music out of the rigidity and frivolity characterizing on either
hand the opposing ranks of those that preceded him, and to embody
the religious spirit in works of the highest art. He transposed the
ecclesiastical melody (_canto fermo_) from the tenor to the soprano
(thus rendering it more intelligible to the ear), and created that
glorious thing choir song, with its refined harmony, that noble music
of which his works are the models, and the papal chair the oracle. No
individual preeminence is ever allowed to disturb and weaken the ideal
atmosphere of the whole work. However Palestrina's successors have aimed
to imitate his effects, they have, with the exception of Cherubini,
failed for the most part; for every peculiar genus of art is the result
of innate genuine inspiration, and the spontaneous growth of the age
which produces it. As a parent of musical form he was the protagonist
of Italian music, both sacred and secular, and left an admirable model,
which even the new school of opera so soon to rise found it necessary to
follow in the construction of harmony. The splendid and often licentious
music of the theatre built its most worthy effects on the work of the
pious composer, who lived, labored, and died in an atmosphere of almost
anchorite sanctity.

The great disciples of his school, Nannini and Allegri, continued his
work, and the splendid "Miserere" of the latter was regarded as such
an inestimable treasure that no copy of it was allowed to go out of the
Sistine chapel, till the infant prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart, wrote it out
from the memory of a single hearing.




PICCINI, PAISIELLO, AND CIMAROSA