Ebook: Palestrina For All: Unwrapping, Singing, Celebrating

This new book explores the music of the great composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594), its surrounding history and still unfolding potential. It follows the music from love poetry, through changing events in the Church Year, to the composer's record-breaking 104 Mass settings, uncovering many neglected treasures on the way. Its approach is accessible and largely non-technical. There is a focus on relationships with text, belief and ceremony, the individual melodic lines, and the richly interweaving voice parts (cantus, alto, tenor, bass). Not least, the author explores diverse ways – emotional, devotional, imaginative – of enjoying and responding to the music.

Here is music which excels in subtle differentiation, equality, consonance and cordiality between the voice parts. Much of it can be interpreted as symbolising ideal community and core beliefs about the eternal God. There is a striking avoidance of tight metricality, mighty forces, tumult or disjunction. The music's leading values are those of clarity, balance, affectionate concord and graceful flowingness.