We have all heard it, yet most of us would not be able to name it. The term polyphony (from the Greek for “many sounds”) is used to describe music that employs simultaneous yet independent melodies.

The Pope has called for a revival of the sacred music of the church's past. After folk and rock 'n' roll Masses, what will the faithful make of polyphony, asks Aengus Collins Earlier this summer a ...

The Holy Father offered his praise to polyphonic music while welcoming participants at the June 18 event commemorating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, a ...

Over the years, criticism of music in Catholic worship has become something of a fashion. But when an internationally renowned musician of the caliber of Peter Phillips, artistic director of the world ...

ON a swelteringly hot morning in this elegant capital city recently, worshippers crammed in the ornately frescoed sixth-century Anchiskhati Basilica. Women in colorful head scarves prayed and kissed ...

Editor’s note: To listen along as you read, click the links in the text. These pieces were performed for The Economist by the choir of Jesus College, Cambridge. IN 1605 Charles de Ligny, a Frenchman, ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. When Italian Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo caught his wife and her lover in flagrante and murdered them both in ...

The Glee Club and Choral Society have just issued a 12-inch record of Sixteenth Century music, mostly Palestrina, with selections of Byrd, Lassus, and Amerio (Cambridge, CRS405). Some of this is a ...

An interview with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski on the choir’s role in the Catholic Church todayWhat are the origins of choirs? Why did the Second Vatican Council call the musical tradition of the universal ...