Latin Text (Ps 81)

Exsultate Deo, adjutori nostro:
jubilate Deo Jacob. 

Sumite psalmum et date tympanum:
psalterium jucundum cum cithara. 

Buccinate in neomenia tuba:
insigni die solemnitatis vestrae.

English Translation (Ps 80)

Rejoice in God our helper:
sing aloud to the God of Jacob.

Take the psalm and bring hither the timbrel:
the merry harp with the lute.

Blow the trumpet in the new moon,
even on our solemn feast day. 

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is likely the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time. He was born at Palestrina, near Rome, in 1514 or 1515, according to some authors, or in 1525, according to Msgr. Haberl who worked at the completed edition of his works. He died at Rome, 2 February, 1594.

His early history is practically unknown. What we know is that he began his active musical life as organist and choirmaster in his native city in 1544; his reputation increasing, in 1551 he was called to Rome, entrusted with the direction and musical formation of the choirboys at St. Peter's, and within the same year was advanced to the post of choirmaster. In 1554, he dedicated his first compositions to Julius III (1549-55), a volume of masses for four voices, and was rewarded with the appointment as a member of the papal chapel in contravention of the rules governing that body, requiring those who held membership in the papal choir to be in Holy Orders. One year later, he was dismissed as married following the decision of Paul IV, shortly after his accession, to come back to the former rules for the government of the papal choir. As a consequence, on 1 October, 1555 the composer took charge of the choir at St. John Lateran, where he remained until February, 1561. During this period he wrote, beside Lamentations and Magnificats, the famous "Improperia". Then he accepted a similar post at Santa Maria Maggiore, which he occupied until 1571.

It is not know at what period of his career Palestrina came under the influence of St. Philip Neri, but there is every reason to believe it was in his early youth. As the saint's penitent and spiritual disciple, he gained insight into the spirit of the liturgy, which enabled him to translate it in polyphonic music as it had never been done before. It was his spiritual formation even more than his artistic maturity that fitted him for the providential part he played in the reform of church music. Palestrina's activity - inspired by St. Philip and encouraged by St. Charles Borromeo who was the patron of Palestrina - when the chancellor of his uncle, Pius IV, antedated by some years the references to church music in the Tridentine decrees:

• the elimination of all themes of reminiscent of, or resembling, secular music;
• the rejection of musical forms and elaborations tending to mutilate or obscure the liturgical text.

 
His wife's death in 1580 affected him profoundly. His sorrow found expression in two compositions, Psalm 136, "By the waters of Babylon", and a motet on the words "O Lord, when Thou shalt come to judge the world, how shall I stand before the face of Thy anger, my sins frighten me, woe to me, O Lord". With these compositions he intended to end his creative activity, but with the appointment as director of music to Prince Buoncompagni, nephew of Gregory XIII, in 1581, he began perhaps the most brilliant period of his long life.

Besides sacred madrigals, motets, psalms, hymns in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and Masses, he produced the work which brought him the title of "Prince of Music", twenty-nine motets on the words from the "Canticle of Canticles". According to his own statement, Palestrina intended to reproduce in his composition the Divine love expressed in the Canticle, so that his own heart might be touched by a spark thereof. For the enthronement of Sixtus V, he wrote a five-part motet and mass on the theme to the text "Tu es pastor ovium", followed a few months later by one of his greatest productions, the mass "Assumpta est Maria". Sixtus had intended to appoint him director of the papal choir, but the refusal of the singers to be directed by a layman, prevented the execution of this plan. During the last years of his life Palestrina wrote his great "Lamentations", settings of the liturgical hymns, a collection of motets, the well-know "Stabat Mater" for double chorus, litanies in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the offertories for the ecclesiastic year.

His complete works, in thirty-four volumes, edited by Theodore de Witt, Franz Espagne, Franz Commer, and from the tenth volume on, by Haberl, are published by Breitkopf and Härtel; Msgr. Haberl presented the last volume of the completed edition to Pius X on Easter Monday, 1908.  Palestrina's significance lays not so much in his unprecedented gifts of mind and heart, his creative and constructive powers, as in the fact that he made them the medium for the expression in tones of the state of his own soul, which, trained and formed by St. Philip, was attuned to and felt with the Church. His creations will for all time stand forth as the musical embodiment of the spirit of the counter-reformation, the triumphant Church.

(text from the Catholic Encyclopedia)