The Download includes a digital booklet with notes and sung texts in English, French and German. The CD version is no longer available.
Victoria's Requiem Mass (as we
now call it) has for many decades and for many people typified Spanish
Renaissance music. Its mystical intensity of expression, achieved by the
simplest musical means, obviously sets it apart from contemporary English and
Italian music, and has led to comparisons of it with the equally intense
religious paintings of Velázquez and El Greco. There is no doubt that this
masterpiece conveys much of the highly individual Spanish view of religion and
death, and this is the more valuable since their vision is largely unfamiliar
outside Spain herself.
In
fact Victoria was just one of a very substantial school of Spanish Renaissance
composers; and one of the least prolific among them. Many of these deserve to
be considered along with Victoria, though none wrote a Mass quite as mature as
this. One possible reason for their collective lack of fame is that they
travelled very little, unless it were to the New World, unlike their
Netherlandish contemporaries. Victoria was lucky in this respect. Having been
born in Avila in 1548 and brought up there in the tradition of Morales, Espinar
and Ribera, he went to Rome, probably in 1565, to study at the Jesuit Collegio
Germanico. Once there he must surely have met Palestrina, and was possibly
taught by him. The subtleties of Palestrina's polyphonic idiom are regularly to
be found in Victoria's music, unlike that of his Spanish contemporaries, and it
gave him an extra dimension of technique when it suited him. In fact, in this
Requiem there is very little imitative polyphony and the lack of it allows its
Spanish flavour to speak all the more strongly. Victoria stayed in Rome until
1587 at the latest, by which time he had been ordained priest (by Bishop Thomas
Goldwell, the last surviving member of the pre-Reformation English Catholic
hierarchy in Rome) and had published several anthologies of his work. By the
end of his life he had succeeded in publishing just about his entire output in
eleven sets, most in luxurious format - a great deal more than Palestrina ever
did. This six-part Requiem appeared by itself in 1605 and was the last of the
series.
From
1587 until his death in 1611 Victoria was employed in Madrid, initially as
chaplain to the sister of Philip II: the Dowager Empress Maria, daughter of
Charles V, wife of Maximilian II and mother of two emperors. It was for her
funeral in 1603 that this Requiem was written. After her death Victoria became
organist to the convent where the Empress had lived. Since he was by profession
almost as much a priest as a musician, it will be understood why Victoria only
wrote sacred music, though it should not be assumed that it is all sombre. By
his contemporaries Victoria was held to be an essentially joyful composer and
there are many motets to prove this, some of them in polychoral style. In
addition much of his music has quite strongly madrigalian features, with
liberal use of accidentals, diminished intervals, and word-painting (witness
the rising scales on 'surge' in the motet Nigra sum sed formosa, see CDGIM 003).
This
recording of the six-part Requiem follows the edition prepared by Bruno Turner,
published by Mapa Mundi. In his preface to this edition Mr Turner explains that
the 1605 print of the music carried some extra motets and liturgical items, as
was customary at that time, which would have been added in performance to the Missa
pro defunctis proper. These were the four-part Taedet animam meam
(the second lesson of Matins of the Dead), which has been moved to the very
beginning to serve as a simple introduction; the motet Versa est in luctum,
which may well have been sung as the dignitaries and clergy assembled at the
catafalque before the Absolution; and the Absolution itself, for which Victoria
wrote the full Responsorium, 'Libera me, Domine', with its final 'Kyrie
eleison'. The only peculiarity of this print is the omission of a setting of
the usual verse 'Hostias et preces' and the consequent repeat of 'Quam olim
Abrahae' in the Offertorium. Although it may be possible to find a suitable
chant setting of these words, and thus satisfy full liturgical demands, it is
not musically convincing to do so and these words are omitted here.
All
the music of this setting, except the initial Taedet animam meam, is
scored for SSATTB. The second soprano part unusually 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. Victoria himself printed most
of the unaccompanied chant incipits, though the editor has provided the short
second 'Agnus Dei' and the final 'Requiescant in pace'. This scoring also holds
true for Alonso Lobo's beautiful setting of Versa est in luctum, which
was written for the funeral of Philip II of Spain, the brother of the recipient of Victoria's own setting. Lobo (1555-1617) was
widely held to be the finest composer in Spain during his lifetime, and there
is evidence that Victoria thought so too.
©
1987 Peter Phillips
The Lamentations of Jeremiah
The
Spanishness
of Spanish polyphony is often invoked. There is an impression that in their
worship the Spanish have a fierceness, coupled to a mysticism, which sets
them apart. This way of thinking was current a long time ago: Michelangelo,
when asked by the Florentine painter Pontormo how he could best please a
Spanish patron, replied that he should 'show much blood and nails'. Such
rawness has readily been attributed to their music, too.
My
experience is that only Victoria's music has quite this special intensity of
feeling to it, and then only in his six-voice Requiem and music for Holy Week.
But it is this intensity, in the end, which makes him so distinctive, not only
in the wider European context but also amongst his compatriots. Of all the
great High Renaissance composers, Victoria's writing can have the most
immediately identifiable atmosphere. And in the purely Spanish context his
greatest achievements cannot easily be confused with those of Lobo, Guerrero,
Vivanco, de las Infantas, Esquivel, Navarro, even Morales, though the works of
these men may be confused with each other. The question is how he achieved this
unique atmosphere.
The
irony is that Victoria, like Morales before him, spent many of his formative
years (from 1565 to about 1587) in Rome studying the international style which
the Flemish had brought there, and which Palestrina was in the process of
bringing to new heights of perfection just at that time. In general his
compositions from this period do not show anything very unusual - for example
his wonderfully sonorous six-voice motets often sound like very good
Palestrina. The opening of his Vidi speciosam is so like the opening of
the older master's Tu es Petrus as to seem like a deliberate act of
homage. They both set Dum complerentur in a similar idiom. Yet the story
of the Lamentations is suggestive: they were finally published in 1585, right
at the end of Victoria's time in Rome; but there is an earlier manuscript copy
of them in the Sistine Chapel Library (I-Rvat 186) which contains them in an
earlier version. In this they are longer, less carefully organized
harmonically, and less poignant in their setting of the texts. Before he
allowed them to be published, Victoria had carefully revised every phrase. His 'Spanish' style was worked out in Rome.
The
1585 publication, known as the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae, included all
Victoria's music for Holy Week: these nine Lamentations, the eighteen
Responsories, two Passions and a number of other pieces. It is all of a
plangent austerity which, when put alongside his six-voice Requiem of 1605, has
long been held to represent Victoria and his Spanishness at its most typical
and best. In fact it is only part of the story, since even when he had returned
to Spain to become a priest (by 1587 at the latest) he wrote music in other
idioms - including one of the most
outward-going compositions of the period, the Missa Pro Victoria, based
on battle noises - which was just as typical of him and perhaps Spain. But the
style of the Holy Week music is particularly telling, almost defying analysis.
For example much of it is not properly polyphonic. The underlying harmony is
still as simple as it always was in sixteenth-century music, yet seems to have
gained a new tension in the way Victoria used it. And the melodies that come
from it are elemental, wrapped round the words, striding up and down with
incredible purpose. There is not a note wasted - and yet this is still art
music, not pared down for congregational use. Victoria had achieved his own match
of function and expressivity.
Since
the Holy Week services were the most dramatic and darkest in the Church's year,
Victoria's expressivity was given full range. The nine Lamentations were
composed for the first Nocturn at Matins on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday
of this seminal week, three for each service. The famous Responsories were
written for the second and third Nocturns of each service. Each of these three
services had three Nocturns in which three Lessons and three Responses were
interwined. For some reason, possibly because there would simply have been too
much music, Victoria set the Lessons (the Lamentations) for the first Nocturn
and the Responses for the second and third Nocturns, but not both.
Victoria
clearly intended his nine Laments to be heard as an overall musical experience
which, however effective across three days of liturgy, makes them ideal for a
recording. As they proceed the number of voices gradually increases, with the
final 'Jerusalem' section always expanding the scoring, so that there is a
crescendo not only within each Lament but within each set of three, and then
over the nine. Most of the nine start with a four-voice section, normally
leading to a five-voice 'Jerusalem'. However the third Lament on both Thursday
and Friday starts in five and ends in six; and the third Lament on Saturday
starts in six and ends in eight. A feature of this process is that the amount
of counterpoint does not increase, so Victoria's chords simply become more
monumental. By the time we reach the eight-voice section, which is partly for
double choir, the effect is deeply impressive.
The 'Jerusalems' are a culmination of every section and sub-section, with the
slightly unusual detail that in some of the Laments (but not all) Victoria has
set these words twice, the second version scored for more voices than the
first. Arguably they should not both be sung, but since there is no firm
evidence as to why the composer provided two, we decided not to leave anything
out. I also specifically asked the singers to produce a more forthright tone
for the body of the text - where the prophet complains so bitterly about the
fate of the holy city - as compared with the 'Incipits', the Hebrew letters and
the 'Jerusalems' themselves.
Juan
Gutiérrez de Padilla (c.1590-1664) is the best-known representative of the
Spanish school of composers in Mexico. Born in Málaga, he was employed as a
church musician firstly in Jerez de la Frontera and then in Cádiz before moving
to New Spain no later than the autumn of 1622. On 11 October he was named
cantor and assistant Maestro at Puebla Cathedral with an annual salary
of 500 pesos, at a time when this Cathedral boasted a musical establishment on
a par with the best in Europe. In 1629 Padilla became Maestro de Capilla,
a post he retained until his death. His six-voice setting of the Lamentations
is one of his finest achievements, employing an impassioned musical language
which is spiced up with the augmented intervals beloved of every Iberian
composer of note in the early seventeenth century, Portuguese as much as
Spanish. The reduced-voice section at 'Ghimel', followed by the verse 'Migravit
Judas', is a classic case of this. I have never elsewhere come across the
astonishing harmonic move he makes at 'inter gentes'. The fact that this set is
scored for SSATTB points to the influence
of Victoria and other Spaniards, who tended to favour this line-up in six
parts. Victoria's seminal setting of the Requiem is scored like this. Quite why
it was thought appropriate to use such a potentially bright sound for Requiems
and Laments is one of the many mysteries of the Spanish school.
© 2010 Peter Phillips
The Tenebrae Responsories, along with the
six-voice Requiem, are responsible for setting the modern impression of
Victoria as a composer. The introverted, spiritually intense mood of both these
masterpieces has appealed to modern ears, promoting the almost indelible
association between Victoria, St Teresa (who, like Victoria, was born in
Avila), Velazquez and El Greco. Although Victoria was capable of other moods,
shown for instance in his 'battle' Mass Pro victoria, the joyful
double-choir Psalm-settings and settings of the sensuous love poetry of the Song
of Songs texts, the Responsories encapsulate something uniquely valuable in
his art. This has much to do with an extreme simplicity and directness of
style.
The
publication which contains these eighteen Responsories first appeared in Rome
in 1585 under the official title, as it then was, of Officium Hebdomadae
Sanctae. It consists of considerably more than the Responsories, since
Victoria set not only the nine Lessons from the Lamentations of Jeremiah the
Prophet but hymns, motets, the Reproaches, the two sets of Passion choruses
and other music from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday. Taken together, these pieces
represent the most complete cycle of music for Holy Week by any leading
Renaissance composer. Gesualdo set all the Responsories (at considerably
greater length than Victoria), but none of the Lamentations. Lassus set the
same Responsories and the nine Lamentations, and Palestrina composed five sets
of Lamentations but no Responsories. It is interesting to observe that settings
of the Lamentations have received more concert performances than have settings
of the Responsory texts. This must have something to do with the strict
liturgical structure of the latter and the resulting impression that a concert
is not quite the right place for them. They are well represented in recordings,
however, where one may listen to them as they were intended to be heard, in
three separate groups, one each for Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Holy Week.
Originally,
on these seminal days of the Church's year, the Responsories were sung early in
the morning during Matins which was followed by Lauds. Later, these Offices
together became called Tenebrae and were performed during the evening of the
preceding day. In this service, the only light in the church came from a
triangular stand holding fifteen candles (representing the eleven faithful
apostles, the three Marys, and Christ), and from six candles on the altar. As
each Psalm was chanted, a candle was extinguished, so that after the fourteenth
Psalm only the highest candle (which represented Christ) was still burning.
During the concluding recitation (the Canticle of Zachary) the six candles on
the altar were also put out one by one until, as the Office of Lauds drew to a
close, the only candle which was still burning was concealed behind the altar;
thus the church was left in tenebris - in darkness. The rite symbolized
both the darkness which covered the earth as Christ was crucified, and his
burial. After the closing prayers the worshippers made a certain amount of
noise to represent nature in turmoil at the death of Christ. Once the noise had
died away, the remaining candle was brought out from behind the altar (a sign
of the resurrection), returned to the stand and extinguished.
The
Tenebrae Matins was divided, on each day, into three Nocturns, each of which
required the singing or reciting of three Lessons alternated with three
Responsories. The Lessons for the First Nocturn on each day are from the
Lamentations. Victoria set these but not the Responsories. In the Second and
Third Nocturns of each day Victoria did the opposite and set the Responsories,
leaving the Lessons to be chanted by a deacon. Since Victoria wrote the music
to adorn the Liturgy, he kept strictly to the repeats prescribed by tradition,
which this recording preserves: a repetition of the second section of the
opening four-part music after the reduced-voice passage, giving a kind of da
capo shape: ABCB. This happens in all eighteen pieces. In addition, in the
third of each set, the opening section is repeated again at the end: ABCBAB. In
this scheme the A and B passages are invariably scored for four voices, while
section C is always for fewer voice-parts, and sung by soloists. The detail of
the scoring shows how carefully Victoria kept to a plan. The first and third of
each group of three Responsories are set for SATB, the second for SSAT (we do
not follow the unauthorized modern habit of singing some of these with men's
voices only). The reduced-voice passages are scarcely less ordered, all being
for three voices, except the first one which is a duet. In almost every case
the solo group in the first Responsory of each set of three is scored for SAT,
the third is scored for ATB and the second makes use of the extra soprano part
in the full choir, resulting in SSA or SST. This precise scheme serves as a
simple framework for the emotional variety in the music.
Part
of the clue as to how Victoria achieved this variety lies in the details of the
Passion narrative. For a late Renaissance composer, albeit one who never wrote
any madrigals, the story gives unlimited opportunities for different kinds of
word-painting, as well as describing states of mind which vary from the
supremely tragic to the contemplative. How Victoria encompassed these
differences in an idiom so straightforward that it scarcely touches on
imitative counterpoint is one of the great miracles of musical thought. With
complete assurance, he describes the innocence of the lamb at the beginning of 'Eram quasi agnus'; the swords and clubs of 'Seniores populi'; the lugubrious
darkness of 'Tenebrae factae sunt'; the lion during 'Animam meam dilectam'; the
intense distress in 'O vos omnes'. At the same time he is capable of writing
passages of the most inspired music, without any obvious help from the text:
consider the solo section of 'Iesum tradidit impius' which does no more than
mark time in the narrative yet, with its two answering soprano parts, is
perhaps the most memorable section of all.
The
power of Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories lies in the balance between the words
and his setting of them. The text has its own impact, which may be discovered
by reading it aloud. Victoria started from this point, being careful to capture
the natural speech rhythms, keeping to syllabic setting (and so never indulging
in the early Renaissance delight of music for its own sake); and then
heightened the meaning of a verbal phrase with the right turn of harmony or
fragment of melody. This pared-down musical idiom, unfamiliar to composers
before the late sixteenth century, was lost again during the Baroque period. It
has become once again a goal for composers during the twentieth century; but,
attractive as the idea of an elemental style has proved to be for many, to
express oneself clearly requires complete certainty about what one has to say.
Victoria remains a model for them all.
©
1990 Peter Phillip