Tomás Luis de Victoria

Tomás Luis de Victoria (sometimes spelled 'da Vittoria') (1548 – August 20, 1611) was a Spanish composer of the late Renaissance. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine Spain () or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España is a country located mostly in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600 He was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, and one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, along with Palestrina and Orlando de Lassus. The Counter-Reformation (also Catholic Reformation denotes the period of Catholic revival from the pontificate of Pope Pius IV in 1560 to the close of the Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 - 2 February 1594 was an Italian Composer of the Renaissance. Orlande de Lassus (also Orlandus Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Roland de Lassus, or Roland Delattre) (1532 (possibly 1530 &ndash June

Overview

Victoria was born in Ávila, likely studying with Escobedo at Segovia early in his life. This article is about the Spanish city For other uses see Avila Ávila de los Caballeros ( Latin: Abila and Óbila Bartolomé de Escobedo (c 1500 &ndash August 11, 1563) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of the province of Segovia in Castile-Leon. He is known to have gone to Rome around 1564, where he joined the monastery founded by St. Ignatius Loyola as part of the fight against Lutheranism. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Saint Ignatius redirects here for other Saints see Ignatius. Ignatius of Loyola, also known as Íñigo Oñaz López de Loyola Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the teachings of the sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther He may have studied with Palestrina around this time, though the evidence is circumstantial; certainly he was influenced by the Italian's style. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (between 3 February 1525 and 2 February 1526 - 2 February 1594 was an Italian Composer of the Renaissance. In 1575 he was ordained as a priest, after a period of service at the monastery as maestro di cappella. He did not stay in Italy, however; in 1586 he returned to Spain, this time in the service of the Dowager Empress Maria, who was entering the convent of Descalzas Reales in Madrid. Maria of Spain ( Madrid, June 21, 1528 - Villa Monte February 26, 1603) was the first daughter of Charles V and Madrid (pronounced in English in Spanish and colloquially in Spain) is the Capital and largest city of Spain. Victoria remained at the convent until the end of his life, performing several roles—priest, composer, director of the choir, and organist.

Victoria is the most significant composer of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and one of the best-regarded composers of sacred music in the late Renaissance, a genre to which he devoted himself exclusively. The Counter-Reformation (also Catholic Reformation denotes the period of Catholic revival from the pontificate of Pope Pius IV in 1560 to the close of the His works have undergone a revival in the 20th century, with numerous recent recordings. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on Many commentators hear in his music a mystical intensity and direct emotional appeal, qualities considered by some to be lacking in the arguably more rhythmically and harmonically placid music of Palestrina.

Stylistically his music shuns the elaborate counterpoint of many of his contemporaries, preferring simple line and homophonic textures, yet seeking rhythmic variety and sometimes including intense and surprising contrasts. In Music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and Rhythm, and interdependent in Harmony In Music, homophony (hoʊˈmɒfəni from Greek "homófonos" where ομοιο = the same and φωνή = a sound tone is a texture in which two or more His melodic writing and use of dissonance is more free than that of Palestrina; occasionally he uses intervals which are prohibited in the strict application of 16th century counterpoint, such as ascending major sixths, or even occasional diminished fourths (for example, a melodic diminished fourth occurs in a passage representing grief in his motet Sancta Maria, succurre). In Music theory, the term interval describes the relationship between the pitches of two Notes Intervals may be described as vertical In Western music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions Victoria sometimes uses dramatic word-painting, of a kind usually found only in madrigals. Word painting (also known as tone painting or text painting) is the musical technique of having the music mimic the literal meaning of a song A madrigal is a type of Secular vocal music composition written during the Renaissance and early Baroque eras Some of his sacred music uses instruments (a practice which is not uncommon in Spanish sacred music of the 16th century), and he also wrote polychoral works for more than one spatially separated group of singers, in the style of the composers of the Venetian school who were working at St. Mark's in Venice. This article is about the musical term See Antiphon (person the orator of ancient Greece In music history the Venetian School is a term used to describe the Composers working in Venice from about 1550 to around 1610; it also describes Saint Mark's Basilica ( Italian: Basilica di San Marco a Venezia) the Cathedral of Venice, is the most famous of

Published in 1605 under the title Officium Defunctorum, sex vocibus, in obitu et obsequiis sacrae imperatricis, one of his finest, most beautiful, and most refined works is the great Requiem Mass he wrote in 1603 for the funeral of Empress Maria, who had been his employer since 1586, and who was the sister of Philip II and wife of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. Officium Defunctorum is a musical setting of the Office of the Dead composed by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria Philip II (Felipe II de España Filipe I ( May 21, 1527 &ndash September 13 1598) was King of Spain from 1556 until 1598 Maximilian II ( July 31, 1527 &ndash October 12, 1576) was king of Bohemia from 1562 king of Hungary and Croatia Also notable is the serene emotion of every one of the 37 pieces that form his Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae of 1585, a collection of motets and lamentations linked to the Holy Week Catholic celebrations. Holy Week ( Latin: Hebdomada Sancta or Maior Hebdomada, "Greater Week" in Christianity is the last week before Easter.

Recordings

The following are recordings of music by Tomás Luis de Victoria. As in most or all of his music, the texts are in Latin and drawn from the Roman Catholic liturgy.

References and further reading

• Gustave Reese, Music in the Renaissance. Gustave Reese ( November 29 1899, New York City – – September 7 1977, Berkeley California) was an American New York, W. W. Norton & Co. , 1954. ISBN 0393095304
• The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 002872416X

External links

• Victoria's Spanish-English webpage (contains: facsimiles, biography, chronology, the opera omnia, scores, mp3s, apocryphal pieces, interpretation, books, editions, disks, texts, top-10, trivia, links, acknowledgements and other scores)
• Free scores by Tomás Luis de Victoria in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Tomás Luis de Victoria free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Listen to a free recording of a songs from Umeå Akademiska Kör. The Werner Icking Music Archive, often abbreviated WIMA, is a web archive of Public domain Sheet music. The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL is a Sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal Music in the Public domain.
• Conservatorio Profesional de Música Tomás Luis de Victoria de Ávila.
• Motets O Magnum Mysterium and O Vos Omnes as interactive hypermedia at the BinAural Collaborative Hypertext