2010

PALESTRINA - THE LIBERATION OF MUSIC

The "making-of" of the film of the same name

The Italian musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Ioannis Petri Loisij Praenestini, c. 1525-1594), known simply as Palestrina, left a life's work of more than 950 compositions. With few exceptions, all of these pieces are vocal church music (mostly masses) in the a cappella style, that is, in the contrapuntal, many-voiced vocal style. This style, valid for two centuries, reaches both its highest perfection and its conclusion in Palestrina's work. With Palestrina, music becomes free for the first time and creates a sound that has been described as an "inner spatial sound". It is no accident that Palestrina's place in the history of art has been compared with that of Michelangelo, an older contemporary. Just as Michelangelo influenced all the architecture that came after him, so Palestrina prepared the way for the great composers of the Baroque, of Classicism and, indirectly, of modern music.

Palestrina, typical of the great artists of the Renaissance, cannot easily be categorised. For more than half of his fifty years of creative work he was employed at St Peter's in Rome. It was precisely this closeness to the centre of power, and the conflicts it created for him, that shaped his life and his work. To assert his artistic style he had to show extreme perseverance and the greatest skill. Only in this way could he hold his own amid the constant change of the prevailing intellectual currents.

"Worlds" lie between this extraordinary musician and us. 400 to 450 years of eventful music history have changed, developed and overturned a great deal. Our reception of music and our listening habits are completely different from those of Palestrina's time. Nevertheless, his polyphonic music remains part of the "official" musica sacra of the Catholic Church to this day. And it is performed all over the world, mostly outside the Catholic liturgy, "in concert" and often by large choirs (which adapts it to our listening habits).

The programme tells of the making of the film about this greatest musician of the Renaissance. The film's collaborators have their say. A few excerpts, and above all the music, bring the images of the film back to life for the listener. Palestrina's music is performed by the Roman ensemble Seicentonovecento under the direction of Flavio Colusso.

VOICES	Doris Wolters, Klaus Barner, Matthias Haase
MUSIC	Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Costanzo Festa
DIRECTOR	Lydia Jeschke
SOUND ENGINEER	Christiane Köhler
EDITOR	Lydia Jeschke
DURATION	54 minutes
FIRST BROADCAST	SWR 30.9.2010 Musik