Guess the Artist
  • RomanticStringsRomanticStrings
    Posts: 339
    From The Catholic Encyclopedia:

    The greatest composer of liturgical music of all time...


    Who is it referring to?

    *No points awarded for correct answer*
  • RomanticStringsRomanticStrings
    Posts: 339
    A hint:

    [His/her] significance lies not so much in [her/his] unprecedented gifts of mind and heart, [his/her] creative and constructive powers, as in the fact that [s/he] made them the medium for the expression in tones of the state of [his/her] own soul, which, trained and formed by St. [N], was attuned to and felt with the Church. [Her/his] creations will for all time stand forth as the musical embodiment of the spirit of the [significant Church era], the triumphant Church.


    Boy, this'll be a tough one!
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    Not if you know he was born in Palestrina, Italy.
    Thanked by 1mmeladirectress
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,192
    Who else but G. P. da P.
  • TCJ
    Posts: 986
    Marty Haugen?

    Or is this the wrong forum?
    Thanked by 1johnmann
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,206
    To be sure he was important, and influential. However he also had a hand in some of the most destructive tampering with the chants of the Mass documented in the history of sacred music.

    I find it fascinating how myth, legend, and fact tend to blur over time.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn CHGiffen
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,413
    Palestrina, it seems to me, might qualify as the Catholic Bach. Of course he wasn't quite as prolific in as many genres (nor such a colourful personality), but the purity of his style rather defines Catholic music in the way that Bach's does Lutheran. His treatment of chant is sad, but, as the saying goes: he was a man of his times. His was an age which wasn't, um, into semiology-paleontology. Then, as now, being 'modern' was the thing to be.

    I'm still waiting, though, for the answer.
    Are we going to be surprised?
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,192
    "Are we going to be surprised?"

    No. It's Palestrina.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,413
    Singing Palestrina is like playing a Bach fugue: everything just falls into place and seems so effortlessly self-evident - unassailable perfection. I think that Pope St Gregory the Great must have lent them both his inspiring dove.
    Thanked by 3CHGiffen noel jones, aago Saspnmusic
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,798
    Like Sherlock Holmes, I'm a Lassus man, but let's try for a little justice all the same:

    1577 Greg. XIII called for revision of chant; Card. Sirleto sounds out Zoilo & Palestrina

    end of 1593 Palestrina agrees to edit a printed gradual.

    Feb. 2, 1594 Gio. Palestrina dies; Iginio Palestrina submits a complete ms, which is rejected by Card. del Monte's commission as error ridden and not as represented the work of Gio. Palestrina; Iginio refuses to accept the return of the ms, which disappears.

    1614 Soriano & F. Anerio edit the Medician Graduale
    Thanked by 1David Andrew
  • RomanticStringsRomanticStrings
    Posts: 339
    Yes, it's Palestrina. I was amused by the Catholic Encyclopedia's particularly fond tone. I would be just as gushing, tending to hyperbole, if left to my own devices.
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,206
    Thank you for those details.

    I won't tell you the source of my information, but I'm slowly discovering that it is rife with errors such as the omission of all of that relevant detail regarding the Medician Graduale.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,092
    Here's the thing: we can't say because of the loss of so many works of composers in earlier eras. At a minimum, we should consciously qualify/condition our assessments with "Based on the records have survived...."
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,933
    I'm sorry, but the authors of the Catholic Encyclopedia seem to be fairly clueless when it comes to talking about artists. They either love someone or they hate them.

    Case in point: there's NO way Shakespeare could possibly be a Catholic. His worldview as derived from his body of work contradicts the dogma of the Curch.
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