Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (3 February 1525 or 2 February 1526 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...

 composer of sacred music

Religious music

Religious music is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence.A lot of music has been composed to complement religion, and many composers have derived inspiration from their own religion. Many forms of traditional music have been adapted to fit religions'...

 and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School

Roman School

In music history, the Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, during the 16th and 17th centuries, therefore spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. The term also refers to the music they produced...

 of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

.
Palestrina was born in the town of Palestrina

Palestrina

Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

, which is near Rome, then part of the Papal States

Papal States

The Papal State, State of the Church, or Pontifical States were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...

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