Second Vespers of the Feast of the Annunciation

Tomás Luis de Victoria, the greatest composer of the Spanish sixteenth-century ‘golden age’ of polyphonic music, was born in Avila in 1548 and in c.1558 became a choirboy at Avila Cathedral, where he received his earliest musical training. When his voice broke, he was sent to the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, at which he was enrolled as a student in 1565. He spent the next two decades in Rome occupying a number of posts, of which the most important were at the Aragonese church of S. Maria di Monserrato, the Castilian S. Gianomo degli Spagnoli and the Jesuit-run Collegium Germanicum, where he succeeded Palestrina as maestro di cappella in 1571, with its associated church of S. Apollinare. In 1575 he took holy orders and three years later he was admitted to a chaplaincy at S. Girolamo della Carita. He left Italy c.1587 and took up an appointment as chaplain to the dowager Empress Maria at the Royal Convent for Barefoot Clarist Nuns, at Madrid, where he acted as maestro to the choir of priests and boys that was attached to the convent. This recording presents a collection of music by Victoria for use at the Second Vespers of the Feast of the Annunciation. Vespers is the Evening Office of the western Catholic Church. In the Tridentine Rite, the reformed and unified basis of worship established following the deliberations of the

Council of Trent from 1545-63, its basic structure consisted of five psalms (four in the Monastic Use) with their respective antiphons, said or sung before and after the Psalms; a short lesson (the Capitulum); a hymn; a Canticle (the Magnificat), with its own antiphon; a collect; concluding versicles; and additional devotions, which often included a votive antiphon in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There were variations and additions; some according to the season, some according to the rank of the Feast, and some – despite all the efforts to achieve a universal unified liturgical structure –according to local custom. Vespers originally comprised the recitation and chanting of the prescribed texts. As the sixteenth century progressed, there was an increasing trend toward the use of polyphony based on these texts and the inclusion of other musical material, including instrumental music.

There is no direct evidence that the continuous use of polyphony on this scale in Vespers was practised in late sixteenth-century Rome, or that the early seventeenth-century Venetian practice of replacing antiphons with motets on similar texts was followed in Rome in Victoria’s time. Victoria did not write any throughcomposed collection of music specifically for use at Marian Vespers, comparable to the collection that Monteverdi published in 1610, but it is remarkable that a high proportion of published within a few years of each other, it would be tempting to suggest that they were written or used for a festal celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation in Rome in the early 1580s; but this would be conjectural and, probably, anachronistic. Nonetheless, I thought it rewarding to put together the present collection, drawing attention to these fine works and illustrating the possible order of a festal monastic service making fullest use of this music. This collection is thus not intended as an ‘authentic’ reconstruction, but more as a musical offering demonstrating how this wonderful body of music could be performed employing some of the liturgical practices that developed in the following generation. It includes the four appropriate vesper psalms; the eight-part Ave Maria (in substitution for the repetition of the antiphon to the Laudate pueri ); the four-part motet Ne timeas Maria (in place of the repetition of the antiphon to the Laetatus sum); the eight-part Magnificat *; and finally, as part of the concluding devotions after the end of the service proper, the eight-part Regina coeli (a Marian antiphon appropriate for 25 March when Easter is very early) and the eight-part Litany of Loreto.

Victoria’s sacred output is for Marian use. This project examines some of the Marian music Victoria wrote, with consideration to the liturgical context in which it might have been used.

The four psalm settings featured in this recording are all vesper psalms – Dixit Dominus; Laudate pueri; Nisi Dominus – and were first published in Rome (1581) by Francisco Zanetti. The remaining setting, Laetatus sum, was published shortly afterwards by Alessandro Gardane in Rome (1583). They are all specified for feasts of the Virgin Mary. The double-choir setting of the Ave Maria, the so-called ‘Angelic Salutation’ based on the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin at the Annunciation, is particularly finely written. A setting, in the Zanetti publication of 1581, of the hymn Ave maris stella is specified for Marian feasts throughout the year, particularly for the Feast of the Annunciation. In addition, the 1583 publication included Victoria’s only setting of a litany, the Litany of Loreto, which has a strong association with the Annunciation. The Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which contains a series of invocations to the Virgin, is thought to have been derived from a fifth-century Greek hymn – the akathistos – composed originally for the Feast of the Annunciation.

Given the existence of this group of largescale and impressive compositions first

* Strictly speaking, the Magnificat for this feast should be on the 7th tone – Victoria published two such Magnificats for four voices in 1581 – but, in order to continue the run of fine double-choir music in this collection, the Magnificat primi toni of 1600 has been used instead.