this sort of direct homage to Josquin. But he often reached back further yet for his models, rooting himself
as deeply as he knew how in the Franco-Flemish legacy, even taking part, enthusiastically if belatedly, in
its ancient emulatory games as if staking a claim to the tradition on behalf of Italy.
FIG. 16-1 (a) Title page of Palestrina, Missarum liber primus (Rome: Dorico, 1554), showing the composer kneeling before
Pope Julius III. (b) Title page of Cristobal de Morales, Missarum liber secundus (Rome: Dorico, 1544), showing the composer
kneeling before Pope Paul III. It is obvious that the printer recycled and retouched the earlier plate to produce the second.
This retrospective strain comes particularly to the fore in Palestrina’s third book of Masses, published
in 1570. Of its eight Masses, two were as old-fashioned as could be. One of them, called Missa super Ut
re mi fa sol la, was based on the old solmization hexachord, the voces musicales on which Josquin had
playfully based a L’Homme Armé Mass almost a hundred years before. And sure enough, the other tenor
Mass in the volume is a Missa super L’Homme Armé, one of the very latest contributions to the noblest
emulatory line of all. (Palestrina’s most recent predecessor had been the Spanish composer Cristóbal de
Morales, who had worked before him at the Sistine Chapel and published a pair of L’Homme Armé
Masses in the 1540s.) In so demonstratively bringing up the rear, so expressly establishing a connection
between his work and the half-forgotten wellsprings of the Franco-Flemish art, Palestrina could not have
staked his claim on tradition more plainly.
That he regarded himself not as an antiquarian—a mere caretaker of the tradition—but as an active
emulant within it is clear from the nature of the compositions themselves. They are cast on a grand scale,
combining feats of ancient contrapuntal craft with the sonorous, mellifluent style that had come into vogue
only during the Willaert period. The Missa L’Homme Armé is scored for a five-part chorus and the Missa
super Ut re mi fa sol la for one in six parts. In both cases the final Agnus Dei adds a part, as was by then
customary, for an extra-grand finale. In the hexachord Mass the extra (seventh) voice is cast as a canonic
part against the cantus firmus, shadowing it at the lower fifth. Ex. 16-2 gives the beginnings of both of
these final Agnus settings. In them, we may see the blazing sunset of the Franco-Flemish tradition in its
Italianate “perfected” phase.
EX. 16-2 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Missarum liber tertius (1570) a. Missa L’Homme Armé, final Agnus Dei