Palestrina Style

The Palestrina style is the style of polyphonic vocal music as written by 16th-century Italian Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594). Palestrina's music is today regarded as the apotheosis of the polyphonic vocal ideal of that era, a music that seeks to obtain a balance between melodic independence and harmonic cooperation of individual voices. Palestrina's style is typified by a graceful melodic smoothness and careful treatment of dissonance, with the primary consideration being melody, and harmony coming as a secondary product of the melodic combination. A good source for study of Palestrina's style is Knud Jeppeson, in his The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance, and Counterpoint: the Polyphonic Vocal Style of the 16th Century.

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