Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Born in the papal town that gave him his name, Palestrina moved to Rome as a child and rose through the church music ranks. In 1551, Pope Julius III made him maestro di cappella at St. Peter's Basilica, though he was forced out four years later when Paul IV required the post go to a cleric. He cycled through positions at St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore before returning to St. Peter's in 1571, where he stayed until his death in 1594. His masses and motets reconciled the aesthetic ambitions of Renaissance polyphony with the functional demands of post-Tridentine Catholic reform. That ba…