BESTING THE FLEMINGS; OR, THE LAST OF THE TENORISTAS

Chapter:

CHAPTER 16 The End of Perfection

Source:

MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

All but six of Palestrina’s hundred-odd Masses are based on preexisting music. That in itself is not remarkable; the polyphonic Mass Ordinary cycle was from the very beginning a cannibalistic genre. But Palestrina was the only late sixteenth-century composer who retained an active interest in the techniques of the early fifteenth-century composers whose work he discovered in the manuscripts of the Sistine Chapel, where he worked in the years immediately preceding the publication of his first volume of Masses in 1554. (He was pensioned out of the Sistine Chapel choir in 1555 owing to Pope Paul IV’s decision to enforce the long-dormant rule of celibacy there; Palestrina was one of the three married members who had to be let go.)

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 16 The End of Perfection." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-016003.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 16 The End of Perfection. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 8 Dec. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-016003.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 16 The End of Perfection." In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 8 Dec. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume1/actrade-9780195384819-div1-016003.xml