Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria, Palestrina is considered the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe. Palestrina was one of the few Renaissance composers never entirely forgotten, but it was the so-called "Palestrinian style" of counterpoint—especially as codified by Johann Joseph Fux—rather than his individual compositions that exerted the greatest influence. 1525 – February 2, 1594; died at about 69. Alive at the same time as William Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Francis Bacon. Wiki link