And these two motives, the motive of religious zeal and the motive of devotion to art, inspired him for the creation of a new musical world.  Analysis of his work and comparison of it with the style which he was called on to supersede, show pretty clearly what were the principles that governed him.  With a view to securing the main object of rendering the text intelligible to the faithful, he had to dispense with the complicated Flemish system of combined melodies in counterpoint, and to employ his scientific resources of fugue and canon with parsimony, so that in future they should subserve and not tyrannize over expression.  He determined to write for six voices, two of which should be bass, in order that the fundamental themes should be sustained with dignity and continuity.  But what he had principally in view, what in fact he had been called on to initiate, was that novel adaptation of melody and science to verbal phrase and sense, whereby music should be made an art interpretative of religious sentiment, powerful to clothe each shade of meaning in the text with appropriate and beautiful sound, instead of remaining a merely artificial and mechanical structure of sounds disconnected from the words employed in giving them vocal utterance.

Palestrina set to work, and composed three Masses, which were performed upon April 28, 1565, before the eight Cardinals of the congregation in the palace of Cardinal Vitellozzi.  All three were approved of; but the first two still left something to be desired.  Baini reports that they preserved somewhat too much of the cumbrous Flemish manner; and that though the words were more intelligible, the fugal artifices overlaid their clear enunciation.  In the third, however, it was unanimously agreed that Palestrina had solved the problem satisfactorily.  ’Its style is always equal, always noble, always alive, always full of thought and sincere feeling, rising and ascending to the climax; not to understand the words would be impossible; the melodies combine to stimulate devotion; the harmonies touch the heart; it delights without distracting; satisfies desire without tickling the senses; it is beautiful in all the beauties of the sanctuary.’  So writes Palestrina’s enthusiastic biographer; so apparently thought the Cardinals of the congregation; and when this Mass (called the Mass of Pope Marcellus, out of grateful tribute to the Pontiff, whose untimely death had extinguished many sanguine expectations) was given to the world, the whole of Italy welcomed it with a burst of passionate applause.  Church music had been saved.  Modern music had been created.  A new and lovely-form of art had arisen like a star.