Perhaps the best proof of the enduring value of Palestrina's work is to be found in the fact that some of his compositions are still to be heard in the Sistine Chapel, and that even in our own time [Footnote 14] a definite movement to restore his music to its proper high place in the service of the Church has been initiated. Whenever, since his death, music has been really on a high plane, Palestrina has been thoroughly appreciated. Whenever musical taste has been debased and men have gone seeking after novelty and bizarre effects and over-decoration, Palestrina has been neglected. For music, he is what Dante is to literature and art, the touchstone by which it is easiest to estimate properly the value of a generation's critical faculty and spirit of appreciation. Henderson, in his "How Music Developed," already quoted from, has summed up Palestrina's accomplishment in a few words: [Footnote 14: The decree of Pope Pius X, requiring the restoration of the Gregorian Chant to the place of honor in the Liturgic Services and making Palestrina's music the standard to which choir music should properly conform, seemed to many music-lovers distinctly reactionary and perhaps old-fogyish. As a matter of fact, it was a well-judged restoration of such criteria in church music as would preclude the possibility of modern unsuitable developments of music finding their way further into church services. It was open to the same objections on the part of those who knew no better as the decree of Pope Leo XIII that St. Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy should be the standard in Catholic schools of Philosophy and Theology. The two decrees will be set beside each other in history as examples of the ability of great Popes so to direct church policy as to preserve the faithful from human degeneracies of taste and thought. Palestrina's music is as firm a standard of church music as Aquinas' thought is a safe criterion in philosophy.] "Before leaving the subject of Palestrina, let me endeavor to make clear to the reader wherein his style is so fine. Composers before him had begun to aim at the simplification of church music. They sought to accomplish their purpose by breaking the shackles of canonic law. The canon had demanded the most exact imitation in the different voice parts. The new style allowed the greatest freedom. The result was that free polyphony took the place of rigid canon. {142} Consequently composers were able to devote more attention to the development of fluent, beautiful and expressive melody. The merit of Palestrina's work was that it carried this style to perfection. His compositions became the models for succeeding composers, and indeed they remain to this day unequalled as examples of pure church music."