SATURDAY 8^th MARCH 2008

7:30pm

St. Mildred's Church, Canterbury

Programme:

Giovanni Pierluigi da PALESTRINA ?1525 - 1594 Mass ("Missa Papae Marcelli")

Sir Charles Hubert Hastings PARRY 1848 - 1918 "Songs of Farewell"

And other works, to be announced.

PALESTRINA was one of the great Renaissance masters, along with Lassus and Byrd. He spent his life in Rome, beginning his musical career as a choirboy at Santa Maria Maggiore Church. He later sang in the Sistine Chapel. He was maestro di cappella at several great churches, was employed by the powerful d'Este family, and taught music at the Rome Seminary. He was famous in his own lifetime for his compositions, a prolific canon of masses, motets and madrigals.

The Missa Papae Marcelli, dedicated to the pope Marcellus II is his most famous, and was written to satisfy the 1562 Council of Trent's demand that mediaeval polyphony should give way to a modern textual clarity. Nevertheless, Palestrina is credited with actually preserving the art of polyphony from total censure by presenting it in a way that complied with the directives of the Council.

PARRY studied at Oxford and became both composer, writer and teacher. He exercised an intellectually revitalizing influence on the English musical scene in the late Victorian era, and his Songs of Farewell are a quintessential example of his intelligence combined with a fresh lyricism.