A Musician of Deep Faith Ordained into the priesthood, Tomás Luis de Victoria was a musician of deep faith, who to me represents the best we have received from the Golden Age of Polyphony. Always faithful to the text, he has written motets and Masses that are resplen¬dently emotional: His sacred compositions, which are the only works of his that have come down to us, have a felicitous mix of passion and mysticism. His music has the perfection of craft, the contrapuntal skill, we find in other superb Renais¬sance composers. But Victoria’s music is at times truly poignant, at times enchantingly serene, and at times so very human in the feelings it conveys. May this great master’s choral music with its variety of textures and sonorities provide you with the same upliftment and inspiration it has provided me throughout most of my life! Johannes Somary Music Director and Conductor Tomás Luis de Victoria: Publisher of His Own Musical Legacy The process by which a Renaissance composer’s music finds its way across more than four centuries into the modern repertory is always fascinating. Tomás Luis de Victoria is an excep¬tional figure among famous composers of the late sixteenth century be¬cause the transmission of his music and the selection of pieces frequently performed today owes so much to steps the man himself took. Victoria kept close control over the publication of his works and issued a limited number of compositions over his life¬time. The publication of his music, which follows the geographical pattern of his career, shaped the modern reception of his output and directly influenced the cultivation of a relatively small number of famous works today, including many on this recording. Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila in central Spain. He received a Jesuit choirboy’s education, then was sent to the German Jesuit College in Rome as a singer. He eventually became direc¬tor of music there and held a number of musical and clerical positions in Roman institutions. In 1587 he returned to Spain, serving as a priest and musical leader at a convent under royal patronage, where he remained (except for an extended visit to Rome) until his death in 1611. His musical publishing began in 1572, at the height of his activity at the German College, with a book of motets for four, five, and six voices issued in Venice, one of the principal centers of music printing in Italy. This volume, containing 33 pieces, was the basis of his entire pub¬lished output of motets for the rest of his career. He reissued the volume in Rome in 1583 with some new motets, adding reprints of some other kinds of pieces he had published in the in¬terim; editions also appeared in Milan and Dillingen in 1589 and in Venice in 1603. What is remarkable about these publications is the stability of their repertory: Victoria added a few new pieces in 1583 but for the most part this single volume, frequently reprinted under his supervision, represents his complete motet output. This is in contrast to the many books of motets issued by his most famous near contemporaries, Palestrina, Lassus, and Byrd. The modern Victoria motet repertory is deeply indebted to this collection, particularly to the first fourteen motets for four voices that open the collection. Seven of the pieces on this re¬cording are from this group: “O Quam Gloriosum,” “Quam Pulchri Sunt,” “O Magnum Mysterium,” “Magi Viderunt Stellam,” “Pueri He¬brae¬orum,” “O Vos Omnes,” and “O Sacrum Convivium.” One more, “Domine, Non Sum Dignus,” was one of the pieces added to the 1583 reprint. It is difficult to overestimate the fame of many of these pieces, particularly “O Quam Gloriosum,” which was the opening work in almost every original edition of Victo¬ria’s motets and which also served as the basis for the composer’s best-known Mass setting. Its constant reprinting and place of honor at the start of printed collections helped propel this beautiful work to its lasting fame in both Victoria’s time and ours. These motets are the works for which Victoria is best known today; they have been repeatedly republished in modern practical editions, anthologized, and cultivated by performers. The four-voice works are clearly in the mold of Victoria’s Italian-born predecessors but are dis¬tinctive for his tendency to use full textures throughout (typically after an imitative opening); for the strong harmonic drive to the cadence of each segment of text; for a harmonic language that strikes most listeners as modern; and for the composer’s skill in working with melodic ideas based on scales, a favorite device. The expanded edition of motets that was issued in Rome in 1583 appeared as Victoria was also producing a series of opulent, large-format volumes of his music in that city (1581–85), books that survey various musical and liturgical genres and mark the cul¬mination of his work there. The five volumes cover hymns, Marian works, Masses, Holy Week offices, and motets (once again, this time organized liturgically, with some further new pieces). The Requiem on this recording (“Missa Pro Defunctis”) is drawn from the Mass volume in this series; its most characteristic musical feature is the presence of the plainchant (mostly in the top voice) throughout. This gives the setting a distinctly different character from the musically independent motets in which Vic¬toria was entirely free to invent melodic material. The music for Holy Week published in this Roman series became particularly famous. Char¬acteristically, the volume begins with one of Victoria’s older motets (“Pueri Hebraeorum,” recycled from the motet collection) and continues with passion set¬tings, responsories, and lamentations—the music needed for the solemn observa¬tion of Holy Week in the Roman church. Two works on the recording are drawn from this collection: “Una Hora” and “Popule Meus.” Both pieces tend towards the simulta¬neous declamation of text by all the voices in contrast to the more imitative polyphony typical of Victoria’s motets, though “Una Hora” begins in imitation (like many of the motets) before turning to a simpler but still expressive texture. One of the products of Victoria’s return to Spain after his Italian service was a mixed volume of liturgical music of various kinds published in Madrid in 1600 that opens with 20 pieces for eight-part double chorus. The “Magnificat” and the sequences “Victimae Pascali Laudes” and “Lauda Sion” recorded here are from this group, the first two newly published in 1600 and the last reprinted from a volume in the Roman series. Also from this collection are the two hymns “Veni Creator Spiritus” and “Ave Maris Stella.” The first was also a carryover from Victoria’s Roman volume of hymns; the second was new. Both present alternating verses of the strophic hymn in plain¬chant and in polyphonic settings, reflecting the typical liturgical presentation of this kind of text in musical alternation. Each hymn draws on the chant melody associated with its text, prompting yet a different kind of musical language—in these pieces Victoria sets and elaborates a pre-existent tune. Finally, it is worth reiterating that the composer’s cultivation and publication of his own music guaranteed that it has reached us in well-attributed sources. Those printed sources, more than for any of his contemporaries, have closely shaped the modern repertory of his music. Dr. Daniel R. Melamed Professor of Music Jacobs School of Music Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana