Given how many great musicians have died over the past week, it may be the right time to pause and listen to the polyphonic glories of Tomás Luis de Victoria’s 1605 musical sendoff for his last patron, Dowager Empress Maria, sister of Spain’s King Philip II.
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The Officium Defunctorum, four parts of a funeral ritual that has the Missa pro defunctis at its centre, is impeccably sung by Belgium’s Collegium Vocale Gent under the leadership of founding music director Philippe Herreweghe.
The album is rounded out with three motets and a setting of Salve Regina.
It is the third release on the organization’s own label.
Clear, perfectly balanced sound and absolute transparency let the 13 voices present the six vocal parts in such a way that a listener can chose to clearly follow the one of their choosing. Or you can let go, listening to the whole and seeing which hand will welcome you back on the other side.
Victoria’s music is as enchanting as these interpretations. Plainsong disappears imperceptibly into the larger polyphonic structure, then reemerges back out into the light later. Like so much renaissance polyphony, this music relies on its changing textures to provide a sense of crescendo and diminuendo. There is also a natural pulse to the music that Herreweghe keeps present, without making it obvious.
The sound, recorded at the church of Notre-Dame-du-Liban in Paris last fall, is a model of spaciousness balanced with clarity.
Victoria, a native of Avila, Spain, a generation younger than Palestrina, would certainly have met the older master while studying in Rome in the late 1560s. Whatever lessons he absorbed, he expanded into his own, rich polyphonic language.
Victoria returned to Spain as a priest and composer in 1587, working as the personal chaplain to Maria until her death in 1603. The Officium Defunctorum is the last music he had published, two years later. He lived out his retirement quietly as organist at a Madrid convent.
You’ll find more details on the album here.
To give an idea of the choir’s unaccompanied sound, here is the Collegium Vocale singing the motet Emendemus in melius by Victoria’s most notable Spanish predecessor, Cristobal de Morales:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
