Notas al Programa
‘With such obsequies and with such a song, O Victoria! Thou mournest at the pious funerals of our common Lady, which seem like those of Thracian Orpheus at the funeral of Eurydice, or the sad complaints which with mournful voice the expiring swan or the bird Philomena intones.
Live long happy, gather laurels to laurels, and be another Timotheus in the musical art of singing, being a swan, soaring with febrile wings to the stars, and filling with the reality of events the augury of your name’ - Martin Pescennius Hasdale
Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum was composed in memory of the Empress Maria of Austria and Portugal, for whom Victoria worked as chaplain of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid. It is suspected that this is the last of the genius's published works, though not his last composition.
With these facts in mind, we may well think that this is just another Requiem Mass, but the truth is that Victoria's corpus will never be anywhere near the terrestrial plane inhabited by the rest of us mortals. This was already foreshadowed in the poem we present at the beginning, dedicated to him by his colleague Martin Pescennius. Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum includes many of the most transcendental and beautiful moments of the music of the ‘Abulensis’ and he even considered it his swan song.
The great presence of plainchant in this work is striking. Throughout it, it alternates in its original form, monodic and free-rhythmic, to introduce the new sections, but it is also used as cantus firmus on which Victoria builds new polyphony.
In this mass for the dead, the use of rhetoric to highlight the meaning of the text is masterly. Without resorting to great ornamentation or artifice, the composer from Avila achieves music that sounds fluid and austere, but which leaves the listener absolutely moved.
‘My harp has become mourning and my organ the voice of those who mourn. Forgive me, Lord, for my days are nothing’. So reads the text of the funeral lament Versa est in luctum which gives the title to this concert as we will hear two proposals for it.
In the Officium Defunctorum by Tomás Luis de Victoria, the Versa est in luctum builds the way to the heart of the mass, it is one of its most expressive sections because of the unexpected harmonic turns and the play of voices with which it perfectly reflects the bitterness of the verses. A modest and sincere lament in which many see how Victoria surrenders to the evidence that we are all approaching our final hour.
For his part, Alonso Lobo set his Versa est in luctum to music to be performed at the funeral of Philip II, brother of Mary of Austria. Lobo's style in this setting is perhaps somewhat more modern than Victoria's austere approach.
He also does a marvellous rhetorical job, adding to this a wider vocal range and a flowing discourse that gives rise to a luminously beautiful lament.
Both motets are a fantastic sample of the personal style of their authors and enjoy an exceptional quality and expressive intensity. Pure aesthetic enjoyment to let ourselves be carried away by this swan song that soars with ‘fébeas wings’.
Violeta Rubio