MUSICAL CHRONICLE
THE Life of Palestrina,[1] by Zoë Kendrick Pyne does not differ radically from the sort of biographies of illustrious composers and Elizabethian dramatists to which we are used. The authoress of the new Life of the great Roman composer has followed in the good old sad old way of not accepting the work of the artist as the first great fact of his life, of not making an analysis of it the centre of her picture. Instead, she has placed facts gleaned from registers of churches and choirs, et cetera, in the foreground. Some descriptions of Palestrina's music are included, to be sure. But trivial detail and unnecessary speculation outbalance it in quantity. For example, on page 3, we are given to read:
"It may be conjectured that he (Pierluigi) showed early signs of musical genius, and, for that reason, may have been placed in the choir of St Agapito, there to acquire the knowledge of those liturgical melodies destined to shape his mind to its great end. But, whether climbing the steep streets to the overhanging Rocca, listening as he went, to the stornelli sung by the peasants in the meadows below—those melodies of untold antiquity—or in the cathedral, following the hand beat of the choir-master as he chanted the long alleluias on an Easter morning, it is certain that all musical sound was to him of deep significance, and that he was storing up impressions to be used hereafter for the greater good of his fellow-man."
On page 153 we read: "On December 5—Cardinal Ugo Buoncompagni of Bologna assumed the tiara as Gregory XIV. Gorgeous ceremonial, stately Requiem, alternating with the street-rows which invariably attended the election of the Pontiff, Te Deums and shouts of Evviva il Papa, centered around the spot where Pierluigi had his dwelling—namely, the precincts of the Vatican—from which he concluded in this year the purchase of a vineyard in the neighbourhood of Rome." But of the Missa Brevis, we are told
- ↑ The Life of Palestrina, by Zoë Kendrick Pyne (12mo, 232 pages; Dodd, Mead: $2.50).
