Der Palestrina-Stil als Satzideal in der Musiktheorie zwischen 1750 und 1900.

Day, Thomas

By Peter Luttig. (Frankfurter Beitrage zur Musikwissenschaft, 23.) Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1994. [407 p. ISBN 3-7952-0804-1. DM 155.00.]

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was the first composer to become a "classic"; that is, the first to be continuously remembered and revered after his death. Of course, the generations of musicians who knew about the legends associated with him and placed him at the pinnacle of Renaissance music may actually have heard very few of his compositions (and not even the better ones), but Palestrina nevertheless once fulfilled what could only be called a yearning to have a great historical ancestor and symbol of a lost musical purity.

Peter Luttig very competently shows how species counterpoint somehow became identified with Palestrina, his style, and even his mystique. Species counterpoint is, to be sure, related to the composer's style the way that a fill-in-the-blank test on William Shakespeare is related to the Bard's plays, but teaching students through this step-by-step process was, nevertheless, supposed to bring them back to the lost Eden of music, that is, to the master's incomparable polyphony. Luttig then goes on to describe how actual compositions by Palestrina began to be used as examples for study and inspiration.

Palestrina as the legendary teacher of new students was popularized by Johann Joseph Fux in the two books of his Gradus ad Parnassum (1725; German translation, 1742). Fux, in this dialogue, portrays himself as the humble student, while Palestrina is the wise teacher. The Gradus begins in the older tradition of music theory rooted in philosophy and what was thought to be the laws of nature and then proceeds to a more modern concern for the practical training of musicians. Fux chose Palestrina as the "light" that would guide him from one era of music theory to another. And one might add that Fux guided Palestrina into European consciousness as the unsurpassed teacher of counterpoint.

Luttig has to cover a wide assortment of subjects that relate to Palestrina as an "authority figure" and source of inspiration for the student. His topics include: Luigi Cherubini and the counterpoint teaching at the Paris Conservatory (the model for other conservatories), the Cecilian movement, the association of unaccompanied polyphony with monarchy and stability in the nineteenth-century, Protestant reactions to Palestrina's music, and Richard Wagner. The author discusses Palestrina's place in the theoretical works of Johann Andre, Anton Reicha, Helmut Oberhoffer, Heinrich Bellermann, Johann Habert Michael Haller, and others.

A substantial part of this book is devoted to the author's own analysis of Palestrina's Lamentations of Jeremiah for Holy Thursday (Lamentationum Feria V. in coena Domini). This might seem out of place in a book of this son but Luttig justifies this digression from his topic by remarking that a study of Palestrina's style without an analysis of that style would be unthinkable; and, besides, his analysis of the Lamentations is an extension of one done by Haller in the nineteenth-century. Palestrina's music for the Lamentations is rather plain and, at first glance, routine. (Igor Stravinsky called Palestrina "a great bureaucrat of music" and the Lamentations would appear to be extremely "bureaucratic.") But Luttig looks beneath the surface of this particular music and finds subtle ingenuity in the motivic development of the simplest ideas, the attention to mathematical proportions, and the distinctive use of the Gregorian modes.

The book does not contain a general index but its bibliographies will be a great help to anyone trying to find information on Palestrina or the history of teaching counterpoint. The first bibliography lists books on theory published between 1750 and 1900. The second covers (appropriately) secondary literature on Palestrina and Palestrina in history. The third bibliography lists the compositions by Palestrina that were printed in books on theory and composition published between 1765 and 1902. (By the mid-nineteenth-century, there were several compositions by Palestrina in the conservatory library for the diligent student to copy out and study.)

Luttig does not promote any nonmusical agendas--about sociology, Marxism, religion, politics, and so forth. His book is a straightforward, objective historical study, with information and analysis. But behind the objective presentation of material there is the author's noticeable enthusiasm for the topic.