Tomas L. de Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories

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. It 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.

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 symbolised 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 unauthorised 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. The pared-down musical idiom, unfamiliar to composers before the late 16th century, was lost again during the Baroque period. It has become once again a goal for composers during the 20th 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.

Peter Philips
(1990)

Tomás Luis de Victoria

Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Ávila, around 1548 and died in Madrid, Augst 27, 1611. He was a choirboy at Ávila Cathedral, and when his voice broke was sent (c.1565) to the Jesuit Collegio Germanico in Rome as a convittore (non-German paying student). During this period he may have made contact with Palestrina, who was maestro di cappella at the Seminario Romano nearby. In 1569 Victoria became cantor and organist at the Aragonese church of S. Maria di Monserrato in Rome (retaining these posts until 1575). From 1571 he also taught at the Collegio Germanico, where he was moderator musicae from 1575 until 1577 or 1578, and in addition he held the post of maestro di cappella at the Seminario Romano. Besides these positions, he provided music for occasional services at the other Spanish church in Rome, S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, and for the associated Archconfraternity of the Resurrection. However, much of Victoria's professional activity in Rome was as a priest rather than principally as a musician: ordained priest in 1575, and supported by income from benefices in Spain, he was a chaplain at S. Gerolamo della Carità in 1578, a position he held until 1585; he also undertook charitable work for the Archconfraternity of the Resurrection.

Victoria's Roman years were prolific ones for the publication of his music. In 1572 he published his first volume, a collection of motets including many of his best-known works. Between 1576 and 1585 there appeared seven more printed collections of his sacred music, containing masses, hymns, Magnificat settings, music for Holy Week (including settings of the Passion, Lamentations, and responsories), psalms, and motets. He dedicated his second book of masses (1583) to Philip II of Spain, and indicated in the preface that he now wished to return to his native country. Philip recalled him (Victoria left Rome at some time between 1585 and 1587) and made him chaplain to his sister, the Dowager Empress Maria, at the Convento de las Descalzas Reales de S. Clara in Madrid. Victoria served her from at least 1587 until her death in 1603, and was also maestro de capilla at the convent, thereafter remaining as organist until his own death eight years later. In 1592 he again visited Rome, where he published another book of masses, and he probably visited the city in 1593–4 too. In 1600 a magnificent collection of his masses, Magnificat settings, motets, and psalms was issued in Madrid. Devoted mainly to polychoral works, it includes three pieces which were among his most popular masses: the Missa pro victoria (a battle mass based on Janequin's chanson La Bataille), and the Missa ‘Ave regina coelorum’ and Missa ‘Alma Redemptoris mater’ (based on his own antiphons). An organist's part was provided, allowing some of the vocal parts to be accompanied or replaced by organ. Victoria's last publication was the Officium defunctorum (1605), written, he states, for the exequies of the dowager empress in 1603, and including his famous six-voice music for the Requiem Mass.

Victoria was the greatest Spanish composer of the Renaissance, and also one of the finest European composers of the time; his total output is, however, much smaller than those of, for example, Palestrina and Lassus. Victoria's modern reputation long rested mainly on a handful of motets (such as O magnum mysterium, O quam gloriosum, O vos omnes, and Vere languores), on the Tenebrae responsories, and on the Officium defunctorum. Much less attention was paid, for example, to his polychoral works (including masses, psalms, antiphons, and sequences), some of which stand apart from the better-known pieces through such aspects as their greater rhythmic animation. Of Victoria's 20 masses, 15 are parody works, most of them based on his own pieces, while the others draw on works by Morales, Guerrero, Palestrina, and Janequin. A notable characteristic of the masses published from 1592 onwards is their brevity (on which Victoria himself remarked regarding the 1592 collection). Likewise frequently concise, and with a highly concentrated expressivity of text-setting, are such works as the Lamentations and responsories for Holy Week. Victoria's powers of text-expression when writing in a simple style are well demonstrated also by the Matins responsory Taedet animam meam from the Officium defunctorum, and the motet Versa est in luctum from the same publication shows an extraordinarily powerful use of chromatic and harmonic colouring. Harmonic sequence is sometimes prominent in Victoria's writing, as in the eight-voice Salve regina. There are also abundant examples of word-painting in his motets, such as Cum beatus Ignatius, with its vivid imagery depicting the wild beasts tearing the martyr to piece

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born probably in Palestrina around 1525 and died in Rome February 2, 1594.

Life and works

Palestrina was the eldest of four children of reasonably well-off parents, and went at an early age to S. Maria Maggiore in Rome as a choirboy, remaining after his voice broke (tradition has it that he became a tenor). In 1544 he was organist and singing teacher at the cathedral in Palestrina, a small town in the Sabine hills about 25 miles from Rome. He married Lucrezia Gori in 1547, and they had two sons. Four years later the Bishop of Palestrina, Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte, was elected Pope Julius III, and he took the composer with him to be director of the Cappella Giulia.

Palestrina wrote the Missa ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’ in honour of his patron, and it was published in his first book of 1554 with a dedication to Julius; he was rewarded the following year with a place in the papal choir at the Sistine Chapel, despite the opposition of its members, who claimed the prerogative to appoint their own colleagues. This work (and others published in the same volume) reveals Palestrina's mastery of the Netherlands polyphonic style. Soon after this he published some other volumes, including one of competent but somewhat uninteresting madrigals to Petrarch's verse. In spite of their lack of sensuality he was to regret having set secular texts in later years.

Although Palestrina was thus gaining a substantial reputation, the next few months were difficult. Pope Julius died in 1555; Pope Marcellus II was elected, but died within three weeks; and Pope Paul IV, scandalized to find married men in his choir, turned Palestrina out, but gave him a pension. The following month Palestrina was made maestro di cappella at St John Lateran, where he found the musical arrangements in some disarray, even though Lassus had been in charge until the previous year. He built up the choir, but in 1560 resigned his post after a quarrel with the authorities about the allowance given him for the choirboys. He seems to have been without employment for some months, but in March 1561 returned as maestro to the other great Roman basilica, S. Maria Maggiore, where he had been a choirboy.

These years saw Palestrina's rise to fame, and also a change in style (in accordance with the requirements of the Council of Trent) towards a simpler way of writing that enabled the words to be clearly heard. The story that his Missa Papae Marcelli prevented the abolition of composed church music in favour of a return to plainchant is untrue, although it was being told in the early 17th century; the mass was probably written to satisfy Pope Marcellus II's demand that music for Holy Week should be suitably restrained and the text properly understood. This aspect of Palestrina's style is also exemplified by his Missa brevis, with its homophonic texture, clear presentation of the words, and continual variety of choral sound.

Palestrina remained at S. Maria Maggiore for about six years, and then accepted an offer to direct the music of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este at the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. This position was well paid and probably had a less demanding daily routine; it also had the advantage of summers at Tivoli, a delightfully cool place in the hills. It may have been there that Palestrina came into contact with more modern ideas, which emanated from the Este rulers of Ferrara in northern Italy; his motets over the next 20 years show awareness of the vigorous rhythms and the word-painting of the madrigal composers, as well as of the grand manner of polychoral music developing in both Rome and Venice. He refused a post at the imperial court in Vienna, and another to take charge of the new Gonzaga chapel dedicated to S. Barbara in Mantua (although he did write a series of masses for use there). In 1571 Animuccia died, and Palestrina succeeded him as choirmaster at the Cappella Giulia; he remained there for the rest of his life.

In 1567 and 1570 his second and third books of masses were printed in Rome, but the next ten years were not happy ones, a series of epidemics carrying off two sons, two brothers, and, in 1580, his wife; he published less, and his second and third books of motets (1572, 1575) may have been retrospective. Immediately after his wife's death he took minor orders as a step towards entering the priesthood, and was awarded a benefice. However, in February 1581 he suddenly married again. His second wife was a wealthy widow who had inherited her late husband's companies dealing in leather and fur, and Palestrina took to running the business with remarkable aptitude. His new life is reflected in both the number and the nature of his works. The most remarkable is the cycle of settings of the Song of Songs (1584), where the imagery is similar enough to that of contemporary love poetry to accommodate a madrigalian word-painting and a less strict style of writing. In view of this it is ironic that in the preface he apologizes for the sins of his youth, when he wrote of human rather than divine love. Some of the masses from these years are composed in a splendid Counter-Reformation manner; among them is the fine Assumpta est Maria, based on his own motet, where a rich effect is gained from a six-part choir with voices kept constantly in their upper registers. He also published some spiritual madrigals in 1581, and some secular ones in 1586.

Towards the end of his life an assistant did most of the routine work at the Cappella Giulia, although Palestrina continued to write for and attend the great festivals at St Peter's. In 1592 the new pope, Clement VIII, increased the pension granted to Palestrina years before on his dismissal from the papal choir, and he also received a kind of musician's Festschrift in the form of a book of Vesper psalms contributed by several leading Italian composers (including Asola, Croce, and Gastoldi) and dedicated to him. He died both prosperous and honoured, and was buried in St Peter's (the chapel has since been pulled down and the present whereabouts of his remains are unknown).

Influence and reputation

Palestrina was one of the most influential composers of his day. For a time he taught at one of the principal seminaries, the Seminario Romano, and his pupils included the Anerio brothers, Soriano, and possibly Victoria. In 1577 Palestrina and a colleague were directed by Pope Gregory XIII to revise the plainchant of the Roman Gradual and Antiphoner (see Council of Trent), and his music is imbued with the traditional melodic style of the Catholic Church, a fact that undoubtedly endeared him to its ministers. But given the upheavals in church music in this period, and the need for a new repertory to be produced quickly conforming to the textual and musical requirements of the Council of Trent, Palestrina's chief advantage was being in the right place at the right time. The incentive for other composers to continue in his ways was strong, and the Roman school continued to adopt his style long after new developments should have made it seem old-fashioned.

His music has been considered more genuinely ‘religious’ than any written in a more modern idiom, probably because secular—especially operatic—idioms have dominated music (including that for the church) since 1600. Thus a Neapolitan composer such as Francesco Durante could write a Missa in Palestrina in the 18th century without feeling that a contemporary idiom would be preferable for the purpose; a major theorist of that century, Fux, wrote the Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) in an attempt to codify the ‘Palestrina style’; and the Cecilian Movement in 19th-century Germany romanticized his works and made them appear the epitome of church music.

In the 20th century Palestrina's style was subjected to a closer scrutiny than that of any other composer (with the possible exception of Bach), and students of music are still expected to be able to write imitations of it, without much understanding of what the ‘Palestrina style’ really means. For there is no definitive set of rules which go to make up his style, but, as with all great composers, rather a series of styles. In fact, Palestrina is at his best when he is at his most difficult to codify—in the grand works of his later years, where contrapuntal skill is less important than his ear for gorgeous sound.

Denis Arnold/Tim Carter

Coming soon on Atrium Musicologicum...

There have been some articles on works by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina plublished in the Atrium. There are more in a final phase of edition and ready to be published. There are also more articles on Tomas Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero and on important and known Medieval Manuscripts. Some biographies are entering in pre-publishing phase.

See you soon!

Palestrina's 'Papae Marcelli' and 'Aeterna Christi Munera' Masses

Palestrina’s 104 masses and 177 motets make him the most prolific and consistent composer of the Counter-Reformation, and yet until this century his reputation has remained firm almost exclusively because of one Mass, the Missa Papae Marcelli, and the legends surrounding iy. Published in 1567, the Mass was dedicated to Pope Marcellus II, who reigned for a mere three weeks in 1555, and seems in part to have been a contribution to the debate over the function of polyphony in the changing Roman Catholic liturgy. Extremist at the Council of Trent wanted polyphony, with its sometimes scant regard for textuaç clarity, banned in favour of plainsong, but the final injuctions of the Council warned only against everything “impure or lascivious” in the music. Palestrina’s 19th-century biographer Baini attributed the reason for this to his hero’s Missa Papae Marcelli, with its settings of the Gloria and Credo which ar chordal and declamatory rather than thickly woven.

It has been suggested that the Missa Papae Marcelli was subversive of the Council’s dictates in a subtler way. It was a long-established practice to base Masses on anything from sacred motets to bawdy chansons. Reformers were keen that worshippers’ ears should no longer be tickled by quotations from secular song, and yet the themes of the Missa Papae Marcelli bear a dangerous resemblance to that most popular of medieval songs, L’homme armé. If this was the snub to authority some way it was, it is just another tribute to Palestrina’s genius in unifying the movements of a Mass through continuous and methodical development of his initial theme.

There is no such doubt about the basis of Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi Munera, which takes material from the plainsong hymn of the same name. Although a later work – it was published in 1590 – its four-part scoring and relatively straightforward exposition of the hymn-tune demonstrates Palestrina in more conservative spirit. Here are the most representative aspects of his style – the smooth, eminently singable lines, the unchallenging harmonies and his resourcefulness with smaller textures, such as in the near-perfect three-part Benedictus. Most of all, Palestrina’s settings embody the archaic, dogmatic completeness of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, making him a supreme musical theologian.

Edward Wickham

On the 423th Birth Anniversary of Heinrich Schütz

Was born in Köstritz [now Bad Köstritz], nr Gera, Oct. 1585; died in Dresden, 6 Nov. 1672)

Was a German composer. The leading figure in 17th-century German music, he was productive in nearly every branch of composition except independent instrumental music. His extant secular music is not unimportant, but it is on his immense output of sacred vocal works that his reputation as the first German composer of truly international stature is based. Together with Michael Praetorius and with his immediate contemporaries, Schein and Scheidt, he played a crucial role in introducing into his native country the new Italian styles of the period, thus providing much of the initial impetus for the musical Baroque in Germany.

In 1598, when Schütz was barely 13, the family inn at Weissenfels was visited by the Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel who, greatly attracted by the boy's singing, engaged him as a chorister in his chapel and provided for his education at the Gymnasium in Kassel. Later, in 1609, when Schütz was pursuing legal studies at the University of Marburg, a further intervention by the landgrave enabled him to undertake a markedly formative period of study with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice. On his return home in 1613 he resumed his former place at Kassel and was appointed second organist with a modest salary. Some time later, however, on a visit with his patron to Dresden, his musical abilities were brought to the attention of Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony who, after lengthy wrangles with the landgrave, gained his services permanently, eventually appointing him principal Kapellmeister to his royal chapel, a post he was to occupy for the rest of his career.

In 1619 Schütz married Magdalena Wildeck, but only six years later she died, leaving the composer with two daughters, whom he entrusted to the care of their maternal grandmother. Shortly afterwards he returned to Venice, where he learnt, possibly from Monteverdi in person, the new techniques of composition which had developed there since his previous visit. On his return he brought with him Francesco Castelli, a Mantuan violinist with whose skills he hoped to revitalize the work of the Dresden chapel; but his plans, like those of many German musicians of the time, were constantly foiled by the effects of the Thirty Years War. In 1633 and 1642 Schütz paid two extended visits to Copenhagen to provide the music (now lost) for grand theatrical events there, mounted in connection with two royal weddings. During his last years, he returned to Weissenfels in semi-retirement; but finally he moved again to Dresden, where he died on 6 November 1672 and was entombed with much honour in the entrance porch of the Frauenkirche.

Most of Schütz's work is contained in 13 printed collections, published during his lifetime and mainly under his personal supervision. The earliest is a volume of 19 Italian madrigals, composed in 1611 on completion of his studies in Venice with Gabrieli. The daring harmonic style and dramatic vocal writing of these settings vividly recall the techniques of Monteverdi in his third and fourth books of madrigals. The remaining collections are devoted to sacred music and provide examples of all the principal forms of the period. Most of the texts are drawn from the Lutheran Bible; Latin, though not uncommon, is used exclusively in only two major collections, the Cantiones sacrae (1625) and the first volume of Symphoniae sacrae (1629). Gabrieli's influence is clearly evident in the Psalmen Davids (1619), a set of 26 polychoral settings of German psalm texts, involving voices and instruments in the grand Venetian manner. Only in one later collection were such lavish forces used, the third volume of Symphoniae sacrae (1650), in which dramatic vocal and instrumental scoring is used to enhance such famous biblical accounts as the parable of the tribute money and the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus.

Choral polyphony (with largely optional continuo) is explored in the Cantiones sacrae (1625), in which Latin texts, many of a mystical character, are given deeply expressionist settings. A parallel volume, the Geistliche Chor-music of 1648, contains 29 German motets (for five, six, and seven voices), in which Schütz strikingly demonstrates his mastery of the ancient contrapuntal techniques absorbed into the German musical mainstream through the pupils of Lassus. Much of the intensely German, and particularly Lutheran, character of these settings results from the intimate relationship between the musical style and the rhythms, cadences, and inflections of the German language. In his preface Schütz stresses the need for young German composers to acquire a sound basis in pure vocal counterpoint before proceeding to more modern, continuo-based styles.

Particular interest attaches to the Musikalische Exequien, the largest of his funerary works, which was composed in 1636 for the obsequies of Prince Heinrich Posthumus of Reuss. The work falls into three sections: an elaborate German burial Mass for solo voices and chorus, based on scriptural and chorale texts chosen by the prince for inscription on his coffin; a double-chorus motet on verses from Psalm 73, the text chosen for the funeral oration; and a vivid juxtaposition of the German Nunc dimittis, sung by a first chorus ‘near the organ’, and ‘Blessed are the dead’ and other biblical texts sung by a three-voice second choir ‘in the distance’, symbolizing ‘angels accompanying the soul of the departed’. Monodies and small concertato works are represented by two sets of Kleine geistliche Konzerte (1636, 1639) and by the first two volumes of Symphoniae sacrae (1629, 1647). In their modest performance requirements, the sacred concertos may reflect economies imposed at Dresden by the war. But it is likely also that Schütz was inspired to explore this miniature genre by the strong progress it had made elsewhere in Europe since the time of Viadana. The Symphoniae sacrae, as their title suggests, display richer instrumental resources and a greater diversity of scoring. In the second set Schütz paid his most significant homage to Monteverdi, partly by including a tribute to him in the preface, partly by adopting the stile concitato, and, most strikingly, by basing one of his settings (Es steh Gott auf swv356) on two of the Italian's madrigals.

Only one of Schütz's ‘historiae’ (portrayals in music of dramatic biblical accounts) was published complete in his lifetime, the Resurrection History (1623), a beautiful setting of an Easter text compiled from all four gospels. The Christmas History (1664), of all his works the most overtly popular in style, was at first published incomplete, with only the role of the Evangelist printed; in common with the Seven Last Words from the Cross (c.1645) and the St Matthew, St Luke, and St John Passions (c.1664–6), it has been only gradually restored in modern times from manuscript sources. In these last works, and others such as his liturgical Zwölff geistliche Gesänge (1657) and his swansong, the immense setting of Psalm 119 for double chorus (1671), the changes that had taken place in the composer's musical language during his long career are clearly evident. The daring harmonic enterprise and bold expressionism of his earlier years have yielded place to a new moderation, a new leaning towards objectivity, a new philosophical calm, revealing modes of thought comparable to those of Bach and Beethoven in their final creative periods.

Basil Smallman