Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/130

 stands out, not only as the ablest of the Spaniards who now begin to appear at Rome, but as one of the greatest of Palestrina's immediate predecessors, and his works are still somewhat in use. His style was serious, but eminently tasteful and free from secularities (masses and magnificats from 1542).

Giovanni Animuccia (d. 1570?), born at Florence, was choirmaster at St. Peter's in 1555-71, filling the interval between the terms of Palestrina. He is notable as the first to write laudi spirituali (1563-70) for Neri (see sec. 76), besides madrigals (from 1547) and masses (from 1567). His brother, Paolo Animuccia (d. 1563), was choirmaster at the Lateran in 1550-2.

59. Palestrina.—The finest tendencies of the time were summed up in the achievements of Palestrina, whose half-century of activity was almost wholly spent at Rome. Even in his own lifetime his genius was seen to be of the highest order, at once representative and original, with an exaltation that remained unmatched for more than a century. Yet, wonderful as it was, its permanent impress upon musical art has been limited, because chiefly put forth in a form of church music which in theory holds itself aloof from other music and which was not an ultimate type. Both the greatness and the limitation of Palestrina's work are evidenced by the fact that it had comparatively little sequel. In its own field it was a consummation that could not be surpassed, but it came at a time when musical progress was turning with avidity to other fields.

The Palestrina style commands admiration, not for its mere technical dexterity as polyphony, though it is full of extreme skill, nor for its stupendous or startling effects, though it is eminently sublime, but for its rejection of intellectual cleverness for its own sake, its instinctive avoidance of secular elements and a secular spirit, its success in finding ways of expression perfectly germane both to the solemn texts treated and to the conditions of the Roman liturgy, and an indescribable ideality or etherealness of conception. This ideality makes it to the modern taste somewhat cold and impersonal. Yet, when properly rendered and properly considered, its representative works stand among the noblest triumphs of religious art. While the Venetian styles were facing forward toward the more passionate forms of the 17th and later centuries, the Palestrina style belonged rather to the mediæval world, with its emphasis upon monastic reveries and contemplation, so that it can be fully appreciated only through sympathy with that unmodern realm of belief and sentiment.