Italian composer (Palestrina - Rome 1525 - Rome 1598). He studied with the French Robin Mallapert and Firmin Lebel, after to have perhaps been master of the choruses and organista in the dome of its born city, was named master of the Cappella Giulia in San Pietro in 1551 and in 1554, was named singer of the Cappella Sistina by the Pope Giulio III, head although in contrast with the regulations that did not admit married musicians. In this same year (1554), was printed its first book of Masses, dedicated to the Pope. But with the advent of Pope Paul IV and the restoration of one stricter discipline, P. had to leave the place in Vatican. In 1571, with the dead of G. Animuccia, he assumed the direction of the Cappella Giulia in saint Peter again, and maintained it for the rest of his life, encircled from the universal esteem (popes and monarchs wanted his compositions). The works of P., nearly entire dedicated to the sacred vocal kind, constitutes the highest stylistic synthesis of the previous and contemporary compositive experiences and the rinascimental expressive apex of the sacred polyphony. It comprises 130 Masses from 4 to 8 voices, as the Missa Papae Marcelli (1567), six books, more than 400 motets and other compositions in motet-style: 42 Psalms, approximately 120 spiritual and profane madrigals.