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The Sistine Chapel Choir in Rome has been one of the most famous choral ensembles in the Western world for centuries. The young Josquin Desprez was a member in the 1460s (and apparently carved his name in the chapel wall while he was there). The choir is a veritable icon of Catholic musical tradition, and it forswore the use of castrati in treble parts only in 1903. Yet its recorded legacy is sparse.

The choir's history begins in the first centuries of Christianity with the emergence of a "schola cantorum," a group of singers who lived and worked together, and were associated with the Pope. The group assumed its current form after the renovation of the Cappella Maggiore, built in the middle 14th century, by Pope Sixtus VI in the 1470s. The chapel, lavishly decorated with paintings by Botticelli and later by Michelangelo, is named for Sixtus. In the 1480s the size of the choir was fixed at 24 singers, six on each part, and for centuries the upper parts were sung by castrati. That size has remained fairly consistent down through the centuries, as has the choir's repertory: although new music was added, notably by composer and longtime director ("maestro perpetuo") Lorenzo Perosi (1872-1956), and chant dropped out of the chapel's musical practices in the 19th century, the Renaissance stile antico of Palestrina and his contemporaries formed an unbroken tradition in the choir's work.

Nevertheless, the revolution wrought by recordings on the musical world did not reach the Sistine Chapel until the 21st century. Recordings were forbidden in the chapel itself, but several live recordings appeared: Habemus papam (We have a pope) was a 2013 release featuring live masses, two of them outdoors, by the choir at the time of the deliberations resulting in the ascent of Francis I to the papacy. The appointment of director Massimo Palombella, who assumed his post in 2010 after replacing Giuseppe Liberto (an opponent of the musical reforms put in place by the Second Vatican Council), resulted in a relaxation of the regulations, and in 2015 the Sistine Chapel Choir released Cantate Domino, its debut album recorded in the chapel itself. The album appeared on the Deutsche Grammophon label, with all profits, by Francis' direction, going to charity. An all-Palestrina album, featuring an innovative version of the Missa Papae Marcelli with unorthodox treatments of tempo, appeared the following year. ~ James Manheim

Italian choral conductor Massimo Palombella is a Salesian priest and director of the Sistine Chapel Choir (Coro di Cappella Musicale Pontificia Sistina). He studied philosophy and theology at the Salesian Pontifical University, and his teachers in music composition at the Conservatory of Turin were Luigi Molfino and Valentino Miserachs Grau. Palombella was ordained a priest on September 7, 1995, and he joined the faculty of theology at the Salesian Pontifical University, as well as the faculty of the Sapienza University of Rome. He founded the Interuniversity Choir in Rome to bring students together to study polyphony and the Roman Catholic choral tradition, and he was awarded the Pontifical medal by Pope John Paul II for service to the Church and to culture. In 2010, he became the director of the Sistine Chapel Choir, and in 2017, he was appointed a consultant to the Congregation for Divine Worship. His recordings have been released by EuroArts and Deutsche Grammophon. ~ Blair Sanderson

It can be difficult to separate myth from reality in the life of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. He was one of the most highly acclaimed musicians of the 16th century, but was not the "Savior of Church Music." He did write a tremendous number of musical works, refining the very musical style of his time. He did not single-handedly transmit the way to write spiritual music, but apparently he was a diligent and reasonably pious family man, hard-nosed in his business dealings and savvy in manipulating professional contacts. He was not a priest, though he once considered Holy Orders after losing a wife and two sons to the plague. The balance and elegant moderation of his music may derive more from conservative melodic and harmonic style than from divine mediation. But centuries after his death, Palestrina's music is still actively serving devotional needs across the world, and echoes of his first biographer's awe still cling to his name. Palestrina's life is generally well documented: He spent all of his career around Rome, working in churches with good archival records. His exact birth date remains unknown, but his age at death is given in a famous eulogy. Whether he was born in Rome or in the provincial town of Palestrina, "Gianetto" received his first musical training in Rome as choir boy at Santa Maria Maggiore by 1537. In 1544, he accepted a post as organist for the Cathedral of Palestrina. While there, he married Lucrezia Gori and met the future Pope Julius III (whom Palestrina honored with the dedication of his First Book of Masses). He returned to Rome in 1551, serving as Master of the Boys for the Vatican's Capella Giulia and then, at Pope Julius' instigation, singing in the Sistine Chapel. Fired by a later pope because of his marital status, he quickly became choirmaster for Saint John Lateran (a job previously held by Lasso). The 1560s were a time of great professional development for Palestrina: He served the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Seminario Romano and the wealthy Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, published four more books of music, and turned down an offer to become chapelmaster for the Holy Roman Emperor. His last professional appointment was a long tenure (1571-1594) as master of the Capella Giulia in St. Peter's. In addition, he performed freelance work for at least 12 other Roman churches and institutions, managed his second wife's fur business, and invested in Roman real estate. Palestrina marketed his immense compositional output in nearly 30 published collections during his lifetime; many more of his roughly 700 works survive in manuscripts. He is best known for the 104 masses, though he composed in every other liturgical genre of his day, as well as nearly 100 madrigals. The polished reserve of his style helped fuel the myth first published in 1607 that his Pope Marcellus Mass was written to save polyphony from banishment in the church; the German theorist Fux enthroned Palestrina's style for centuries to come in his 1725 Gradus ad parnassum. ~ Timothy Dickey

Along with Palestrina, Franco-Flemish composer Orlande de Lassus was the dominant figure of the late Renaissance. Though he composed much sacred music, Lassus was considered second-to-none in the production of secular material: motets, madrigals, French chansons, and German Lieder. Lassus' works were so popular in their time that his music accounts for three-fifths of all music printed in Europe between 1555 and 1600.

Lassus was born in Mons and got his start as a choirboy. An often disputed story has the child Lassus kidnapped three times on account of his beautiful singing voice; the only certainty is that by 1544 he had joined the service of Ferrante Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily. A stopover in Mantua allowed Lassus to absorb prevailing Italian influences. Lassus spent less than a year in Sicily and transferred to Milan for the remainder of the 1540s. He often used an Italian form of his name, Orlando di Lasso. In 1551, Lassus was made choirmaster at St. John of Lateran in Rome, but remained only until 1553, being succeeded by Palestrina. Lassus returned to Mons in 1554, receiving word that his parents were ill, but upon his arrival found them already dead and buried. In 1555, Lassus' first book of madrigals and a collection of various secular works appeared simultaneously in Antwerp and Venice, thus beginning his status as a one-man industry of musical publications.

In 1557, the German Duke Albrecht V engaged Lassus' services as a singer at the court in Munich. Lassus' status was upgraded to Kapellmeister in 1561. His position enabled considerable travel, and Lassus made frequent trips to Venice, where he met and made friends with the Gabrielis. Judging from the range of settings, both sacred and secular, coming from Lassus in these years, it is apparent he was asked to supply music for a wide variety of events at the court of Duke Albrecht. The flood of published editions, both authorized and not, of Lassus' music during this time established him as the most popular composer in Europe, and in 1574 he was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Gregory XIII.

In 1579, Duke Albrecht V died, and the longstanding extravagance of his court left his successor, Duke Wilhelm, with little choice but to make deep cuts in the entertainment budget. This had a direct and negative effect on Lassus' fortunes, but nonetheless he declined an offer in 1580 to relocate to the Court at Dresden. By the late 1580s, the number of new pieces Lassus undertook began to slow down. In the months before his death, Lassus succeeded in bringing to life his last great masterwork, the Lagrime di San Pietro, in itself a summation of the highest forms of Renaissance musical art. He died at about the age of 62, and in 1604 his sons published an edition of his collected works entitled Magnus opus musicum. This was used as the basis for the first modern edition of Lassus' music, published in Leipzig between 1894 and 1926.

Among his key works, the Sibylline Prophecies (1553) and Penitential Psalms (1560) reflect the influence of Italian mannerism. While later music contains occasional chromatic alterations, mature Lassus works favor a unique style that combines an intensely dramatic sense of text painting, nervous and excited rhythmic figurations, and glorious, rolling counterpoint. Late works demonstrate a concern for terseness in expression, and texts are realized in a highly compressed state. No verifiable instrumental music is known from Lassus, and his masses are generally considered unfavorably in light of Palestrina's achievement in that realm. But his other works -- motets, madrigals, French chansons, and German Lieder -- are considered second to none in the context of the late Renaissance, and several of his secular songs were known from king to peasant in the second half of the 16th century. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis

Born in 1582, Gregorio Allegri, an Italian priest, singer, and composer in the tradition of the stile antico, is primarily known for his Miserere, a nine-part setting of Psalm 51. He spent much of his life working in Roman churches, joining the papal choir in 1629 and eventually becoming its choirmaster. According to a legend, Mozart wrote out the full score of this work after hearing it only once, thus effectively circumnavigating the rule that prohibited anyone from removing any parts of the score from the Sistine Chapel, where it was guarded. During the Romantic period, when composers and literary figures embraced the ideals of the stile antico, Allegri's Miserere was much admired. Allegri's other works include motets and instrumental concertini. He died in 1652.

Felice Anerio was an highly important figure of composition in the Italy of the 16th and 17th centuries. The majority of works attributed to him include sacred and secular vocal works. Included within the corpus of his work are "Regina caeli" (Queen of Heaven), "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" (I Come to Thee Holy Spirit), and "Tibi laus, tibi gloria" (To you praise and to you glory). He was a composer for the pope and wrote imaginatively for two choirs, employed true emotion, and made attempts to get out of modal conventionality. He was influenced by the tradition of Palestrina and by his contemporary innovator Filippo Neri. ~ Keith Johnson

The dominating figure of sixteenth century Spanish music, Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Avila. He was sent to Rome to study, possibly for a time under Palestrina during the latter's years at the Roman Seminary. In 1571 he succeeded Palestrina there as choirmaster, a post he also subsequently occupied at the Jesuit Order's German College. Later he became active as a priest, working at St. Girolamo della Carità. Following his return to Spain in 1585, Victoria served the Empress Maria and her daughter as teacher, organist, and choirmaster until his death in 1611.

By the time Victoria arrived in Rome, the conservative ecclesiastical establishment and the Council of Trent had ensured that any musical hint of the "lascivious or the impure" was largely banished (Palestrina was even moved to dismiss his publication of secular madrigals as a youthful peccadillo). It is therefore not surprising to find that Victoria's output consists solely of religious music that eschews even the use of secular cantus firmus, and that displays the formal perfection and the well-smoothed vocal writing of the Palestrina style. What is surprising is that despite his Roman training and years of service in the city, Victoria so strongly retained his Spanish roots. Some of his finest works were composed after his return home, and many of them contain features that seem to epitomize the deeply mystical approach of so much Spanish Renaissance music. Comparison with Palestrina reveals a greater emphasis on chromatic color and use of dynamic contrast; Victoria's block harmonies and multiple choirs look forward to the Baroque. His response to words is acute and highly personal, a characteristic particularly suited to the comparatively dynamic and plastic form of the motet and to other texts which allow full rein to subjective treatment. Of Victoria's 44 motets, the early four-part O quam gloriosum can perhaps be allowed a special mention, since it is pervaded by a youthful vigor and joyous radiance that gives lie to the understandable impression that Spanish Renaissance composers were preoccupied with somber religious subjects. His widely performed Christmas motet, O magnum mysterium, exudes a quiet sense of wonder. Victoria's fame as a motet composer has tended to overshadow his masses, yet at their finest, as in the lovely Missa Ave maris stella, they are not inferior to those of Palestrina.

To discover Victoria at his greatest, however, one must ultimately return to the darker side, and in particular to the two works by which he is best known, the Tenebrae Responsories (first published in 1585) and the Requiem of 1605, a work of timeless serenity. The former is a setting of 18 pieces that adhere to the traditional form of the responsory, with its alternation of verse and refrain. The work takes us through the Passion story in music that relies not so much on the drama of the events themselves as on a quite extraordinarily direct and profound response to the text, a response frequently achieved by means of the greatest simplicity, or, perhaps more accurately, apparent simplicity.