These two quotations, from Curt Sachs and Gustave Reese, sum up neatly the outstanding spiritual and technical qualities of Palestrina’s music, expressing for us, as for so many in the past, that instinctive feeling that it has a heavenly quality. More down to earth, those qualities of serenity and balance can be identified as superb control of structure, like strategic planning, and flawless attention to detail, like tactical efficiency. So very often one finds the word ‘felicity’—happy appropriateness, absolute rightness—describing Palestrina’s numerous works that qualify as great.