of fifths (the C being elided)—ordinary, that is, to us; in Palestrina’s time it was a striking novelty, and the
speed with which the implied bass progression traverses the tritone from E to B-flat is still a little
disorienting and “uncanny.” The string of successive leading tones (G#–C#–F#–B), each contradicting the
last, does the very opposite of what a leading tone is supposed to do in “common practice” (known as
such to us but not, of course, to Palestrina). Far from tightening the focus on any particular harmonic goal,
it keeps the tonality of the music blurred until the cadential suspension, coinciding with the “uncanny” B-
flat, concentrates expectations on A (Ex. 16-4).
That is the sort of thing one fairly expects in a “humanistically” conceived motet, especially one with
a text as charged as this one is with emotion. The composer “recites” the text like an orator, highlighting
its meaning by modulating his harmonies as an orator modulates his tone of voice. When colorful
harmonies or effects imitative of speech patterns occur in tandem with affective words, they seem to
“point to” or refer to those words, ultimately to symbolize them. Such symbolism, in which signs point to
something “outside” the system of sounds themselves (in this case to words and their embodied concepts)
is called “extroversive” symbolism (or, more formally, semiosis—“signing”). Humanistic, rhetorical text
setting encourages such effects, which became increasingly prevalent during the sixteenth century.
EX. 16-4 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, O magnum mysterium, opening phrase