Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred polyphony whose 104 surviving Masses and roughly 375 motets made him the central figure of late-sixteenth-century Roman church music and the model of stile antico counterpoint for centuries afterward. He was born around 1525 in or near the town of Palestrina in the Papal States, southeast of Rome, and took his usual name from the town. He moved to Rome around 1537 to study music at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

He returned to Palestrina in 1544 as organist and choirmaster of the cathedral, and in 1551 was called back to Rome by Pope Julius III to direct the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's Basilica. His subsequent posts included St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and a return to the Cappella Giulia in 1571, which he held until his death.

His Missa Papae Marcelli, published in 1567 and dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II, became the canonical example of polyphony whose text setting was clear enough to satisfy Counter-Reformation reformers concerned about textual intelligibility in liturgical music. The widely repeated story that the Mass alone persuaded the Council of Trent not to ban polyphony from the liturgy is a later embellishment, but the work's reputation as the touchstone of acceptable Catholic polyphony was established within a generation of its publication.

His later collections include four books of Masses, multiple books of motets, and the Canticum canticorum motet cycle of 1584 on texts from the Song of Songs. He died in Rome on February 2, 1594, at around age 68 or 69, and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica with the inscription Musicae Princeps.

His name Giovanni is the Italian form of John, ultimately from the Hebrew Yochanan meaning "God is gracious." It has been the most common Italian masculine name for centuries, and he carried it as the central figure of Roman Renaissance church music.