It is quite characteristic of the inherent and unostentatious greatness of Palestrina that the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, the singing of which before the Commission of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on the nineteenth of June, 1565, caused this mass to be chosen as a model in style and in structure of what all future music of the Roman liturgy should be, was written several years before that event as an ordinary item of routine loyalty in the service of the church which he so devoutly loved.[34] It did not come into being, as has been persistently proclaimed by legend and history,[35] at the request of the Commission nor as a specific answer to the warning of the Council of Trent that all figured or polyphonic music would be excluded from the Roman service because of the current abuses. The name by which this famous mass has been known was not given to it until 1567. The Pope to whom it was dedicated, Marcellus II, had died in 1555, ten years before fame and immortality had been accorded to this composition by the award of the Cardinal Commission, but, though he had reigned only twenty-three days, Palestrina did not forget his earnest efforts in behalf of church-music while he was a Cardinal. This mass stands by universal consent as an unrivalled monument to the piety, depth of feeling, and intensity of expression, as well as the technical skill, of its creator. All technical contrivances, the devices of fugue and canon, are in complete subjection to the demands of expression, and the listener is never for a moment conscious of the consummate art with which the parts are fashioned. Its subjects are all original and all are of great simplicity, but treated with infinite variety. It is written for six voices--soprano, alto, two tenors of equal compass, and two equal basses--which are so grouped as constantly to suggest the effects of antiphonal choirs. Though an atmosphere of solemnity pervades the whole, each movement has individual characterization. Baini, Palestrina’s biographer, calls the Kyrie devout, the Gloria animated, the Credo majestic, the Sanctus angelic, and the Agnus Dei prayerful.