Roman School

The Roman School was a group of composers of the Renaissance who worked in Rome from the mid-16th century to the 17th century. Well-known composers of this school were Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria and Gregorio Allegri. The focus was on polyphonic vocal music that was created calm and fluent in melodic, harmonic and rhythmic sense, can thus be said that the Roman school stylistically continued the Dutch polyphony and further developed.

The church musical demands of the Counter-Reformation, which had been formulated at the Council of Trent were implemented in it.

Only under specified conditions allowed the council playing polyphonic music in churches:

• Understanding of the text
• Dignity in the expression
• Exclusion of parody masses