The first of Palestrina's four books of masses was republished in 1591 with the addition of a Missa Pro Defunctis, a very beauti ful work in which no attempt is made to set the Dies irae, and a Missa Nasce la gioja mia.
The Missa Papae Marcelli appeared in 1567 as the last item in Palestrina's second book of masses. The volume is dedicated to the king of Spain ; and in the dedication Palestrina says that, following the advice gravissimoruns, et religiosissimorm homi num, he has given his best energies to the composition of masses novo modorum genere. Dr. Knud Jeppesen, in his treatise Pales trina and the Dissonance (Copenhagen and Oxford, 1927), has pointed out exactly where the problem lay, if Palestrina was not to reduce the whole music of the mass to note-against-note har mony or falsobordone like his Improperia and Tallis's Responses. Simple statistics show that, whereas in earlier masses Palestrina develops his polyphony so that the voices are hardly ever singing the same words together, in the Missa Papae Marcelli each clause of the text is heard in the highest voice, or in several voices simul taneously before the polyphony is allowed to make the clauses overlap, and this is a general feature of Palestrina's mature style.
Yet there was no need for Palestrina to write a work specially to meet this demand. He had already formed the style for it, and his reference to masses novo modorum genere applies to six other masses besides the Missa Papae Marcelli. The Improperia had already revealed him as the greatest master of harmonic colour in note-against-note declamation; this very mastery made him content to write most of his early madrigals in a homophonic style which rash critics might deem primitive ; he was, on the other hand, a polyphonist to whom canonic devices were a child's play, the rules of which it was no trouble to follow and no sin to disregard. Any volume of Palestrina's works would have revealed to the cardinals that here was the man they needed. Every vol ume, except the earliest, contained works of more than one period : Palestrina published his works, not when he wrote them, but when he could afford to publish them, as the dedication of his First Book of Lamentations (really his last) plaintively shows.
The third book of masses, which appeared in 177o, shows at least three styles. It is difficult to suppose that the Missa Re
pleatur os meum can be anything but an early work; it is the heav iest and, for the most part, the dullest music Palestrina ever wrote. The materials of Missa Brevis, the Missa De Feria (a quiet work without Gloria and Credo), the Missa L'Homme Arne, and the above-mentioned Missa Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La, show how futile is any attempt to guess the quality of Palestrina's work from its theoretic or formal origins. L'Homme Arme is the notorious old tune on which Flemish composers based puzzles ; and Palestrina bases on it an encyclopaedia of rhythmic problems. Yet his result here, and in the obviously ridiculous scheme of Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La is of the quality of the Missa Brevis and not far below the Missa Papae Marcelli itself.
In 1571 Palestrina was reappointed as choir-master of St. Peter's, on the death of Animuccia. In 1577 Gregory XIII. com missioned Palestrina and his colleague, Zoilo, to "purify" the mu sical text of the liturgical (or Gregorian) chant. It is not surpris ing that Palestrina, and his colleagues and successors in the task, conceived that to purify was to simplify. The Spaniards knew better, and protested. Palestrina's share in the work soon ceased; but the Palestrinian tradition of plain-chant remained official until the musical liturgiologists of Solesmes restored the ancient style at the beginning of the loth century. (See Music, sec. 3.) In 1581 a fourth book of masses appeared, with all offending titles omitted, though it really contains another L'homme arme. In 1584 appeared Palestrina's wonderful setting of the Song of Solomon, in 29 motets, which he describes in his dedication as of a "genus alacrior," while he deplores that he had ever sung of a profaner love. Neither madrigals nor motets can give a com plete view of Palestrina if this unique work, which is neither liturgical nor secular, is unknown. Like all Palestrina's music, it is practically difficult to know ; the work cannot be appreciated in less than its entirety ; and its entirety is that of a bound volume of a magazine. There is no occasion on which it can be performed as a whole in public. We must live with it, and form ourselves into groups of singers who can produce it among themselves.