Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548-1611) was the most
renowned Spanish Renaissance polyphonist. His works are
characterized by mystical fervor and nobility of
musical concepts. He was the seventh child of 11 born
in Ávila to Francisco Luis de Victoria and Francisca
Suárez de la Concha. His father's death in 1557 left
the family in the care of an uncle who was a priest.
Victoria spent several years as a choirboy in Ávila
Cathedral.
In 1565 (or 1563) Victoria entered the German College
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Tomás Luis de Victoria (ca. 1548-1611) was the most
renowned Spanish Renaissance polyphonist. His works are
characterized by mystical fervor and nobility of
musical concepts. He was the seventh child of 11 born
in Ávila to Francisco Luis de Victoria and Francisca
Suárez de la Concha. His father's death in 1557 left
the family in the care of an uncle who was a priest.
Victoria spent several years as a choirboy in Ávila
Cathedral.
In 1565 (or 1563) Victoria entered the German College
at Rome. This was a Jesuit school lavishly supported by
Philip II and Otto von Truchsess von Waldburg, the
cardinal archbishop of Augsburg. Victoria served as
organist at the Aragonese church of S. Maria di
Monserrato in Rome from 1569 to 1574. In 1571 the
German College hired him to teach music to the young
boys. He was ordained on Aug. 28, 1575. From that year
to 1577 he directed the German College choir singing at
the church of S. Apollinare in Rome; from 1578 to 1585
he held a chaplaincy at S. Girolamo della Carità, the
church of the newly founded Oratorians at Rome.
Victoria returned to Spain in 1587 and until 1603
served as chapelmaster of the Descalzas Reales convent
in Madrid, where Philip II's sister, the Dowager
Empress Maria, and her daughter, Princess Margaret,
resided. From 1604 until his death on Aug. 27, 1611, he
was also the organist at the convent.
In 1572 Victoria dedicated his first, and still most
famous, publication to Cardinal Truchsess, a great
connoisseur of church music. The 33 motecta ranging
from four to eight voices in this collection include
the sensuous Vere languores and O vos omnes, which to
this day form the bedrock of Victoria's reputation with
the broad public that knows nothing of his Magnificats,
hymns, sequences, psalms, antiphons, and 20
Masses—five of which appeared in 1576, four more in
1583, seven in 1592, and the rest in 1600 and 1605.
In his 1572 motets Victoria closely followed the detail
technique of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, evincing
a commanding mastery of Palestrina's dissonance
treatment. Personal contact with Palestrina and perhaps
even lessons probably explain Victoria's absorption of
the technique. From 1566 to 1571 Palestrina served as
chapelmaster at the Roman College near the German
College. What distinguishes Victoria's personal manner
in 1572 from Palestrina's is the younger composer's
frequent recourse to printed accidentals, his fondness
for what would now be called melodic minor motion
(sharps ascending, naturals descending), and the
anticipation of 19th-century functional harmony.
Written for the funeral of Empress Maria, whose service
was the composer as chaplain of the Descalzas Reales of
Madrid, this Gregorian paraphrase is the last of the
works published by Victoria, but no one is sure if it
is the last of his compositions. The work includes the
relevant parts of the Missa pro Defunctis, which
Victoria adds a Lectio for four voices on a text of
Job, the motet Versa est in luctum with texts by the
same author, and the responsory Libera me.
Officium Defunctorum is scored for six-part chorus. It
was possibly intended to be sung with two singers to
each part and includes an entire Office of the Dead: in
addition to a Requiem Mass, Victoria sets an
extra-liturgical funeral motet, a lesson that belongs
to Matins (scored for only SATB and not always included
in concert performances), and the ceremony of
Absolution which follows the Mass. Polyphonic sections
are separated by unaccompanied chant incipits Victoria
printed himself. The Soprano II usually carries the
cantus firmus, though "it very often disappears into
the surrounding part-writing since the chant does not
move as slowly as most cantus firmus parts and the
polyphony does not generally move very fast."
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officium_Defunctorum_(Vi
ctoria) ).
Although originally created for six (6) voices
(SSATTB), I created this Interpretation of the "Missa
Officium Defunctorum" (Office of the Dead) for Wind
Sextet (Flute, Oboe, Bb Clarinet, English Horn, French
Horn & Bassoon).
PARTITION