reactionaries for the worldly frivolities of an A.D. 1550 choir.
Presumably that modern abomination, the _vibrato_, with its shake of
artificial fright, had not been invented then, and sanctuary form was
saved one indignity. But the innovations became an abuse so general that
the Council of Trent commissioned a select board of cardinals and
musicians to arrest the degeneration of church song-worship.

One of the experts consulted in this movement was an eminent Italian
composer born twenty miles from Rome. His full name was Giovanni Pietro
Aloysio da Palestrina, and at that time he was in the prime of his
powers. He was master of polyphonic music as well as plain-song, and he
proposed applying it to grace the older mode, preserving the solemn
beauty of the chant but adding the charming chords of counterpoint. He
wrote three "masses," one of them being his famous "Requiem." These were
sung under his direction before the Commission. Their magnificence and
purity revealed to the censors the possibilities of contrapuntal music
in sanctuary devotion and praise. The sanction of the cardinals was
given--and part-song harmony became permanently one of the angel voices
of the Christian church.

Palestrina died in 1594, but hymn-tunes adapted from his motets and
masses are sung today. He was the father of the choral tune. He lived to
see musical instruments and congregational singing introduced[1] in
public worship, and to know (possibly with secret pleasure, though he
was a Romanist) how richly in popular assemblies, during the Protestant
Reformation, the new freedom of his helpful art had multiplied the
creation of spiritual hymns.

[Footnote 1: But not fully established in use till about 1625.]