Council of Trent (1545-1563)

A council of the Roman Church, held at Trento (South Tyrol, now Italy) 1545-63, where important decisions regarding church music were made.  The council abolished all the tropes and sequences with the exception of four.  The Cardinals' determination to restore the dignity of the service, after the growing corruption and secularization of the previous centuries, acutely endangered the continued development of polyphonic music because for a time they considered abolishing all music in the service other than plainsong.