The complaint, as such, was nothing new. We have heard it before from John of Salisbury, who railed
at the vainglory of the singers at Notre Dame, and even from Saint Augustine, who had nothing more than
the seductive beauty of Gregorian chant to contend with. Made against the music of the incipient ars
perfecta, however, it carried considerable conviction, because imitative texture was an artistic value first
and last, and was hardly reconcilable with the demands of textual intelligibility no matter how much
attention a composer like Willaert paid to correct declamation. As one indignant bishop, Bernardino
Cirillo Franco, put it of contemporary composers (and with the text of the Mass Sanctus in mind), “in our
times they have put all their industry and effort into the compositions of fugues, so that while one voice
says ‘Sanctus,’ another says ‘Sabaoth,’ still another ‘Gloria tua,’ with howling, bellowing, and
stammering, so that they more nearly resemble cats in January than flowers in May.”^3
EX. 16-5C Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Missa O magnum mysterium, Credo (“Patrem omni potentem... “), beginning