He was able to keep his pension, together with the salary accorded him in his new position. After six years he was transferred to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained for ten years, his monthly salary being about sixteen dollars. In 1571 he was reappointed to his old office of chapel master at the Vatican. Palestrina was chapel master at the Santa Maria Maggiore at the time of the appointment of the commission for the reform of church music. The Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, both active members, recommended that one more trial be made to harmonize religious requirements with the better taste of the people. A story has prevailed for centuries that Palestrina was requested to write a mass which should serve as a model of what the music of the sacred office should be, and that he submitted three works, which were first performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, before a group of clergy and singers. There was an immediate and enthusiastic verdict in favor of the compositions. The first two were good, and were sufficiently praised; but the third, the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, as it was afterward called in honor of an earlier pope, was felt to be the epitome of all that was noble and dignified in ecclesiastical music, the crown and glory of the service itself. It was first sung in the papal chapel in 1565. In appreciation of the noble work, Palestrina was made official composer to the pontifical choir--a post created especially for him--and succeeding popes confirmed him in his office as long as he lived. The story of the commission of cardinals and the musical reforms instituted by the Council of Trent has been so emphasized by some historians as to represent Palestrina as the 'savior’ without whose services church music would virtually have ceased to exist. Such a view, however, requires some modification. Church music was not 'saved’ by Palestrina in any such sense, though its debt to him is, nevertheless, almost inestimable. There was never any intention on the part of the cardinals to abolish it altogether from the church; but they had long been seeking a form and a style which should be intelligible, acceptable both to the devotee and the layman of cultivated musical taste, and suitable to the office which it holds in the sacred service. Ambros goes so far as to deny that there was any cause for such wholesale purification; but, in view of the facts cited, this is evidently an error. That the evil was widespread is proved by the action that provincial synods took, in following the example of the Council of Trent, Milan and Cambrai in 1565, Constance and Augsburg in 1567, Namur and Mechlin in 1570.