Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work is considered as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Palestrina was extremely famous in his day, and if anything, his reputation and influence increased after his death. J.S. Bach studied and hand-copied Palestrina's first book of "Masses", and in 1742 wrote his own adaption of the Kyrie and Gloria of the "Missa sine nomine." Felix Mendelssohn placed him in the pantheon of the greatest musicians, writing, "I always get upset when some praise only Beethoven, others only Palestrina and still others only Mozart or Bach. All four of them, I say, or none at all.".