Although he wrote a considerable number of secular madrigals, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was primarily a composer of sacred music. He was extraordinarily prolific, writing at least masses, over motets, and many other religious works. Unlike almost any other composer, Palestrina has enjoyed steadfast respect. Writing in , Agostino Agazzari called him “the savior of church music.” Almost years after his death, Angelo Berardi described him as “the prince and father of music.” And after the publication of Johann Joseph Fux’s enormously influential textbook Gradus ad Parnassum (), Palestrina’s music became the primary model for composition students in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even today, composition students are almost always taught how to write in the style of Palestrina.
Youth and Early Employment
Hardly any concrete information about the early years of Giovanni Pi
|