ber,
1555, he was maestro. Eleven years later, a year after he had written
his immortal Improperia, we find him begging on account of the needs of
his family to be given an increase of salary, or the acceptance of his
resignation. They gave him the acceptance. Again he found another post,
and ten years later was back again as maestro of the Vatican after his
many wanderings and vicissitudes.

In the meanwhile he had written his famous mass named after his old
friend, Pope Marcellus II. The ten years between 1561 and 1571 had
marked an epoch not merely in the life of Palestrina, but in the history
of religious music.

The reform Palestrina undertook, or was entrusted with, was the ending
of the old scandal brought upon the Church by the elaborate lengths to
which contrapuntal composers had gone in using popular melodies, and
often even street songs of an obscene nature, as a foundation melody or
cantus firmus for their vocal gymnastics. The churchmen of that day did
in a more elaborate fashion what Wesley did in his day and the
Salvation Army in ours for the popular ballad of the streets. The
trouble was that many of the congregation would think only of the
original words of these catchy tunes, and in the general uproar some of
the priests would sing the actual texts, thinking that the people would
not hear them, and forgetting that they were supposed to be for an
all-hearing ear.

I find an interesting example of this custom in the career of a
musician, a contemporary of Palestrina's mentioned by Van der Straeten;
his name was Ambrosio de Cotes. He was the Maestro de Capilla of the
King's Chapel at Grenada; he was of either Flemish or English birth,
and, though he was a churchman, was a gambler and drunkard; he kept a
mistress, who ought to have been pretty to fit her pretty name, Juana de
Espinosa. Besides, De Cotes caroused miscellaneously, he ran the streets
at night, in bad company, and singing bad songs. In 1591 he was
officially reproved for these habits, and for singing improper words to
sacred music (_y cantan muchos rezes letras profanas, yndecentes_).

So great was the scandal throughout the whole world of church music that
contrapuntal music came near being abandoned entirely. It was given a
last chance in a proposition to Palestrina to see if it were worthy and
capable of redemption. He composed three masses, and the third of them,
dedicated to the memory of Pope Marcellus II., was accepted, not only as