Excerpt from Masters of Music: Their Lives and Works

Italy, whose music had slept while her art had waked and had held the world spellbound, became ready for her great musical epoch in the sixteenth century. Raphael had been dead nine years when he was born who has since been termed "the Raphael of music." Palestrina, called of old Praeneste, is a small town southeast of Rome, and once upon a time, many years ago, a man and his wife lived there with their little boy. Their dwelling was almost hidden by chestnut trees, and it faced the blue western distance where Rome lay.

Some people say that this couple were of noble birth, that the man's family name was Sante, and his wife's Ghismondi (both old and well known Italian names), but we know little of them. It is quite possible that they were of the peasant class, for they lived in the humblest and simplest manner. Their little boy, Giovanni Pierluigi, or Gianetto as he was called, grew up among the chestnut trees on the lower slopes of the Sabine hills, a simple country boy save for his one great inspiration, - love for music.

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