Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 - 1594)
Missa Papae Marcelli
Missa Aetema Christi
Munera Stabat mater

Gregorio Allegri (1582 -1652)
Miserere

Palestrina's 104 Masses and 177 motets make him the most prolific and consistent composer of the Counter-Reformation, and yet until this century his reputation has remained firm almost exclusively because of one Mass, the Missa Papae Marcelli, and the legends surrounding it. Published in 1567, the Mass was dedicated to Pope Marcellus II, who reigned for a mere three weeks in 1555, and seems in part to have been a contribution to the debate over the function of polyphony in the changing Roman Catholic liturgy. Extremists at the Council of Trent wanted polyphony, with its sometimes scant regard for textual clarity, banned in favour of plainsong, but the final injunctions of the Council warned only against everything "impure or lascivious" in the music. Palestrina's nineteenth century biographer