Roman School

By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose name has been associated for four hundred years with smooth, clear, polyphonic perfection.

Under the guidance of the Vatican, and with the Sistine Chapel Choir being one of the finest of the time, it was perhaps inevitable that the stylistic center of sacred polyphony would turn out to be Rome.

The Council allowed polyphony—a common misconception is that they banned it outright, but this is false—however they did require that text which was sung be clearly understandable.

The combination of the reforms of the Council of Trent with the presence of the extremely talented composers inheriting the Franco-Netherlandish style, was the production of a body of music which has sometimes been held to represent the peak of perfection of Renaissance polyphonic clarity.

The most famous of these is probably Luca Marenzio, whose madrigals were wildly popular in Italy and elsewhere in Europe; some of the composers of the Roman School borrowed his expressive techniques, for instance word painting, for occasional use in a liturgical setting.