44th Day of Easter - Sicut Cervus and the man who saved polyphony

For a long time, church music sounded like this - Pascha Nostrum Organum - Leonin

Beautiful and worshipful in its way, but hard to dance to. One part gets a little movement, but the bottom voices are static. (Our word “tenor” comes from the Latin teneo which means “to hold.” You can see that the tenor line holds the text, while the top line gets to move around a bit.)

Then polyphony developed - lines of music moving in different directions, little independent melodies that are incredibly satisfying to sing for those willing to work at it a little.
Here is a 12th century example - O Primus Homo Coruit

But church musicians started doing what church musicians are still prone to doing, using their position to indulge their musical tastes, push the boundaries, focus on jamming with their musician friends more than serving the church, and generally showing off. Those lovely independent lines of music are very fun to sing, but the text, already in a language different than the vernacular of the poor peasants, get obscured.

I’m not sure if this piece by Guillaume Dufay counts as overly-busy polyphony - I find it lovely - but probably couldn’t follow the text. Dufay  (Side note - it is very hard to follow choral text no matter how simple it is. The phenomena of multiple voices singing. But I digress from an already lengthy digression)

Enter Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation in 1517 and an emphasis on understandable text when singing. Then the generation-long Council of Trent (1545-1563) and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. How could polyphony continue as a valid part of music when it so obscured the text? Some of the reformers wanted to do away with it completely - get that rock and roll out of the church! - and return to simple chant-like music.

Legend has it that Palestrina was asked to compose a mass that was beautiful and worshipful while it retained polyphony, showing that the style of music could be reformed. So he set the mass text to lovely, restrained polyphony and, to make it even more acceptable, named it after the pope.

Pope Marcellus Mass - Kyrie

Polyphony was preserved! And now I add the song that I intended to put at the top, Sicut Cervus by Palestrina, along with a brief note that this is the text of Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.” I posted several songs set to that text a few days ago. But the Palestrina story is too fun not to share, even though it is probably exaggerated.

Sicut Cervus