CRYOGENICS
The final stage in Palestrina’s texturally clarified, harmonically saturated, motivically economical—in a
word, “classical”—ars perfecta polyphony is reached in the book of Offertories that he published in the
last year of his life. Tui sunt coeli (Ex. 16-13) is the one for Christmas. Compared with the Missa Papae
Marcelli this pervasively imitative composition might seem a relapse into some bad old pre-Tridentine
habits. But this is pervasive imitation with a difference. The points are tightly woven out of laconic
motives that are precisely modeled on the pronunciation of the words.
Many motives (“et tua est terra,” “orbem terrarum,” etc.) are well-nigh syllabically texted in all parts.
Elsewhere, Palestrina deploys the fuga sciolta technique in a way that maximizes intelligibility. The
words are concentrated at the heads of the motives, the parts that all the voices have in common. In the
first point, for example, the syllabically texted head exactly coincides with the verbal phrase; everything
that follows is freely molded melisma. Thus every entrance stands out in note-lengths, in texting style, and
by virtue of its wide skips, from the placid melismatic note-river that murmurs in what is definitely the
aural background.
EX. 16-13 Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tui sunt coeli (Offertory), mm. 1–22