Tomás Luis de Victoria is a Spanish a cappella choral composer of the late Renaissance, a generation younger than Palestrina. His best-known works are a few motets, above all O magnum mysterium, which have populated the programs of college glee clubs for years. O magnum mysterium is of a somber cast that reinforces the notion of Victoria's Spanish-ness. But the composer spent 20 years of his life in Rome, crossing paths often with Palestrina -- whose music his own strongly resembles in its carefully smoothed surfaces. The ...
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Tomás Luis de Victoria is a Spanish a cappella choral composer of the late Renaissance, a generation younger than Palestrina. His best-known works are a few motets, above all O magnum mysterium, which have populated the programs of college glee clubs for years. O magnum mysterium is of a somber cast that reinforces the notion of Victoria's Spanish-ness. But the composer spent 20 years of his life in Rome, crossing paths often with Palestrina -- whose music his own strongly resembles in its carefully smoothed surfaces. The usual line on Victoria is that his music is somehow more "expressive" that that of his Italian counterpart, and this release by the Westminster Cathedral Choir gives us the chance to evaluate that idea by listening to pieces other than the familiar Victoria favorites. The music here consists mostly of settings of texts dealing with the Virgin Mary, so it doesn't have the dark colors that listeners reflexively associate with Spain. There is a motet, Ave Regina caelorum, a parody mass...
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