It must not be supposed that Palestrina was the only great church composer of his period. There were others during his lifetime and immediately following, whose genius would have been proclaimed of the first magnitude had it not been for the greater effulgence of Palestrina’s. Giovanni Maria Nanino (about 1545-1607) ranks as second only to Palestrina among the Italian church composers, as witness his motet for six voices, _Hodie nobis cœlorum rex_, annually sung in the Sistine Chapel on Christmas morning; his mass, _Vestiva i colli_, for five voices; and particularly his Lamentations set in simple melodious style for four male voices. His brother, Giovanni Bernardino Nanino (about 1560-about 1618), wrote a remarkable _Salve Regina_ for twelve voices in which the new spirit of striving for unusual effects is noticeable. Viadana (about 1564-1645) introduced into church music the _concerti ecclesiastici_, which were a kind of monodic chant or song for from one to four voices with organ accompaniment indicated by a _basso continuo_, or figured bass. Most of his church music, however, was written in the old contrapuntal style. Following the trend of the times, Francesco Soriano or Suriano (1549-about 1621) permitted the dramatic style of the monodists to enter very perceptibly into his ‘Passions for Holy Week,’ probably his best work. Among the greatest of Palestrina’s contemporaries was Tomasso da Vittoria (about 1540-about 1613), sometimes called ‘the Spanish Palestrina.’ His greatest masterpiece is the elaborate six-part Requiem Mass, composed for the obsequies of the Empress Maria, widow of Maximilian II. Next to Palestrina’s Mass for the Dead, this is the most important and profoundly moving among the many settings of this office as pure ritual-music. Its subjects are all taken from plain-song melodies, yet it has an astonishingly modern quality, due to Vittoria’s employment of powerful, sonorous chords and especially to a warmer and more direct and personal mode of expressing his religious emotions than composers of the polyphonic school were wont to assume. Palestrina’s religious music is the music of a soul of immaculate purity, as though, to use Ambros’ figure, his strains were messengers from a higher world; Vittoria’s music was the responsive utterance of a saintly soul on earth, struggling amid poignantly human emotions for a heavenly estate. Among his other works, the _Improperia_ gained great renown for their purity of church style and warmth and tenderness of expression.