mid-century composers
whose works we examined in the previous chapter—when motet composition had decisively
overshadowed the Mass. It testifies to the quasi-official, “papal” and hierarchical character of
Palestrina’s activity.
Not that he neglected the motet by any means, with upwards of four hundred to his credit, including a
celebrated book of fairly lively works based on the Song of Songs and another fifty with Italian rather
than Latin texts, called “madrigali spirituali.” Palestrina also composed two ambitious books of service
music that sought to outfit the whole church calendar with items of a particular type: the first of these was
a book of Vespers hymns that appeared in 1589; the other, considered by many to be his masterpiece, was
a complete cycle of Mass Offertories that appeared in the last full year of his life, 1593. Finally, and
definitely least, come two books of secular part-songs (madrigals)—but even in this genre, which
Palestrina devalued in his devout maturity and even went so far as to recant, he wrote one indisputable
“classic” (Vestiva i colli, “The hills are bedecked”).