This is the Kyrie from the The Missa Papae Marcelli, written in 1567. This music is incredibly beautiful. I find it to be very moving and expressive, almost transcendent, like a choir of angels.
It is difficult for me to describe what I find so beautiful about it. It is something about the smoothness of the voices and and how they move so beautifully.
Since I wasn't able to pick out any of the features myself that worked to create this beautiful sound, i had to do a little research. I learned that some of the methods that Palestrina employed were: keeping the dissonances on the weak beats only, keeping the flow of the music dynamic, and avoiding leaps in the melody. If there was a leap it was followed by a step,(This was Fux' s description of his methods which I was able to find on Wikipedia).
I listened again to this piece with those methods in mind and was able to hear how he did indeed employ these methods to create such a beautiful, fluid sound.
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