Palestrina's Saint Cecilia Motets and the Missa Cantantibus Organis

Slightly revised and updated version of a paper given at the conference “Palestrina e l’Europa” (which took place in Palestrina in October 1994, in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Palestrina’s death) and published in the conference proceedings (edited by Giancarlo Rostirolla et al., Palestrina, 2006).

An angel and two boys sing Clemens non Papa’s motet Cecilia virgo, accompanied by Cecilia on the clavichord. Painting by Michiel Coxie 

Palestrina benefited greatly from one of the sixteenth century’s most important artistic phenomena: the transfer of musical culture from the Netherlands and France to Italy. His musical style and his choice of genres and texts were shaped by the traditions of Franco-Flemish polyphony and the musical culture that produced it: traditions strongly inculcated into Italian musical life by northern musicians in Italy and by Italian publishers of northern music.

            One such northern tradition was the association between Saint Cecilia and music, which led to the adoption of Cecilia as patron saint by societies of professional musicians in the Netherland and France and to the composition by Franco-Flemish composers of the post-Josquin generation of a large number of motets in her honor.[1] Although Cecilian motets by northern composers began to see publication in the 1530s, it was apparently not until 1563 that a Cecilian motet by an Italian was published: Palestrina’s Dum aurora finem daret appeared in this first book of four-voice motets. Palestrina was also involved in the Italian adoption of Cecilia as a patron of professional musicians: he was an early, probably founding member of the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma, organized in 1584 under the protection of Saints Gregory and Cecilia.

Franco-Flemish Background

 As James W. McKinnon has explained, the Acts of Saint Cecilia, the earliest account of her life (mostly, and perhaps even entirely fictional), contain nothing that, on the face of it, should have led musicians to adopt her as a patron saint. Cecilia did not sing aloud or play the organ at her wedding; she sang to God alone, “in corde suo.” But when the passage was adapted for use as an antiphon for Vespers and Lauds on Cecilia’s Day (22 November), the words “in corde suo” were left out. For anyone not familiar with the Acts or with the responsory of Matins where the passage is sung intact, it would be easy to misinterpret, or to reinterpret creatively, the antiphon to mean that Cecilia sang to the accompaniments of instruments, or that she played an instrument herself.[2]

            I have found no evidence that professional musicians recognized Cecilia as their patron before the sixteenth century. After 1500, however, musicians in the Netherlands and France organized themselves quite frequently under Cecilia’s protection. In 1502 a group of musicians in Louvain formed a confraternity, naming Cecilia their patron.[3] Documents dating from 1515 to 1545 record payments to musicians in the cathedral of Antwerp for musical celebrations of Cecilia’s Day.[4]

In 1570 an association was formed in Evreux, in Normandy, whose purpose was to hold a festival each year on Cecilia’s Day, which included a banquet, religous services, and a contest in which motets and chansons were judged and the winning composers awarded prizes.[5] Five years later, in Paris, a similar association was founded and dedicated to Cecilia.[6] From the charter of a Cecilian organization in Mons, founded in 1588, it is clear that religious services were an important part of its celebration of Cecilia’s Day.[7]

            What kind of music was sung on these occasions? Almost certainly it included motets in honor of Cecilia by composers of France and the Netherlands. More than twenty Cecilian motets by northern composers were published between 1530 and 1560: works by Jacquet of Mantua, Manchicourt, Gombert, Certon, Rore, Clemens non Papa, Crecquillon, Canis, and several others. Most of these motets are settings of liturgical texts for Cecilia’s day, but one of the non-liturgical texts strengthens the suspicion that these motets were sung during celebrations of Cecilia’s Day by professional musical associations under her protection.

The bassus part of the seconda pars of Baston's motet Virgo gloriosa Cecilia, published in 1556

            Cantibus organicis, a motet attributed to both Gombert and Hubert Naich, encompasses within its two partes two main aspects of Cecilian celebrations of the sixteenth century: religious services and musical performances in Cecilia’s honor. The text, in dactylic hexameters,[8] ends with an exhortation, addressed to singers, to sing the praises of Cecilia on her feast day. In addition to the musical sources, the poem is preserved in an early sixteenth-century manuscript, of which the following text is a transcription.[9]

Cantibus organicis Christi Cecilia sponsa

Dedita fundebat dulcem paeana tonantem.

Noctes atque dies, ut apes intenta labori,

Cogebat petulans sacra per ieiunia corpus

At[que] animum servire deo: cane peius et angui

Omne voluptatis genus execrata, pudicis

Carmina cantabat pernox resontia verbis.

Fundite cantores dulci modulamina voce

Cantibus exultat vestris Cecilia virgo,

Cuius festa dies totum veneranda per orbem

Devotis animis rediit. Gaudete fideles!

Cecilia, the bride of Christ, devoted to instrumental song, poured forth a sweetly thundering paean. Day and night, as intent in her work as the bees, and despite her sextual desire, she forced her body and soul to serve God. Cursing every kind of pleasure as worse than a dog or a snake, she sang sangs through the night that resounded with chaste words. Pour forth, singers, melodies with a sweet voice. Your songs delight Cecilia the virgin, whose feast day, venerated through the whole world, returns for devoted hearts. Rejoice all ye faithful!

            The first two lines can be traced back to the Acts of St. Cecilia by way of the liturgical exts based on them. We can see clearly in this poetic adaptation how the phrase “Cantantibus organis” has been taken out of its original context and given a new meaning. Here Cecilia is a performing musician: her “sweetly thundering paean” is audible to everyone. The next two lines borrow from a number of liturgical sources. “Noctes atque dies” recalls “non diebus neque noctibus” from the Magnificat antiphon Virgo gloriosa; the simile “ut apes” is to be found in several parts of the Cecilian liturgy; and the word “ieiunia” is from the verse of the responsory Cantantibus organis.

            The clear reference in the last four lines of the poem, which serve as the text for the motet’s secunda pars, to the musical celebration of Cecilia’s Day confirms that this motet was actually written for performance on that day. But it is likely that most of the others were written for the same purpose.

            Celebrations of Cecilia’s Day in two cities in particular are strongly associated with motets addressed to St. Cecilia. At Evreux several Cecilian motets (including two by Lassus) won prizes. If the texts of prize-winning motets were typical of texts of music sung at Evreux, then the performance of Cecilian motets must have played an important role at the festival. And in Courtrai (Kortrijk) Andreas Pevernage composed a series of non-liturgical motets that celebrate Cecilia’s Day by praising the newly elected dean of the musicians’ guild of St. Cecilia.[10]

Cecilia Returns to Rome

Italian musicians had ample opportunity to learn of the northern veneration of Cecilia and of the musical tradition quickly growing around it. Northern composers who lived in or visited Italy included several authors of Cecilian motets: Jacquet of Mantua, Rore, and Lassus. Italian publishers included many Cecilian motets of northern composers in their prints. For example, Gardano’s Fior de mottetti of 1539 included Paignier’s Gloriosa virgo and Pieton’s Sponsa Christi Cecilia (both first printed by Moderne of Lyon in the Mottetti del fiore of 1532); Scotto’s Motetti del Labirinto Libro Terzo of 1554 included two Cecilian motets by Canis (Ceciliam intro cubiculum and Virgo gloriosa) and one by Antonius Galli, another northerner (Ceciliae laudes celebremus—another non-liturgical text that, published in Venice, might have increased Italian awareness of Cecilia’s Day celebrations north of the Alps).

            The Italianization of the Franco-Flemish Cecilian motet tradition was largely a Roman phenomenon, despite the role that Venetian publishers played in it. The two earliest Cecilian motets by an Italian composer, as far as I know, are Roman: Palestrina’s Dum aurora finem daret and Cantantibus organis. Another composer active in Rome in the 1570s, Marenzio, wrote at least three Cecilian motets. Two of them, Ceciliam cantate pii and Dum aurora finem daret, though not published until 1616, were probably written in Rome between 1574 and 1580. The first Italian musical society under Cecilia’s protection was also Roman: the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma.[11]

            The apparent eagerness with which Roman musicians embraced the Cecilian tradition surely had something to do with Cecilia’s having lived and died in Rome. Musical interest in Cecilia in Rome was also related to the encouragement of her cult by Cardinal Carlo Emilio Sfondrati, whose titular church from 1591 was Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Sfondrati’s campaign to enhance Cecilia’s prestige—and by extension that of his own church—including the engaging of papal singers to perform in his church on Cecilia’s Day. His efforts on her behalf were not only musical. They culminated in 1599 with his astonishing discovery of her uncorrupted body under the church.

Sfondrati's tomb at the entrance to Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

            Palestrina published his setting of an antiphon for Cecilia’s Day, Dum aurora finem daret, in the Motecta festorum totius anni of 1563, a collection reprinted at least seven times during his lifetime. The thirty-six motets for various feast days include only ten dedicated to individual saints other than Mary; of these, only two are female: Mary Magdalen and Cecilia. Barbara, Catherine, Anne, Margaret and other important female saints are absent from Palestrina’s collection. By including a motet to Cecilia in a collection so often reprinted, and by labeling it specifically “In festo Sanctae Ceciliae,” Palestrina enhanced Cecilia’s prestige and the importance of her feast day for Italian—and especially Roman—musicians.

            Palestrina gave Cecilia’s Roman cult another boost in 1575, with the publication of this third book of motets in five, six, and eight voices, which included the five-voice Cantantibus organis. The motet is a setting of a responsory for Cecilia’s day, its two parts reflecting the responsorial form: prima pars A-B, second pars C-B. Organized around a Dorian scale based on G, the motet consists of a series of majestic points of imitation.

            During the two decades following the publication of Palestrina’s Cantantibus organis, as can be seen in Table 1, several Cecilian motets by other Italians—Costanzo Porta, Marenzio, and Massaino—saw publication.

            The growing importance of Cecilian motets, of Cecilia’s day, and of the church of Santa Cecilia in Rome’s liturgical and musical life is illustrated in the diaries of the Sistine Chapel. In the diaries covering the years 1535–1560, neither the day nor the church play an important role; year after year November 22 passed without events that might suggest that Cecilia’s Day was of special importance to the papal musicians, to their employer, or to the cardinal whose titular church was Santa Cecilia.[12]

            By the mid 1590s the situation had changed drastically. Efforts by Cardinal Sfondrati to bring papal singers to his titular church to celebrate Cecilia’s day in 1594 were so insistent that they caused controversy:

Lunedi alli 21 [novembre]… Di poi la messa il Cardinal Sfondrato ha mandato un cappellano ad invitare tutto il nostro Collegio, che voglia andar a cantar domani la messa et vespero alla Chiesa di Santa Cecilia suo titulo; glie fu reposto dal mastro di cappella, che alla Messa si anderà per servire a sua signoria Ill.ma, ma il vespero non è solito che la Cappella del papa collegialiter lo canti mai in nessun loco; et fu detto al detto Cappellano, che il Cardinal Mont’alto e il Cardinal Matthei hanno donato altre volte alla Cappella, cioè per li cantori scudi quindici per una messa sola; però con li padroni non si fa patti.

The disagreement was quickly settled, as we learn from the next entry.

Martedi alle 22, Santa Cecilia. Questa mattina ad instantia del Ill.mo et Rev.mo Cardinal Sfondrato siamo andati a cantar la messa a detta chiesa di Santa Cecilia suo titulo… Detto Ill.mo Sig.r Cardinal ci dette da pranzo a casa sua e di poi pregò il Collegio, che andasse a dir Vespero alla medesma chiesa, et per piú comodità ci mandò tutti in cochio, et cantammo Vespero… Il detto Ill.mo Cardinal questo medesmo giorno mandò al nostro Collegio scudi quindici di moneta.[13]

These performances must have included Cecilian motets, of which the Sistine Chapel’s musical library had several by both Palestrina and his Franco-Flemish predecessors.[14]

The Missa Cantantibus Organis

 Sometime between Palestrina’s composition of Cantantibus organis and his death, he and several Roman composers collaborated on a Mass for twelve voices (three four-voice choirs) based on Palestrina’s five-voice Cecilian motet.[15] The Mass, which is incomplete, survives in a single contemporary source, in the Archivio di San Giovanni Laterano, which carefully names the composer of each section. The origins of the Mass are unknown, although some internal evidence suggests that one of the composers, Giovanni Andrea Dragoni, may have organized the project.

            Parts of the Mass seem to have been composed at different times. The first two major units, the Kyrie and the Gloria, have much in common, and they both differ in many ways from the last several sections–two settings of the Sanctus, both incomplete, and the incomplete Agnus Dei. The Credo, in the middle, constitutes a transition between the characteristics of the Kyrie and Gloria on the one hand, and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei on the other.

            One feature shared by the Kyrie and Gloria that distinguishes these sections from the Mass’s last several sections is the status of the composers involved. The composers of the Kyrie and Gloria–Annibale Stabile, Francesco Soriano, Palestrina, and Dragoni—were all leading members of the Roman musical establishment in the 1580s. Prospero Santini and Curzio Mancini, who wrote the last parts of the Mass, were younger, and they had considerably lower status.

            The composers of the Kyrie and Gloria were all early members of the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma, as shown by the inclusion of their words in the madrigal collection Le gioie (published in 1589), which describes the contributors as members of the “vertuosa compagnia dei musici di Roma.”[16] Neither Santini nor Mancini contributed a madrigal to Le gioie. They may have been members of the Compagnia; but perhaps they joined after 1589.

            Another important difference between the composers of the Kyrie and Gloria and the composers of the Sanctus and Agnus Dei is in their closeness to Palestrina. Both Stabile and Dragoni claimed, in prefaces to editions of their own music, that they had studied with Palestrina, who himself referred to Soriano as his student. There seems to be no evidence that either Santini or Mancini studied with Palestrina.

            The Kyrie and Gloria are organized with much care. Either a single supervisory composer coordinated the contributions of Stabile, Soriano, Palestrina, and Dragoni, or these composers worked together, aware of what the others were doing and making sure their own contributions complemented those of the others. The last parts of the Mass, in contrast, show signs of disorganization: most obviously in their incompleteness and in the redundancy of the second Sanctus.

            The Kyrie and Gloria make effective use of Palestrina’s motet by distributing its material carefully. With one exception, each subsection develops a different part of the motet. While the Kyrie is based largely on material found only in the motet’s prima pars, the Gloria takes most of its material from the secunda pars. In his Kyrie I, Stabile used the first and last points of imitation in the motet’s prima pars. Soriano, in setting the Christe, developed the second point of imitation of Palestrina’s prima pars. Dragoni then based his elaborate setting of Kyrie II on the third and fourth points of imitation of the prima pars. This wide-ranging exploration of the motet’s content contrasts sharply with the thoughtless dependence on the motet’s first point of imitation that characterizes the last part of the Mass.

            Both the Kyrie and Gloria are designed in such a way that each builds to a climax: music in twelve parts by Dragoni. A sense of increasing complexity and excitement is conveyed most dramatically in the Kyrie. The number of voices builds gradually, from one four-voice choir in Stabile’s Kyrie I to two four-voice choirs in the Soriano’s Christe, to three four-voice choirs in Dragoni’s Kyrie II. The length of the movements also increases, but not steadily. Stabile wrote twenty-seven breves, Soriano twenty, and Dragoni forty-five.

            The important role of Dragoni’s music both the Kyrie and Gloria, together with the extremely tight and effective organization of both of these movements, suggests that he was responsible for organizing the composition of the Mass. He was maestro di cappella at San Giovanni in Laterano during the 1580s; his music survives largely in the archive of that church, where it formed a central part of the repertory. That the same archive contains the only source of the Missa Cantantibus organis—and a source more or less contemporary with its composition—adds support to the idea that Dragoni coordinated the composition of the Mass, perhaps for performance at his own church.

            One of the most impressive products of the sixteenth-century’s veneration of Cecilia, the Missa Cantantibus organis represents a culmination of the Romanization of the Franco-Flemish Cecilian tradition. Just as Palestrina played a crucial role in the Romanization of that tradition, so also did he play a crucial role in the creation of the Mass: as composer of the motet on which it is based, as composer of the first part of the Gloria, as member of the Compagnia dei Musici, and as teacher of the leading Roman musicians who contributed to the Mass. Stefano Maderno’s marble depiction of Cecilia as she was found, five years after Palestrina’s death, under the church that bears her name, is the most celebrated monument to the revival of interest in Cecilia in late sixteenth-century Rome. In the Missa Cantantibus organis Palestrina helped to create a sonic monument to Cecilia that is a worthy counterpart to Maderno’s marble one.

Table 1. Some Sixteenth-Century Cecilia Motets

This list is limited to motets published in the sixteenth century. For a list that also includes works preserved only in manuscript, see Ferer, “Thomas Crecquillon and the Cult of St. Cecilia.”

Year of First         Opening Words (Prima Pars/Secunda Pars)          Composer

Publication                       

with RISM 

number

153211                        Sponsa Christi Cecilia / Biduanis                          Pieton

                            Gloriosa virgo / Dum aurora                                Paignier

1539 (J6)              Cantantibus organis                                             Jacquet

1539 (M269)        Cantantibus organis / Cecilia virgo                         Manchicourt

153910                        Cecilia virgo / Nunc Valerianus                            Hugier

                            Cantantibus organis / Cecilia virgo                        Carette 

                            Cecilia virgo Dominum / Creator omnium             Carette

153911                        Cantibus organicis / Fundite cantores                    Naich or

                                                                                                    Gombert

15413                          Ceciliam cantate pii / Concordes igitur                  Gombert

1542 (C1707)        Cantantibus organis / Benedico te                         Certon

                            Cecilia virgo / Dum aurora                                  Certon

15427                          Ceciliam intra cubiculum / Cecilia                        Canis

                            virgo Almachium

1545 (R2474)        Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                              Rore

15452                          O beata Cecilia / Cecilia me misit                         Canis

1546 (M3716)        Domine Jesu Christe / Dum aurora                       Mornable

15476                            Cecilia virgo / Biduanis                                      Clemens

15482                            Virgo gloriosa / Cantantibus organis                    Crecquillon

15511                            Domine Jesu Christe / Cilicio induta                    Maillard

155310                          Ave virgo Cecilia / Ave virgo prudens                 Manchicourt

15541                            Dum aurora finem daret                                     Crecquillon

15542                            Dum aurora finem daret                                     Bultel

15545                            Ave virgo gloriosa / Deprecare Jesum Christum    Crecquillon

15548                            Virgo gloriosa / Domine Jesu Christe                   Crecquillon

155415                          Virgo gloriosa / Cilicio Cecilia                            Canis

                             Ceciliae laudes / Praeses atrox                              Galli

15558                    Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                              Gheens

15566                    Virgo gloriosa Cecilia / Biduanis                          Baston

15583                    Cecilia ex praeclaro / Cilicio vero                         Crespel

1563                      Dum aurora finem daret                                      Palestrina

15641                    Cantantibus organis                                             Torquet

1565                     Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                               Maillard

                            Dum aurora finem daret  / O beata Cecilia              Maillard

15684                   O virgo generosa / O virgo felix                             Pevernage

                            Cecilia in corde suo                                              Chaynée

1571 (C1470)        Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                               Castro

1575 (M3314)        Cecilia virgo Almachium / O beata                        Monte

1575 (P711)           Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                              Palestrina

1578 (P1669)         Dum aurora finem daret                                       Pevernage

                            Alma patrona veni                                               Pevernage

                             Plaudite                                                             Pevernage

                             Nectite Ceciliae                                                   Pevernage

                             Ceciliae gaudate                                                   Pevernage

                             Ducite festivos                                                     Pevernage

                             Ecce triumphali                                                   Pevernage

                             Solemnis redit ecce dies                                        Pevernage

1580 (C3945)         Cantantibus organis                                              Cornet

1580 (P5181)         Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                               Porta

1582 (L939)           Cantantibus organis / Fiat Domine                         Lassus

1785 (L958)           Domine Jesu Christe                                             Lassus

1585 (M494)          Cantantibus organis                                               Marenzio

1585                      Gloriosa virgo Cecilia                                           Porta

1588 (C1478)         Cantantibus organis / Biduanis                               Castro

1589 (G4875)         Dum aurora finem daret                                        Guerrero

1590 (H1985)         Dum aurora / Cecilia valedicens                             Gallus

1592 (M1276)        Cilicio Cecilia / Haec est virgo                               Massaino

1595 (R1936)         Cantantibus organis                                               Rogier

1596 (M3325)        Cilicio Cecilia                                                       Monte

15973                    Cecilia virgo gloriosa                                             F. Lassus

                            Cantantibus organis                                                F. Lassus

[1] My interest in Cecilian motets goes back to a research project that I carried out at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Anthony Newcomb, in 1981. Homer Rudolf had already called attention to the sixteenth-century motets for St. Cecilia in “The Life and Works of Cornelius Canis,” PhD dissertation, University of Illionis, 1976; the cult of Cecilia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the motets dedicated to her are the subject of long-term research project by Rudolf, to whom I am grateful for providing me with copies of two unpublished papers, “St. Cecilia, patron saint of music (1984) and “Cologne, Convents, Commissions, and the Cult of St. Cecilia (1995). Mary Tiffany Ferer, in “Thomas Crecquillon and the Cult of St. Cecilia,” in Beyond Contemporary Fame: Reassessing the Art of Clemens non Papa and Thomas Crecquillon, ed. Eric Jas, Turnhout, 2005, places Crecquillon’s Cecilia motets within the context of the saint’s sixteenth-century cult and the motets written in her honor.

[2] James W. McKinnon, “Cecilia,” in the New Grove, 1980. Thomas Connolly, Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia, New Haven, 1994, broke radically with this widely accepted explanation, arguing that the roots of Cecilia’s association with music can be traced back to ancient times. While ingenious and thought-provoking, Connolly’s arguments do not supplant the more obvious explanation for Cecilia’s adoption as a patron saint of music. Oddly, Connolly devotes almost no attention to music dedicated to St. Cecilia (and gives no explanation for why composers wrote little or no music in praise of Cecilia before 1500).

[3] Edmond Vander Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle, 8 vols., Brussels, 1867–88, II, 22–26.

[4] Vander Straeten, Pays-Bas, I, 131.

[5] E. C. Teviotdale, “The Invitation to the Puy d’Evreux,” in Current Musicology 52 (1993), 7–26.

[6] Vander Straeten, Pays-Bas, I, 130.

[7] Vander Straeten, Pays-Bas, II, 31–32.

[8] Not prose, as stated by Don Harrán, in whose edition of the motet the first two words are mistakenly given as “Cantantibus organis”: Hubert Naich, Opera omnia, ed. Don Harrán, Stuttgart, 1983.

[9] Bibliothèque Municipale, Valenciennes, MS 182 (olim 174), fol. 10v, transcribed in J. Mangeart, Catalogue déscriptif et raisonné es manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Valenciennes, Paris, 1860.

[10] Edition of and commentary on Pevernage’s St. Cecilia motets in Andreas Pevernage, Cantiones Sacrae (1573), parts 2 and 3, ed. Gerald R. Hoekstra, AR Editions, 2010.

[11]  William Summers, “The Compagnia dei Musici di Roma, 1584–1604: A Preliminary Report,” in Current Musicology 34 (1982), 2–25.

[12]   Raffaele Casimiri, “I diari sistini” in Note d’archivio 1 (1924)–17 (1940).

[13]  Hermann-Walther Frey, “Das Diarium der Sixtinischen Sängerkapelle in Rom für das Jahr 1594 (Nr. 19),” in Analecta musicological 14 (Studien 9), 445–505 (497–8)

[14]  Eduardo Dagnigo, “I codici Sistini 239 a 242,” in Note d’archivio 10 (1933), 297–313; José M. Llorens, Capellae Sixtinae codices, Città del Vaticano, 1960.

[15]  Raffaele Casimiri, “La ‘Missa: Cantantibus organis Caecilia’ a 12 voci di Giov. P. da Palestrina e de’ suoi scolari,” in Note d’archivio 8 (1931), 234–44.

[16]  Summers, “The Compagnia dei Musici di Roma.”