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Palestrina - Prince of Music
Flavio Colusso directing the Polyphonic Chorus
Directed by	Georg Brintrup
Written by	Georg Brintrup
Produced by	Christopher Janssen Arte
Starring	Renato Scarpa Remo Remotti Giorgio Colangeli Franco Nero
Cinematography	Paolo Scarfó Benny Hasenclever Oliver Kochs
Edited by	Georg Brintrup
Music by	Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	March 15, 2010
Running time	52 minutes
Country	Italy / Germany
Language	Italian

Palestrina - Prince of Music is an Italian/German 2009 music film directed by Georg Brintrup. It's about life and music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca.1525-1594, the famous Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. It was filmed in March 2009, mostly in and around L'Aquila and Rome. Most of the ancient buildings and interiors in the city of L'Aquila, that served as locations for the film, were distroyed only a few days later by the earthquake of April 6, 2009. The music of Palestrina was directed by Flavio Colusso and the Ensemble Seicentonovecento. The film was also titled The Liberation of Music or Die Befreiung der Musik when released in Germany.

Palestrina - Prince of Music premiered at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome November 15, 2009,

Plot

To achieve artistic and economic independence, Palestrina worked with great diplomacy in the shadow of the powerful Roman Catholic Church. Despite strict ecclesiastical rules, he succeeded in modernizing music.

During the time when Protestant Northern Europe separated from the Catholic Church of Rome and when Rome was no longer the center of power, the young Giovanni Pierluigi is trained as a choir-boy in the circle of the "Roman School" of polyphony founded by Costanzo Festa. This talented musician - at only 25 - becomes the head of the Cappella Giulia (Julian Chapel) at St. Peters. But he is both artistically and economically dependent on the clergy and subject to the moods and whims of the all powerful Popes.

After Pope Giulio III nominated him cantore ponteficio for life, the highest position in Rome for a musician at that time, Palestrina felt that he, at the age of thirty, was at the height of his career. However, the envy of the next Pope, Paul IV, and that of his singer-collegues led to him losing the title and he was dismissed. He was deeply shocked and realized that the greedy Roman clergy were more interested in secular politics than in the spirituality of music.

This realization haunted the musician and caused his artistic counterreaction. Within a few years he developed a new style in polyphonic art, the genus novus. A balance between word and sound, in which all voices are predominent. Music became freer than ever. In this style and he composed the famous Missa Papae Marcelli, which, after the Council of Trent, became the model for sacred music. This composition corresponds to the ecclesiastic musical challenges for verbal comprehension.

Suddenly Palestrina was back on top. The Jesuits, eager to win back Protestant Northern Europe for the Roman Catholic Church, became very attentive to Palestrina's music and summoned him to be the first music teacher at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. These "Spanish Priests", as they were called, knew that music can reach people much deeper than words, directly to their souls, and that music can bring people back to the "true faith". They were very successful in this endeavour. Princes, Kings and even the Emperor wanted Palestrina as the choir-master of their courts. However, experience had taught him not to become a pawn in the hands of the powerful.

Like all the other great Renaissance artists, Palestrina wanted to take his destiny into his own hands and maintain his artistic independence. He demanded enormous salaries for these positions, since he intended on staying in Rome. In fact, he soon became the head of the Cappella Giulia. And he was the first and only musician to receive the title of composer of the Cappella Pontificia "modulator pontificus". Palestrina became the most important musician in the country.

At the peak of his career, he received a heavy stroke of fate. The plague and an influenza epidemic took away his two oldest sons and his wife. He was desperate and fell into a deep depression. He wanted to give up composing and become a member of the clergy. Again, however, he took fate into his own hands. Strenuousness, ambition and the desire for secularity pursuaded him to take another very pragmatic decision. He married the rich widow of a fur merchant and finally had enough money to publish his scores. At least this meant that his work would never be forgotten. Within a few years sixteen books were published with numerous compositions, Palestrina's legacy, his "musical descendants", which still fascinate us today.

Cast

• Domenico Galasso as Iginio
• Renato Scarpa as Monsignore Cotta
• Remo Remotti as Filippo Neri
• Giorgio Colangeli as L. Barré
• Stefano Oppedisano as Annibale
• Claudio Marchione as Cristoforo
• Achille Brugnini as Giacchino
• Franco Nero as D. Ferrabosco
• Pasquale di Filippo as G. Severini
• Bartolomeo Giusti as old Palestrina
• Daniele Giuliani as young Palestrina
• Patrizia Bellezza as Virginia Dormuli
• Francesca Catenacci as Lucrezia Gori

External links

• Palestrina - princeps musicae at IMDb