Palestrina, GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA, the greatest of Italian musical composers, was born at
Palestrina in 1524. He studied music at Rome under Goudimel, and in 1551 was made maestro di cappella of the Julian Chapel of St Peter's by Pope Julius III. In 1554 he published a collection of Masses, which the pope so highly approved of that he appointed their composer one of the singers of the Sixtine Chapel. Being a married man, he lost that office on the accession to the pontificate of the severer Paul IV. But in 1555 he was made choir-master of the Lateran, and in 1561 was given the similar post in St Maria Maggiore, and held it till 1571, when he was restored to his office in the Julian Chapel. The Council of Trent, having undertaken to reform the music of the church, entrusted to Palestrina the task of remodelling this part of religious worship. He composed three masses as examples of what could be done; one of them, the Mass of Pope Marcellus (to whose memory it is dedicated), saved music to the church by establishing a type infinitely superior, in its blending of devotional with artistic feeling, to anything that had preceded it, a type which, amid all the changes that music has since gone through, continues to attract admiration. Palestrina must be considered the first musician who reconciled musical science with musical art, and his works form a most important epoch in the history of Music (q.v.). He died in the arms of St Philip Neri on 2d February 1594. His compositions, very numerous, are all sacred, except two volumes of Madrigals; they have been published at Leipzig (1868 et seq.). The authoritative Life was written by the Italian Baini (Rome, 1828).