Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (born c. 1525, Palestrina, near Rome [Italy]—died February
2, 1594, Rome) was an Italian Renaissance composer of more than 105 masses and 250
motets, a master of contrapuntal composition.
Palestrina lived during the period of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation and was a
primary representative of the 16th-century conservative approach to church music.

Life
Palestrina was born in a small town where his ancestors are thought to have lived for
generations, but as a child he was taken to nearby Rome. In 1537 he was one of the choirboys
at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he also studied music between 1537 and 1539.
In 1544 Palestrina was engaged as organist and singer in the cathedral of his native town. His
duties included playing the organ, helping with the choir, and teaching music. His pay was that
of a canon and would have been received in money and kind. His prowess at the church there
attracted the attention of the bishop, Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, who later became
Pope Julius III.
In 1547 Palestrina married Lucrezia Gori. Three sons were born to them: Rodolfo, Angelo, and
Iginio. Only the last outlived his father. In 1551 Palestrina returned to Rome, where he assumed
the first of his papal appointments, as musical director of the Julian Chapel choir, and thus was
responsible for the music in St. Peter’s. Before he was 30 he published his first book of masses
(1554), dedicated to Julius III, and the following year he was promoted to singer in the Pontifical
Choir. About this time he became composer to the papal chapel. Palestrina repaid the pope’s
patronage by composing a mass in his honour. Yet he did not neglect the secular side of his art,
for his first book of madrigals (secular and spiritual part-songs) appeared in 1555, unfortunately
at a time when the lenient regime of Julius III had given way to the sterner discipline of Paul IV.
A decree of the new pope forbade married men to serve in the papal choir, and Palestrina,
together with two of his colleagues, received a small pension by way of compensation for their
dismissal.
For the next five years Palestrina directed the choir of St. John Lateran, but his efforts were
continually thwarted by singers whose quality was almost as limited as their number, which was
restricted because very little money was available for music. Nevertheless, he gained admission
for his eldest son, Rodolfo, then about 13, as a chorister. Eventually he broke away from this
uncongenial milieu. The chapter archives of St. John Lateran record that in July 1560 he and his
son suddenly departed.
A year passed before Palestrina found employment. In March 1561 he accepted a new post at
Santa Maria Maggiore. This post was more congenial to him and he remained at it for about
seven years. At the invitation of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este he then took charge of the music at
the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, a popular summer resort near Rome. He was in the cardinal’s service
for four years, at which time he also worked as music master for a newly formed Seminarium
Romanum (Roman Seminary), where his sons Rodolfo and Angelo became students.
Thomas Morley

Thomas Morley (born 1557/58, Norwich, England—died October 1602, London) was a
composer, organist, and theorist, and the first of the great English madrigalists.
Morley held a number of church musical appointments, first as master of the children at Norwich
Cathedral (1583–87), then by 1589 as organist at St. Giles, Cripplegate, in London, and by 1591
at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1592 Morley was sworn in as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal.

It is highly probable that Morley converted to Roman Catholicism early in life, perhaps under the
influence of his master, William Byrd. By 1591, however, Morley had defected from the church,
for in that year he engaged in espionage work among the English Roman Catholics in the
Netherlands.
About that time, Morley evidently began to recognize the possibilities that were offered by the
new popularity of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, for he began publishing sets of
madrigals of his own composition. Morley published 25 canzonets (“little short songs,” as he
referred to them) for three voices in 1593; in 1597 he published 17 for five voices, and 4
canzonets for six voices in the same year. His first madrigals—a set of 22—appeared in 1594,
and 20 ballets were published in 1595. The latter were modeled on the balletti of Giovanni
Giacomo Gastoldi but expressed more elaborate musical development and a stronger sense of
harmonic direction than Gastoldi’s. Morley excelled in the lighter and more cheerful types
of madrigal or canzonet.
Among his works are a considerable proportion of Italian madrigals reworked and published by
Morley with no acknowledgment of the original composers—a practice not uncommon at the
time. In 1598 Morley brought out a volume of English versions of selected Italian madrigals; and
in that same year he was granted a monopoly to print music in England for 21 years. His
textbook, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597), provides knowledge of
the theoretical basis of composition of Morley’s own time and that of earlier generations.
Morley’s compositions are written in two distinct styles that may be chronologically separated.
As a pupil of Byrd he was trained in the premadrigalian English style of broad and strong
polyphony; his volumes of the 1590s, however, exhibit his mastery of Italian madrigal style and
are characterized by a direct effectiveness, gentle harmonic warmth, springy rhythms, and
clarity of texture.
Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (born March 21 [March 31, New Style], 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Ernestine
Saxon Duchies [Germany]—died July 28, 1750, Leipzig) composer of the Baroque era, the most
celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians. Although he was admired by
his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist, and expert on organ building,
Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time and is celebrated as the
creator of the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B Minor, and numerous
other masterpieces of church and instrumental music. Appearing at a propitious moment in the history of
music, Bach was able to survey and bring together the principal styles, forms, and national traditions that
had developed during preceding generations and, by virtue of his synthesis, enrich them all.
He was a member of a remarkable family of musicians who were proud of their achievements, and about
1735 he drafted a genealogy, Ursprung der musicalisch-Bachischen Familie (“Origin of the Musical Bach
Family”), in which he traced his ancestry back to his great-great-grandfather Veit Bach, a Lutheran baker
(or miller) who late in the 16th century was driven from Hungary to Wechmar in Thuringia, a historic
region of Germany, by religious persecution and died in 1619. There were Bachs in the area before then,
and it may be that, when Veit moved to Wechmar, he was returning to his birthplace. He used to take
his cittern to the mill and play it while the mill was grinding. Johann Sebastian remarked, “A pretty noise
they must have made together!

Life

Early years
J.S. Bach was the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Ambrosius was
a string player, employed by the town council and the ducal court of Eisenach. Johann Sebastian started
school in 1692 or 1693 and did well in spite of frequent absences. Of his musical education at this time,
nothing definite is known; however, he may have picked up the rudiments of string playing from his father,
and no doubt he attended the Georgenkirche, where Johann Christoph Bach was organist until 1703.

By 1695 both his parents were dead, and he was looked after by his eldest brother, also named Johann
Christoph (1671–1721), organist at Ohrdruf. This Christoph had been a pupil of the
influential keyboard composer Johann Pachelbel, and he apparently gave Johann Sebastian his first
formal keyboard lessons. The young Bach again did well at school, and in 1700 his voice secured him a
place in a select choir of poor boys at the school at Michaelskirche, Lüneburg.
His voice must have broken soon after this, but he remained at Lüneburg for a time, making himself
generally useful. No doubt he studied in the school library, which had a large and up-to-date collection of
church music; he probably heard Georg Böhm, organist of the Johanniskirche; and he visited Hamburg to
hear the renowned organist and composer Johann Adam Reinken at the Katharinenkirche, contriving also
to hear the French orchestra maintained by the duke of Celle.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
He seems to have returned to Thuringia in the late summer of 1702. By this time he was already a
reasonably proficient organist. His experience at Lüneburg, if not at Ohrdruf, had turned him away from
the secular string-playing tradition of his immediate ancestors; thenceforth he was chiefly, though not
exclusively, a composer and performer of keyboard and sacred music. The next few months are wrapped
in mystery, but by March 4, 1703, he was a member of the orches tra employed by Johann Ernst, duke of
Weimar (and brother of Wilhelm Ernst, whose service Bach entered in 1708). This post was a mere
stopgap; he probably already had his eye on the organ then being built at the Neue Kirche (New Church)
in Arnstadt, for, when it was finished, he helped to test it, and in August 1703 he was appointed organist —
all this at age 18. Arnstadt documents imply that he had been court organist at Weimar; this is incredible,
though it is likely enough that he had occasionally played there.
Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi’s earliest musical compositions date from his first years at the Pietà. Printed
collections of his trio sonatas and violin sonatas respectively appeared in 1705 and
1709, and in 1711 his first and most influential set of concerti for violin and string
orchestra (Opus 3, L’estro armonico) was published by the Amsterdam music-
publishing firm of Estienne Roger. In the years up to 1719, Roger published three more
collections of his concerti (opuses 4, 6, and 7) and one collection of sonatas (Opus 5).

Vivaldi made his debut as a composer of sacred vocal music in 1713, when the Pietà’s
choirmaster left his post and the institution had to turn to Vivaldi and other composers
for new compositions. He achieved great success with his sacred vocal music, for which
he later received commissions from other institutions. Another new field of endeavour
for him opened in 1713 when his first opera, Ottone in villa, was produced in Vicenza.
Returning to Venice, Vivaldi immediately plunged into operatic activity in the twin roles
of composer and impresario. From 1718 to 1720 he worked in Mantua as director of
secular music for that city’s governor, Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the
only full-time post Vivaldi ever held; he seems to have preferred life as a freelance
composer for the flexibility and entrepreneurial opportunities it offered. Vivaldi’s
major compositions in Mantua were operas, though he also composed cantatas and
instrumental works.

caricature of Antonio Vivaldi

Caricature of Antonio Vivaldi, pen and ink on paper by Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1723; in the Codex
Ottoboni, Vatican Library, Rome. The inscription below the drawing reads, “Il Prete rosso
Compositore di Musica che fece L'opera a Capranica del 1723” (“The red pr iest, composer of music
who made the opera at Capranica [College in Rome] of 1723”).(more)
The 1720s were the zenith of Vivaldi’s career. Based once more in Venice, but
frequently traveling elsewhere, he supplied instrumental music to patrons and
customers throughout Europe. Between 1725 and 1729 he entrusted five new
collections of concerti (opuses 8–12) to Roger’s publisher successor, Michel-Charles Le
Cène. After 1729 Vivaldi stopped publishing his works, finding it more profitable to sell
them in manuscript to individual purchasers. During this decade he also received
numerous commissions for operas and resumed his activity as an impresario in Venice
and other Italian cities.
George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel (born February 23, 1685, Halle, Brandenburg [Germany]—died April
14, 1759, London, England) was a German-born English composer of the late Baroque era,
noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most
famous of all oratorios, Messiah (1741), and is also known for such occasional pieces as Water
Music (1717) and Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749).

Life
Handel was the son of a barber-surgeon. He showed a marked gift for music and became a
pupil in Halle of the composer Friedrich W. Zachow, learning the principles
of keyboard performance and composition from him. His father died when Handel was 11, but
his education had been provided for, and in 1702 he enrolled as a law student at the University
of Halle. He also became organist of the Reformed (Calvinist) Cathedral in Halle, but he served
for only one year before going north to Hamburg, where greater opportunities awaited him. In
Hamburg, Handel joined the violin section of the opera orchestra. He also took over some of the
duties of harpsichordist, and early in 1705 he presided over the premiere in Hamburg of his first
opera, Almira.
Handel spent the years 1706–10 traveling in Italy, where he met many of the greatest Italian
musicians of the day, including Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti and his
son Domenico. He composed many works in Italy, including two operas, numerous Italian
solo cantatas (vocal compositions), Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (1707) and another
oratorio, the serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708), and some Latin (i.e., Roman
Catholic) church music. His opera Agrippina enjoyed a sensational success at its premiere
in Venice in 1710.
Handel’s years in Italy greatly influenced the development of his musical style. His fame had
spread throughout Italy, and his mastery of the Italian opera style now made him an
international figure. In 1710 he was appointed Kapellmeister to the elector of Hanover, the
future King George I of England, and later that year Handel journeyed to England. In 1711 his
opera Rinaldo was performed in London and was greeted so enthusiastically that Handel
sensed the possibility of continuing popularity and prosperity in England. In 1712 he went back
to London for the production of his operas Il pastor fido and Teseo (1713). In 1713 he won his
way into royal favour by his Ode for the Queen’s Birthday and the Utrecht Te
Deum and Jubilate in celebration of the Peace of Utrecht, and he was granted an annual
allowance of £200 by Queen Anne.

Recognized by prominent members of both the English aristocracy and the intelligentsia,
Handel was in no hurry to return to Hanover. Soon he had no need to do so, for on the death
of Queen Anne in 1714, the elector George Louis became King George I of England. In 1718
Handel became director of music to the duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the
11 Chandos Anthems and the English masque Acis and Galatea, among other works. Another
masque, Haman and Mordecai, was to be the effective starting point for the English oratorio.
Except for a few visits to the European continent, Handel spent the rest of his life in England. In
February 1727 he became a British subject, which enabled him to be appointed a composer of
the Chapel Royal. In this capacity he wrote much music, including the Coronation Anthems for
George II in 1727 and the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline 10 years later.
SAN JOSE NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
SAN JOSE CAMARINES SUR
AY 2024-2025

Submitted by:
John David M. Morada

Submitted to:
Mary Joy A. Peñas
MAPEH Teacher