In 1957 Nino Pirrotta expressed his view of Palestrina's music and the Tridentine reforms as follows:
The composers were directed to avoid too open an intrusion of secular elements, and to preserve the comprehensibility of the text so far as possible. That the latter would have been attainable through the avoidance of canons and other developed contrapuntal procedures (Animuccia, preface to Laude, Libro ii, 1570) is only in part true, if the noteworthy complexity of Palestrina's polyphonic composition is taken into account. In fact the problem had to be solved more from the spiritual than from the purely technical side. The true contribution of Palestrina and some of his contemporaries (e.g. de Kerle and Animuccia) to its solution — dramatised in anecdotes which do not withstand historical criticism — consists in the deep and inner religiosity which his works unquestionably express. This religiosity, joined to the responsibility for interpreting the official attitude of the Church, influenced the style in that it led to extreme circumspection in taking up the new means of emphasis and expression, be it because they had arisen from secular music (above all after the rise of the madrigal) or because they seemed incompatible with the restraint becoming to the divine service (since they tended towards the description and expression of personal feelings).