Palestrina and Arvo Pärt

The 500th anniversary of Palestrina’s birth gives us the perfect opportunity to celebrate this most consummate of renaissance composers. From his time to ours he has come to represent an entire epoch of music, and to influence some of the greatest names from later centuries — among them Händel and Beethoven, though perhaps the greatest compliment was paid by J.S. Bach, who made his own edition of Palestrina’s Missa Sine nomine a 6, with embellishments, to learn the style.

There would be many ways of acknowledging Palestrina’s achievement. I decided to showcase an outstanding mass setting from the 107 he wrote, include one or two of his greatest motets; and make a comparison with one of his peers. In this context, perhaps the most intriguing is with Arvo Pärt. Although Pärt doesn’t write polyphony in the way Palestrina exemplified, he can create an atmosphere in his music which sits well alongside that of the renaissance master. In Da Pacem, for example, he takes up the standard renaissance technique of deploying a chant melody and surrounding it with other contrapuntal lines. And their two views, old and contemporary, of the Nunc dimittis text are fascinating. — Peter Philips