The Master and the Soundscape. Palestrina and the musical image of Rome between the 16th and 17th centuries (original) (raw)

Cinquecento Rome was the cradle of one of the most influential syntheses of Western music, the one that is usually labeled with the name of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. In the following centuries, this synthesis – no matter if misinterpreted or subjectively reshaped – would become a myth. How did this peculiar and multifaceted formulation of a paneuropean polyphonic style come into being? What kind of influences turned a chapelmaster of provincial origins into the supreme arbiter of Roman musical style? This paper explores from a broad perspective the confluence of international and local musical trends towards Rome during the Sixteenth century, and the subsequent global dissemination of the new Roman music. And since music was a crucial factor in city life, it also address the unmistakable coincidence of this process with the powerful renewal of “l’image de Rome” (Labrot) in the post-Tridentine era, trying to capture the evolving soundscape corresponding to this image.