Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina and the Impotence of Early Lateness

STEPHEN McCLATCHIE Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina and the Impotence of Early Lateness A strong critical tradition, virtually contemporary with the work's creation, interprets the title figure of Hans Pfitzner's 1917 opera, Palestrina, as a thinly veiled allegory for the composer himself: a lone figure at the end of an age, pessimistic and conservative, fighting against a decadent culture. The scent of decay, of overripeness, is strong; in his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), Thomas Mann describes Palestrina as 'something ultimate ['Letztes'J, consciously ultimate, from the sphere ofSchopenhauer and Wagner, of romanticism .., its metaphysical mood, its ethos of "cross, death, and grave," its mixture of music, pessimism and humor' (297). Critics have been led along this interpretive path owing to the striking similarities between the argument of Palestrina and the positions taken by Pfitzner in his many polemical writings. Even the titles of these works, written around the time of Palestrina, make clear his conservative stance: The Threat of Futurism (from 1917) and The New Aesthetic of Musical Impotence: A Symptom ofDecline? (1920). Despite John Williamson's attempt to contest this view in his recent monograph on the composer, it seems most fruitful to follow, and perhaps even intensify, this interpretative tradition by highlighting-several contradictory aspects of the opera - most particularly, the striking (and apparently unnoticed) aesthetic inconsistency at the heart of the work. Following in the footsteps of his idol, Richard Wagner, Pfitzner wrote the libretto for Palestrina himself. The action takes place in November and December 1563, the year of the conclusion of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church council convened in 1545 to reform the church in the wake of the Reformation. When the opera opens, the Renaissance master is exhausted and creatively spent after the death of his wife, Lukrezia. He has not composed for months, and is incapable even of preventing his pupil, Silla, from rejecting his teachings in favour of those of the Florentine Camerata. The story revolves around the threat that the Council of Trent, currently considering questions of church music, will ban all polyphonic church music in favour of Gregorian chant. Although the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand means that such an extreme solution is unlikely, CardinalCarlo Borromeo has decided to commission a Mass from Palestrina which will demonstrate that polyphonic music can be composed according to the principles of textual and musical clarity mandated by the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 67, NUMBER 4, FALL 199B PFITZNER'S PALESTRINA 813 Counter-Reformation. His plan is derailed when Palestrina refuses, claiming that 'God no longer speaks within [his] soul' (Borromeo: 'So spricht denn Gatt nieht mehr in Eurer Seele!' Palestrina: 'Ich glaube - nein!' [Palestrina, r.iii]). Later, however, after Borromeo's angry departure, Palestrina has visions: nine dead musicians (including Josquin and Isaac) as well as his dead wife come forth to inspire him. Finally, angels appear and dictate to the fictional Palestrina motives from the real Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli - the very work which, according to legend, saved polyphonic music from the ban ofthe Council ofTrent. Not knowing of this miracle, Borromeo has Palestrina thrown into prison; eventually, Silla and Palestrina's son, Ighino, tum the Mass over to the authorities and Palestrina is released. In the third act, we see them waiting at home while the Mass is performed in front of Pope Pius IV. Its huge success is capped when the pope himself visits Palestrina to praise him and appoint him to the Sistine Chapel.l The second act is taken up by the Council of Trent; its dysfunctional and decidedly un-Christianblend ofcynicism, opportunism, and politics is epitomized by Borromeo's bald-faced lie that 'the Mass is being written' when in fact Palestrina had refused. Some facts presented in the opera do not fit with .history: the real Palestrina's wife did not die until 1580, and 1563 is a little early for the Florentine Camerata to be active (it was certainly not yet active in a musical sense). The central action of the opera - the salvation of polyphony by the clear text setting of the Missa Papae Marcelli - is itself questionable.2 First of all, the eponymous pope...