This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Palestrina, the great composer of sacred polyphony, whose masterful compositions for the sacred liturgy have been described by Catholic musicologist Susan Treacy as “a cathedral in music.” Palestrina was so much the musical voice of the Catholic Reformation in the sixteenth century that he is rightly revered as one of the most important composers of all time.

He is buried at St. John Lateran Cathedral, one of the four major basilicas of Rome, the inscription on his tomb lauding him as the “Prince of Sacred Music”, and he was described by the great composer Felix Mendelsohn as one of the West’s four musical tetrarchs—alongside Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Clearly, Palestrina’s praises have been widely sung, and rightly so, placing him beyond the realm of the unsung heroes celebrated in this series. The same can be said of other great composers of sacred polyphony, such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Metabolical: The Lure ... Lustig, Robert H Best Price: $9.27 Buy New $11.02 (as of 03:06 UTC - Details)

Leaving these giants aside, we will focus instead on some of the great composers from the history of Christendom who are not as well-known or as widely lauded.

Guido of Arezzo, an eleventh century Benedictine monk, is well-known to professional musicologists but is largely unknown outside of the ivory towers of academe. This is unjust because he is responsible for the language that all musicians use. A music theorist and teacher, his seminal work, Micrologus, was the most influential musical treatise of the middle ages with the exception of Boethius’ De institutione musica. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern staff notation which was foundational to the development of Western musical notation.

Moving forward three hundred years to the high middle ages, the French composer Guillaume de Machaut composed the first polyphonic setting of the Mass. His Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) is, therefore, a pioneering work which paved the way for Palestrina and others. A century later, in the fifteenth century, another French pioneer, Guillaume Du Fay, would emerge as the most illustrious musician of his time. A composer of both sacred and secular music, he would be described by his contemporary Piero de’ Medici as “the greatest ornament of our age.” Another composer of the fifteenth and sixteenth century whose praises were widely sung in his own day but who is largely unsung today is Josquin Des Prez. The composer of several settings of the Mass, his most celebrated work is probably the four-voice motet, Ave Maria … Virgo serena. Such was his importance that Susan Treacy has suggested that he might be considered “a Renaissance Beethoven.”

We will move now to an altogether different type of unsung composer, Antonín Dvořák. Whereas some heroes of Christendom are unsung because they have never been widely known or were once widely known but are now largely forgotten or neglected, Dvořák remains one of the most celebrated and famous of all classical composers whose praises are sung wherever great music is loved. He is unsung, however, because his role as a great composer of classical music has eclipsed his great Catholic faith and the influence that this faith had on his work. In this sense, he is unsung in the same sense that Shakespeare is unsung.

Take, for instance, the way that Dvořák’s importance is encapsulated in the opening sentence of his entry on Wikipedia:

Antonín Leopold Dvořák (8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák’s style has been described as “the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them,” and Dvořák has been described as “arguably the most versatile… composer of his time.”

Thus, in summarizing the salient features of Dvořák’s legacy, we are told of his nationality, and are informed of the influence of folklore and nationalism, and of his Romanticism and versatility, but we are not told of his deep Catholic faith, nor its role in his work, nor its being the inspiration for his great sacred compositions.

Dvořák is best known for his Symphony Number 9 in E minor, popularly known by its subtitle From the New World or simply as the New World Symphony. Such is its enduring popularity that it was selected to be taken by Neil Armstrong to the moon during the first lunar landing in 1969 and was voted the favourite symphony in a poll conducted by ABC Classic FM radio in Australia in 2009. This is all very well and all very good but this is not what makes Antonín Dvořák an unsung hero of Christendom. What qualifies him for such an accolade and for his inclusion in this series are his many sacred choral works. His setting of the Stabat Mater is the longest extant setting of that text, running to around 90 minutes, and he also composed a Requiem, a Mass in D major and a setting of the Te Deum. Beyond Labels: A Docto... Salatin, Joel Best Price: $8.26 Buy New $17.60 (as of 11:36 UTC - Details)

The premiere of Dvořák’s Requiem in Birmingham (England) in 1891 was conducted by the composer himself, and was “very successful.” Such success was repeated the following year during a performance in Boston in which “the composer was frequently applauded between numbers and given a most enthusiastic ovation at the end.” A later performance in Vienna was described as “a triumph of Dvořák’s music.”

The Te Deum, composed in 1892, was dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, and his Mass in D major, originally intended for organ, solo voices and a small choir, was subsequently arranged for a full symphony orchestra. The oratorio Saint Ludmila tells the story of the Bohemian saint and martyr, combining in its subject matter Dvořák’s patriotism and his deep Catholic faith.

With respect to the latter, he was a lifelong and devoutly practicing Catholic. He and his wife had nine children. There is little doubt that Dvořák’s New World Symphony will be performed across the United States as part of next year’s celebrations to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps we might hope and pray that the Te Deum that he composed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World might be performed with it. There can be few better ways of reminding ourselves that the United States is not merely a New World nation but that it is also and must always be One Nation under God.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.