He left the post four years later, unable to continue as a layman under the papacy of Paul IV, and held similar positions at St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore in the following decade.

[3] According to Grove Music Online, Palestrina's "success in reconciling the functional and aesthetic aims of Catholic church music in the post-Tridentine period earned him an enduring reputation as the ideal Catholic composer, as well as giving his style (or, more precisely, later generations' selective view of it) an iconic stature as a model of perfect achievement.

Palestrina came of age as a musician under the influence of the northern European style of polyphony, which owed its dominance in Italy primarily to two influential Netherlandish composers, Guillaume Du Fay and Josquin des Prez, who had spent significant portions of their careers there.

[3] Orlando di Lasso, who accompanied Palestrina in his early years, also played an important role in the formation of his style as an adviser.

As was usual, Palestrina was buried on the same day he died, in a plain coffin with a lead plate on which was inscribed Ioannes Petrus Aloysius Praenestinus Musicae Princeps.

[3] The Gloria melody from Palestrina's Magnificat Tertii Toni (1591) is widely used today in the resurrection hymn tune, Victory (The Strife Is O'er).

[3] His Missa sine nomine seems to have been particularly attractive to Johann Sebastian Bach, who studied and performed it while writing the Mass in B minor.

[3][11] One of his most important works, the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass) has been historically associated with erroneous information involving the Council of Trent.

Performing editions and recordings of Palestrina have tended to favour his works in the more familiar modes and standard (SATB) voicings, under-representing the expressive variety of his settings.

[13] This produced a smoother and more consonant type of polyphony which is now considered to be definitive of late Renaissance music, given Palestrina's position as Europe's leading composer in the wake of Josquin des Prez (d. 1521).

The "Palestrina style" taught in college courses covering Renaissance counterpoint is often based on the codification by the 18th-century composer and theorist Johann Joseph Fux, published as Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus, 1725).

The method was widely adopted and was the main basis of contrapuntal training in the 19th century, but Fux had introduced a number of simplifications to the Palestrina style, notably the obligatory use of a cantus firmus in semibreves, which were corrected by later authors such as Knud Jeppesen and R. O. Morris.

The main insight, that the "pure" style of polyphony achieved by Palestrina followed an invariable set of stylistic and combinational requirements, was justified.

Bach studied and hand-copied Palestrina's first book of Masses, and in 1742 wrote his own adaptation of the Kyrie and Gloria of the Missa sine nomine.

[16] Conservative music of the Roman school continued to be written in Palestrina's style (which in the 17th century came to be known as the prima prattica) by such students of his as Giovanni Maria Nanino, Ruggiero Giovanelli, Arcangelo Crivelli, Teofilo Gargari, Francesco Soriano, and Gregorio Allegri.

[11] 20th and 21st century scholarship by and large retains the view that Palestrina was a strong and refined composer whose music represents a summit of technical perfection.