Sicut cervus is probably the best known of Palestrina’s motets. In them are embedded the beauty and dignity for which the famous Renaissance composer music is known. This masterpiece conforms to the ideal of Renaissance counterpoint, the musical technique that involves combining two or more independent melodic lines, or “voices”, to create a polyphonic composition. Sicut cervus’s gentle melodic flow contains a quiet drama, with a deep feel for the text from Psalm 42:1:

Sicut cervus desiderata ad fortes aquarium,
ita desiderata anima mea ad te, Deus.

As the deer longs for the flowing stream,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594) wrote over a hundred masses and some 250 motets that had a long-lasting influence on the development of church and secular music in Europe, especially on the development of counterpoint, sealing his iconic stature as a model of perfect musical achievement. Among his most notable works is the Missa Papae Marcelli, regarded as an archetypal example of the complex polyphony championed by Palestrina. It was sung at the papal coronation Masses, the last being the coronation of Paul VI in 1963.

Hear’s a taste of perfection (best listened with stereo): Sicut cervus performed by the Indiana University Conductors’ Chorus (conductor: Daan Bee Kim)