Palestrina Missa Assumpta est Maria

 Day 8

Palestrina Missa Assumpta est Maria

Choir of Clare College Cambridge

Timothy Brown

To music students of my generation the word Palestrina is inevitably followed by the word 'counterpoint' and brings back memories of having to do exercises to master (though I never quite did) the intricacies of 16th century counterpoint. At times it did seem more like an intellectual exercise akin to a crossword puzzle rather than anything connected with music as I understood it. But I do recall after one session our rather fearsome counterpoint teacher playing us a recording of the last part of Palestrina's Missa Brevis to stress that this was real music were were dealing with. It made quite an impression at the time but I don't think that I have actively listened to any Palestrina since those days 50 or so years ago.

I found when I came to prepare for today's blog that I had more Palestrina in my CD collection than I expected. This was because I acquired some of my mother's CDs when her hearing started to fail her and she had always been a choral singer. I by contrast haven't sung in a choir since I was at university and therefore have no experience of performing any of this music - or indeed of hearing it in a liturgical context.

I certainly enjoyed listening to this mass, perhaps more than I was expecting. It took a while to get into the very different world of Renaissance church music with its very controlled harmonic and rhythmic language where time moves at a slower rate than most of the music I would generally listen to. But the beauty of the music grew on me, particularly the Benedictus, where the six part texture thins down to only four parts. What surprised me most however was the amount of chordal writing there was - my memories were that everything in Palestrina was polyphonic throughout but that is certainly not the case and there is plenty of contrast.

I've no context for this sort of music. I've no idea what distinguishes Palestrina from his contemporaries or how his polyphonic style differs from, say, Tudor Church music. We did briefly touch on this in music history classes at University but in those days my mind was pretty closed to anything before about 1750. Perhaps during this 365 project I can explore some Byrd and Tallis.

The performance I listened to was from an extremely disciplined and beautifully controlled British College Choir. Everything was in its place with clear and clean voices and as far as I could hear perfect intonation. To a British musician like me this is the sound world of Renaissance Polyphony. Would Palestrina have recognised it or do we have a quite false perspective of how this music should be performed? Much food for thought.