The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1

ic recognition in the process. That is the man whose name in English would be John Peter Lewis, or as his father called him, Giovanni Pier Luigi, who was born at Palestrina, at some da

h ever had. He was a younger contemporary of Willaert's, but was born an Italian. And all his glory belongs to Italy. Of hi

ry happily. Yet this marriage brought him the greatest shock of his life. His wife's name was Lucrezia, "

life; with her he sustained the most cruel afflictions of his spirit, and with her also he ate the hard crust of sorrow: yet with her again he rested in

their compositions. The last son, Igino, outlived his parents and his own welfare; he was "un' anima disarmonica" After his father's death he attempted to complete and market an unfinished and rejected composition of his father's, but he was legally re

t wife of Palestrina, was the mother of Angelo, that after her death he married one Doralice, and that she was the mother of Igino. But Baini exposes Pitoni's careles

ses to Pope Julius III. As a reward, the careless pontiff made him one of the singers of his Sistine Chapel, omitting the usual severe examination, and overlooking as a small matter the fact that Palestrina was so far from being a priest that he was very much married and very much the father, and furthermore

osco, and Palestrina, "uomini ammogliati, e chi con grandissimo scandalo, ed in vilipendio del divin culto, contro le disposizioni dei sagri canoni, e contro le costituzioni e le consuetudini della cappella apostolica cantano i medesimi tre ammogliati imitamente ai capellani cantori." He then declares that, after mature deliberati

of a fever and came nigh to death. But he recovered, and two months later found another post as canon of the Lateran, of which by the 1st of October, 1555, he was maestro. Eleven years later, a year after he had written his immortal Improperia, we find him begging on a

Pope Marcellus II. The ten years between 1561 and 1571 had marked an epoch

a foundation melody or cantus firmus for their vocal gymnastics. The churchmen of that day did in a more elaborate fashion what Wesley did in his day and the Salvation Army in ours for the popular ballad of the streets. The trouble was that many of the congr

he was of either Flemish or English birth, and, though he was a churchman, was a gambler and drunkard; he kept a mistress, who ought to have been pretty to fit her pretty name, Juana de Espinosa. Besides, De Cotes caroused miscel

proposition to Palestrina to see if it were worthy and capable of redemption. He composed three masses, and the third of them, dedicated to the memory of Pope

ua dolce consorte, after having piously accompanied the solemn procession for the transport of the body of Saint Gregory Nazianzeno f

ness began anew and "neither the tears nor the voice of the loving companion prevailed against the inexorable scythe of death." On

nd in his old age he felt both fatigue and want, and was compelled to join the long list of those musicians who have appealed to their patrons for ch