Free liturgical performance
Sunday June 15, 2025 at 1 P. M.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux parish
1100 E Alhambra Road
Alhambra, CA 91801
Program
Frescobaldi – Capriccio sopra Vestiva i colli di Palestrina
Palestrina, arr. Bassano – Benedicta sit Sancta Trinitas
Bruckner – Asperges me No. 1
Palestrina – Missa Nasce la gioja mia à 6.
Palestrina – Offertorium Benedictus sit Deus
Palestrina – Offertorium In te speravi
Palestrina (attr.) – Ricercar secondo tuono
Zielenski – Communio Benedícimus Deum cæli
Fux – Psalm cxxvij. Beati omnes
Palestrina, arr. Rognoni – Pulchra es
Palestrina – O Beata & gloriosa Trinitas, intabulated for organ by Jakob Paix
Personnel
MaryRuth Miller & Anselm Decker, cantus
Dr. Kiri Tollaksen, cornetto
Hannah Little & Nathaniel Decker, cantus secundus
Carrie Holzman Little, viola da braccio
Dr. Matthew Tresler, altus
Spencer Schaffer, tenor sackbut
Dr. Jon Lee Keenan, tenor secundus
Noah Gladstone, tenor sackbut
Gregory Billion, tenor
Brad Close, tenor sackbut
Scott Graff, bassus
Dr. Jonthan Stehney, dulcian
Alejandro Acosta, archlute
Matthew Xie, theorbo
Sean Maxwell, organ
Bryan Roach, director
The Year 2025 marks 500 years since the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who is arguably the single most influential composer of all time. Palestrina worked closely with the popes in Rome, and almost singlehandedly determined the sound of Catholicism. The implementation of his musical reforms changed the course of music history forever.
Humanists during the Renaissance perceived several flaws in the way that music was composed during the sixteenth century (for instance, long melismatic passages on weak syllables, as well musical phrases that seemingly failed to adequately emphasize the rhetorical imagery of the words), which were corrected by Palestrina and his contemporaries, laying the foundation for the Baroque. Palestrina’s style would reach legendary status during the baroque era, and it has been performed continuously over the past 450 years, inspiring countless revival movements ever since.
To reflect the timelessness of Palestrina’s music, we have included 17th-century arrangements of Palestrina’s works for solo voice in a baroque idiom, as well as later compositions from the 18th and 19th centuries directly inspired by Palestrina’s style: all this in addition to featuring Palestrina’s immortal compositions performed in the manner that they would have been encountered during the 16th century.