Margherita Colonna
She was born in Palestrina about 1255. Her father, Oddone Colonna, died when she was about two years old. Her mother, who was also named Margherita and who was the sister of Matteo Rosso Orsini and a pious woman, died when Margherita was probably a little over ten years old. Margherita was left in the care of her older brothers.
Hans Pfitzner
In 1895, Richard Bruno Heydrich sang the title role in the premiere of Hans Pfitzner's first opera, "Der arme Heinrich", based on the poem of the same name by Hartmann von Aue. More to the point, Heydrich "saved" the opera. Pfitzner's "magnum opus" was "Palestrina", which had its premiere in Munich on 12 June 1917 under the baton of Jewish conductor Bruno Walter. On the day before he died in February 1962, Walter dictated his last letter, which ended ""Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that "Palestrina" will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality"".
Easily the most celebrated of Pfitzner's prose utterances is his pamphlet "Futuristengefahr" ("Danger of Futurists"), written in response to Ferruccio Busoni's "Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music". "Busoni," Pfitzner complained, "places all his hopes for Western music in the future and understands the present and past as a faltering beginning, as the preparation. But what if it were otherwise? What if we find ourselves presently at a high point, or even that we have already passed beyond it?" Pfitzner had a similar debate with the critic Paul Bekker.