The legend says that in the mid-16th century the Catholic Church was about to ban complex polyphony from worship, until Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina wrote a mass so beautiful that the pope wept and changed his mind. This episode takes that story apart. We trace Palestrina's real life: born around 1525 near Rome, losing his mother at ten, training as a chorister at Santa Maria Maggiore under Franco-Flemish masters, and rising to lead the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's at 26 after his hometown bishop became Pope Julius III. In 1554 he published the first book of masses by a native Italian composer.

Then the politics of the Counter-Reformation intervened. Pope Paul IV required papal choristers to be ordained clergy, and the married Palestrina was fired. His wilderness years were followed by a return to St. Peter's in 1571 and a decade of p ...