There is a popular myth – no less mythical for its popularity – that Palestrina composed his Missa Papae Marcelli to address concerns that polyphonic music obscured the import of religious texts, thereby ‘saving’ artistic music in Catholic liturgy after the Catholic Reformation associated principally with the council of Trent. Hans Pfitzner’s operatic retelling of the story makes it an even more explicit challenge from Cardinal Borromeo that Palestrina had to demonstrate the religious value of what was then a new musical style so that the Council did not simply ban such expression.

Mythicised as this account is, there is some irony in comparing it with the statement in Sacrosanctum Concilium (the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council) that ‘other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action.’ Even in this context, of course, the permission to use ‘classic’ polyphony in the style of Palestrina is a concession in light of the primacy of Gregorian chant, but nevertheless, that it is singled out for mention clearly allows us to see it as having a particular place of honour.

Palestrina himself, in the dedication of his Second Book of Masses (which includes that for Pope Marcellus), argues that he has ‘considered it my task, in accordance with the views of most serious and most religious-minded men, to ben all my knowledge, effort, and industry toward that which is the holiest and most divine of all things in the Christian religion–that is, to adorn the holy sacrifice of the Mass in a new manner. I have, therefore, worked out these masses with the greatest possible care, to do honor to the worship of almighty God, to chich this gift, as small as it may be, is offered and accommodated.’

Palestrina’s music seems to us elegantly restrained and serenely clear in setting the ordinary texts of the Mass. The unity-in-diversity that is the sound of polyphonic music illustrates both the Church as a gathering into one body of many peoples, and also the Trinity, the greatest mystery of unity-in-diversity known by the Church.

‘The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care’ says Vatican II; what seems modern to our ears which might, a few centuries hence, still belong to that expanding treasure? How can any music we craft (in composition or in performance) ‘serve the worship of almighty God’? Should we restrain on particular styles or resources, or can our faith lead us to appreciate the divine in the unfamiliar?