Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work is considered as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
Palestrina - Prince of Music
The film starts with the death of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina in 1594. Afterwards his son, Iginio, some of his students and colleagues, members of the Cappella Giulia (Julian Chapel) at St. Peter's Basilica, and also members of the Roman clergy give their personal statements or testimony on Palestrina’s life and career: from his childhood, when he is trained as a choir-boy in the circle of the "Roman School" of polyphony founded by Costanzo Festa, to the peak of his career, when the plague and an influenza epidemic take away his two oldest sons and his wife.