Backround Paper
...ed a canon, or monochord, and thereby were able to determine mathematically the intonation of an entire musical system. The Pythagoreans saw these ratios as governing forces in the cosmos as well as in sounds. For the Pythagoreans, as well as for Plato, music consequently became a branch of mathematics as well as an art; this tradition of musical thought flourished throughout antiquity in such theorists as Nicomachus of Gerasa (2d century AD) and Ptolemy (2d century AD) and was transmitted into the Middle Ages by Boethius (6th century AD). The mathematics and intonation of the Pythagorean tradition, and the Greek modes consequently became a crucial influence in the development of music in medieval Europe. Although little of ancient Greek music survives, Greek musical thought has profoundly affected the manner in which Western culture has expressed itself in this art. Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina was a pupil of Mallapert and Firmin Lebel at St. Maria Maggiore, Rome, where he was a choirboy from at least 1537. He became organist of St. Agapito, Palestrina, in 1544 and in 1547 married Lucrezia Gori there; they had three children. After the Bishop of Palestrina's election as pope (Julius III) he was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia in Rome (1551), where he issued his first works. During the 1560s and 1570s Palestrina's fame and influence rapidly increased through the wide diffusion of his published works. So great was his reputation that in 1577 he was asked to rewrite the church's main plainchant books, following the Cuoncil of Trent's guidelines. His most famous mass, Missa Papae Marcelli, may have been composed to satisty the...