Palestrina was a carpet seller. The realisation hits me as I flip wearily through some herringbone swatches in a retail park off London’s Old Kent Road. What a cruel twist of fate for a composer variously known as the ‘prince of music’ and the ‘saviour of church music’ to have fallen on hard times. What a waste to think of the fine Italian Renaissance polyphonist chasing invoices in the fur and textile industry and fitting composition around it. I mentioned this to a soprano friend the other day, ‘Everyone needs a side hustle,’ she responded, wistfully.

Palestrina may have had a run of bad luck in the 1570s, losing family members to plague and being widowed, but his reputation seems to have continued to grow, especially once he himself died. In the 18th century, Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux wrote about Palestrina’s style of counterpoint in his treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (‘Paths to Parnassus’, 1725), which Haydn apparently recommended to Beethoven. In the 19th century, Palestrina was the first Renaissance composer to have his complete works printed in scholarly editions; and there’s Victor Hugo’s poem Que la musique date du seizième siècle (‘That music dates from the 16th century’, published in the collection Les rayons et les ombres, 1840) in which he refers to Palestrina as ‘the old master, the old genius … father of harmony’. And in 1915, in the midst of the First World War, German composer Hans Pfitzner wrote an opera about Palestrina’s triumphant successes.

You would be right to be suspicious of such a mushrooming posthumous reputation, but in Palestrina’s case there’s a bedrock of truth. Italy in the 16th century was a difficult place and time to live: from the sack of Rome in 1527 by imperial troops to the Protestant threats from northern Europe, turmoil was never far away. Within the Catholic Church, the Council of Trent met periodically mid-century (1545-63) to counter Reformation zeal and cast a censorious eye over liturgy and its sacred music. Uneasy with its seductive and lascivious findings, it heralded a new conservative era. Some of Palestrina’s music met the council’s requirements and was held up as an ideal, and thus in this heady mix of liturgical upheaval polyphonic music kept its place in the liturgy and a legend was born, with Palestrina cast as the great Italian composer who saved church music from cancel culture (as we say nowadays).

That was all almost half a millennium ago, as 2025 marks the quincentenary of Palestrina’s birth and is a good time to celebrate him as the peak of the stile antico – that late flowering of perfected polyphony which Monteverdi would eventually contrast with the stile moderno of the early Baroque. And speaking of anniversaries, 2025 is also the year in which the vocal consort Stile Antico – which I would suggest is at the peak of modern Renaissance polyphony performance – celebrates its 20th anniversary. So I meet up with three of the group’s singers, soprano Kate Ashby and tenors Andrew Griffiths and Jonathan Hanley, to discuss all things ‘stile antico’.

The ensemble Stile Antico begins 2025 with a new album dedicated to Palestrina, the final instalment of its trilogy ‘The Golden Renaissance’. Ashby explains that the idea came from Helen Rogers at Decca: ‘She wanted to mark three composer anniversaries that fell very nicely every two years. We first celebrated Josquin and then Byrd, and now we have Palestrina. And that has been really fortunate for us, because those are three quite different composers, but each of them definitely deserves a proper deep dive to explore their repertoire. We have performed Palestrina’s music before, but this was a chance to explore further. And since both previous discs, Josquin and Byrd, were based on Masses, we decided we wanted to do the same for Palestrina, so we chose Missa Papae Marcelli, since that’s the famous one. For all three of our discs, the idea is to offer an introduction to the composer, so this one would be like a sort of “Now That’s What I Call Palestrina”.’ We laugh, remembering the pop compilations of that name which first appeared back in the 1980s.

A collaborative approach: right from the outset, 20 years ago, the London-based early music vocal ensemble Stile Antico has rehearsed and performed without a conductor (photography: Eduardus Lee)

The Missa Papae Marcelli is famous for having satisfied the demands of the Council of Trent, which sought less elaborate polyphony devoid of secular influences that would neither distract nor titillate the congregation. Palestrina, having already based many of his Masses on popular tunes (he penned a number of fine madrigals too), had quickly to find a new style that eschewed such complexities and kept the words front and centre. Yet there’s the rub: it still had to display sufficiently elevated craftwork to justify his profession. The Mass that became his great success was dedicated to Pope Marcellus II, who in 1555 reigned for only 22 days before a sudden death. Apparently, the pope himself felt that Palestrina had set the sacred words ‘in such a way that everything was audible and intelligible, as it should be’.

Clear words and a meticulous avoidance of extramusical influence were the hallmarks of this self-conscious new style, obviously, but so were elegant control of consonance and balanced phrases. In the Missa Papae Marcelli, Palestrina’s phrases often leap up a fourth, then step back down graciously, lending a delicate arch-shape to each part. At times he uses homophony rather than polyphony to make an emphatic point. The results are extremely elegant and indeed expressive.

This story is depicted in his first book of Masses (published 1554), where a famous woodcut shows Palestrina presenting his music to the previous pope, Julius III. But as is so often the case in musicological matters, this is not as straightforward as it seems. The image was recycled from Cristóbal de Morales’s second book of Masses (1544). Some facial reconstruction has occurred, but everything else is unchanged – the result being that the famous picture, adding fuel to our legend, inadvertently shows Palestrina presenting someone else’s music to the pope! But a corrupted image such as this must not suggest that all Renaissance polyphony sounds the same: that’s fake news! If anything, the altered woodcut provides insight into the way that composers like Palestrina were viewed by society in the 16th century: on his knees (literally) as servant and craftsman, brilliant but disposable (hence the carpet-selling side hustle when he fell on hard times in later life).

An exciting prospect: Stile Antico is beginning to veer off the beaten track in its choice of repertoire by Palestrina (photography: Eduardus Lee)

Stile Antico’s concert programme The Prince of Music, touring this year, includes motets from Palestrina’s fourth book published in Rome in 1584 and dedicated to yet another pope, Gregory XIII. It’s a fascinating collection. In the introduction, the composer renounces the sins of his youth – a reference to those early madrigals – and claims to have changed his purpose. In setting the Old Testament Song of Songs with all its erotic power there is an intensity in these motets that does seem to mark a new direction. We can read this as spiritual fervour, I suppose, but in the dedication he writes, ‘I have used a kind of music somewhat more lively than I have been accustomed to use in ecclesiastical melodies,’ though he does justify this by suggesting that the subject demands it.

I ask Hanley if Palestrina still has the power to surprise the group of seasoned singers as they explore his music. ‘I think so!’ he responds, enthusiastically. ‘Last year we did a programme based on Dante’s Inferno and found this piece by Palestrina called Peccantem me quotidie (second book of motets, 1572), which talks about being stuck in hell. As we sang it through, everyone just gasped to think that it was by Palestrina; overall, we felt it could have been Victoria because it’s really expressive and quite dark.’ Ashby adds that its intensity derives from the phrygian mode, and says, ‘It’s just a very different style. Obviously, he wrote so much, and a few pieces are continuously used as examples of his lovely, clean, balanced style, but then there are definitely pieces, like Jonathan says, that are more extracurricular and show a different style, such as Salve regina and Peccantem me quotidie.’ Griffiths laments the fact that ‘teachers often reduce Palestrina to a very simple, four-part calm where nothing really happens. It was a perfect but slightly cold style that when I was at Cambridge was taught as the ideal introduction to counterpoint but that actually doesn’t necessarily engage you that much. So I’ve also been surprised by the sheer pleasure of the sonority of these alternative pieces and particularly in finding more colour and expressive depth than I thought maybe there would be.’ I couldn’t agree more. If you take any Renaissance composer and just judge them on four or five pieces, including a conservative Mass and a couple of motets, you’ll end up with a limited view. I’m excited that Stile Antico is veering off that beaten track a little and opening up the catalogue.

Stile Antico is much lauded, its two Gramophone Awards sit alongside notable others. This vocal ensemble has gained international acclaim for its rich, vibrant sound in sacred and secular music from the 16th and early 17th centuries, and I once referred to the group in print as having ‘a fond, Werther’s Original hue’ (3/23). The main reason behind this unique sonic identity is that they perform without a conductor, relying instead on a collaborative approach. I ask Griffiths about this, since it is not the norm for a British group working with Renaissance repertoire. He says, ‘My first concert was also the group’s first concert, which was in Oxford at Easter time, and we sang Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories. I don’t think we thought to set out to reinvent the wheel, we certainly didn’t get together to decide there wouldn’t be a conductor – we just didn’t need one. It didn’t feel very strange, really.’ Ashby, who also sang in that first concert, agrees: ‘It was very clear from the beginning that it was going to be quite an important principle of the group. The real challenge for us is probably more in rehearsal than in performance, I would say. I think you could probably get a group of 12 decent singers together, people who are experienced in this kind of repertoire and know the music, and they would likely give a pretty good performance unconducted because they understand how it works. But the bigger challenge is in rehearsing unconducted because that just requires so much awareness and knowledge of each other. In particular, we know when to explore something, when to try out different ideas, and when to draw a line under something. It’s something we have had to learn over years.’

I ask Hanley if the singers each have a bête noire. Is there, for instance, someone who always mentions musica ficta? He chuckles. ‘We can almost always tell what everybody’s going to say. I usually suggest we should be more expressive, since I focus on text and leave others to think about ficta; but then there’ll be people talking about rits and breaths too. I think it’s really important that everyone is heard and that these things are always balanced and measured. But yes, it is quite funny.’

Griffiths is reflective: ‘It’s really interesting how often something good comes out of trying two or three different options before finding another way that nobody had previously thought of. Actually, we sometimes find that two or three really disparate ideas are catalysts for us to produce something new and interesting.’ It’s this sense of adventure that Ashby relishes: ‘One of the things that we love is the scope to explore because the manuscripts are not very dictatorial: there are no tempo markings, no expression markings in terms of dynamics, for instance. We get the words and we get the notes and then we can explore what to do with those.’

This year the group is looking forward to giving a large gala concert in May, at London’s Wigmore Hall, as part of the anniversary celebrations. It will be a showcase of some of Stile Antico’s favourite music, including some of the new music that has been written for it. The group will also be visiting the US, Europe and the UK with its Palestrina programme, which includes works by the composer’s Roman contemporaries as well as a new piece by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, A Gift of Heaven. All this is interspersed with several ‘come and sing’ events, which demonstrates another side of Stile Antico: a commitment to education with a view to inspiring the next generation of singers. The whole makes for a busy and varied schedule.

I can’t resist asking if they have thought about the next 20 years, and Griffiths lights up instantly. ‘There’s always new music out there, and our newest member is a very good editor and finder of things, particularly Spanish polyphony.’ (He’s referring to bass Gareth Thomas, who joined in February last year.) ‘So we’re exploring music that hasn’t actually been performed, or at least published, for centuries. I suspect that will influence our future programming, as it’s exciting to find things that haven’t been performed for so long. I guess it’s also sort of a chance to reflect. If you had asked 20 years ago whether this kind of group might be possible or sustainable or even practical on a musical or social level, people might have been a bit sceptical! So now we enjoy trying to pass on some of our knowledge to others through our ensemble bursary, mentoring younger groups and so on.’ The enthusiasm is infectious.

Needless to say, I have had a sneak preview of the new album, and it is glorious. I think back to those carpet swatches, overwhelmed by choice, and spare a thought for Palestrina’s resilience – before slipping on my headphones once more to take a deep dive into his elegant and sumptuous music.