I will here interrupt the thread of the narration, in order to touch upon the legendary story which connects Palestrina incorrectly with what subsequently happened.  It was well known that on the decisions of the sub-committee of the congregation hung the fate of Church music.  For some while it seemed as though music might be altogether expelled from the rites of the Catholic Ecclesia.  And it soon became matter of history that Palestrina had won the cause of his art, had maintained it in its eminent position in the ritual of Rome, and at the same time had opened a new period in the development of modern music by the production of his Mass called the Mass of Pope Marcellus at this critical moment.  These things were true; and when the peril had been overpassed, and the actual circumstances of the salvation and revolution of Church music had been forgotten, the memory of the crisis and the title of the victorious Mass remained to form a mythus.  The story ran that the good Pope Marcellus, who occupied the Holy See for only twenty-two days, in the year 1555, determined on the abolition of all music but Plain Song in the Church; hearing of which resolve, Palestrina besought him to suspend his decree until he had himself produced and presented a Mass conformable to ecclesiastical propriety.  Marcello granted the chapel-master this request; and on Easter Day, the Mass, which saved Church music from destruction, was performed with the papal approval and the applause of Rome.  It is not necessary to point out the many impossibilities and contradictions involved in this legend, since the real history of the Mass which wrought salvation for Church music, lies before us plainly written in the prolix pages of Baini.  Yet it would have vexed me to pass by in silence so interesting and instructive an example of the mode by which the truth of history is veiled in legend.

Truth is always more interesting than fiction, and the facts of this important episode in musical history are not without their element of romance.  There is no doubt that there was a powerful party in the Catholic Church imbued with a stern ascetic or puritanical spirit, who would gladly have excluded all but Plain Song from her services.  Had Michele Ghislieri instead of the somewhat worldly Angelo de’Medici been on the Papal throne, or had the decision of the musical difficulty been delegated to him by the congregation of eight Cardinals in 1564, Palestrina might not have obtained that opportunity of which he so triumphantly availed himself.  But it happened that the reigning Pope was a lover of the art, and had a special reason for being almost superstitiously indulgent to its professors.  While he was yet a Cardinal, in the easy-going days of Julius III., Angelo de’Medici had been invited with other princes of the Church to hear the marvelous performances upon the lute and the incomparable improvisations of a boy called Silvio Antoniano.  The meeting took place at a banquet