Palestrina - Prince of Music
Palestrina - Prince of Music is an Italian/German 2009 music film directed by Georg Brintrup. The subject is the life and music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca.1525-1594), famous Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music. He is the best-known 16th-century composer of the Roman School. Filmed in March 2009 on locations mainly in and around L'Aquila and Rome, most of the ancient buildings and historical interiors in the city of L'Aquila were destroyed by the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, only a few days after the end of shooting. Palestrina’s music in the film is directed by Flavio Colusso and the Roman Ensemble Seicentonovecento. The film was also titled The Liberation of Music or Die Befreiung der Musik when released in Germany.
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.