Victoria and his 'Missa pro defunctis à 6'

On this concert tour, the Tallis Scholars will perform two movements from the 1603 setting of Tomas Luis de Victoria's Missa pro defunctis (i.e., Mass of the Dead, or Requiem Mass). This six-voice setting of Victoria's will bookend the second half: first with the 'Requiem aeternam' and then with the 'Libera me'.

BIOGRAPHY

Tomás Luis de Victoria
(c.1548-1611

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) is one of the most significant Spanish composers of the Reformation. He was one of the greatest composers of church music of his day in Europe, who has been admired above all for the intensity of some of his motets and of his Offices for the Dead and for Holy Week.

Victoria’s classical education likely began at S Gil, a school for boys founded at Avila by the Jesuits in 1554. The school enjoyed a good reputation from the beginning. After his voice had broken, Victoria was sent to the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, Rome, which had been founded in 1552.

Victoria not only left far less music than either Palestrina or Lassus but also limited himself to setting Latin sacred texts. He had a habit of reissuing works that he had already published: more than half the contents of five of his 11 prints had appeared in earlier prints, and of prints subsequent to his first, only the first consists almost entirely of newly published music. Moreover, unlike Palestrina, he succeeded in publishing, usually in a luxurious format, nearly the whole of what is now recognized as his authentic oeuvre. Thus the first seven volumes of the eight-volume complete edition of 1902–13 consist wholly of music published during his lifetime.

MISSA PRO DEFUNCTIS À 6

In 1603, the Dowager Empress Maria, sister of Philip II, died. It was the duty of her chaplain and choirmaster, Victoria, to provide music for her funeral rites. In doing so, Victoria was writing for the twelve singing priests and four boys who comprised the singers of the Royal Convent, a relatively lavish set-up that enabled polyphony in many parts.

Accordingly, this Missa pro Defunctis is in six parts, with divided trebles and tenors. After the intonation Requiem aeternam, given in the treble part, the polyphony unfolds slowly and majestically around the ancient plainchant melody. The plainchant acts as an anchor, a throughline which gives the piece as a whole an awesome solidity. And to end the concert, the closing cry of 'Libera Me'. The ancient words – angry, fearful, finally hopeful – remain deeply relevant in a world which has yet to eradicate the threat of armed conflict.

• VIDEO: Victoria's Missa pro defunctis à 6. While it's nice to hear this recording, imagine how this will sound in the glorious acoustic of the Bella Concert Hall at the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts!

Francisco Guerrero

Various works on The Tallis Scholars' tour programme were composed by Spanish composer Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599). His works will be featured alongside other Renaissance greats such as Josquin des Prez, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Biography

Francisco Guerrero
(1528-1599)

Guerrero was born and died in Seville. He stands alongside Tomás Luis de Victoria and Cristóbal de Morales as one of the most celebrated Spanish composers of the Renaissance. However, unlike Victoria and Morales, who spent large portions of their careers in Italy, Guerrero spent most of his time in his native Spain.

Guerrero's music was both sacred and secular. He wrote numerous secular songs and instrumental pieces, in addition to masses, motets, and Passions. He was able to capture an astonishing variety of moods in his music, from ecstasy to despair, longing, joy, and devotional stillness; his music remained popular for hundreds of years, especially in cathedrals in Latin America.

Missa de la batalla escoutez

The Tallis Scholars have two movements from Guerrero's Missa de la batalla escoutez on its tour programme: the Gloria and the Credo.

The Missa de la batalla escoutez derives material from the song La Guerre by Clément Janequin, an extended piece that depicts the sounds of battle in an unusually dramatic way. Guerrero's mass tempers the exuberance of his source, using passages from the beginning of the song as his main material - though the rapid declamation of the original can be detected in the 'Qui tollis' section of the Gloria.

In addition to excerpts from the Missa de la batalla ecoutez, The Tallis Scholars will also perform the 'Sanctus' from the Missa l'homme armé, which we introduced in yesterday's post.

• VIDEO: The Tallis Scholars Summer Academy (2012) performs the 'Gloria' from Guerrero's Missa de la batalla escoutez, conducted by David Woodcock.

The armed man is to be feared: L'homme armé

The theme of the French secular song L'homme armé (the armed man) will be featured on the Tallis Scholars' tour programme.

L'homme armé melody (Anonymous)

In the Europe of the fifteenth century, when the anonymous French song L'homme armé first became popular, war was an omnipresent threat. Many watched aghast as the old order seemed to crumble before their eyes. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire had sacked Constantinople, putting an end to the thousand-year old Byzantine empire. Later that same year, the Hundred Years War between England and France culminated in a bloody battle at Castillon. The song obviously resonated with a people preoccupied with war: the armed man was indeed to be feared.

• TEXT (Old French): 

  L’homme armé doibt on doubter.
  On a fait partout crier
  Que chascun se viegne armer
  D’un haubregon de fer.
  L’homme armé doibt on doubter.

• TRANSLATION:

  The armed man should be feared.
  Everywhere it has been proclaimed
  That each man shall arm himself
  With a coat of iron mail.
  The armed man should be feared.

Josquin des Prez

Composers of the early Renaissance, of whom Josquin des Prez was the most renowned, frequently turned to secular songs as models for sacred compositions. Tapping into contemporary popular songs allowed them not only to pepper their music with familiar motifs, but to allude to the content of those songs, creating multiple layers of meaning. Josquin composed two masses on the L'homme armé theme. The later of the two is a polyphonic tour de force, incorporating several complex canonic and imitative techniques.

Francisco Guerrero

Francisco Guerrero, born some years after Josquin's death, also based mass settings on existing works. Guerrero's take on the L'homme armé mass is scored, unusually, for four higher voices, the tessitura giving it an intriguingly weightless feel. He evokes the song of the angels in the 'Sanctus', while in the livelier Hosanna, the triple time meter of the original tune is used, with the alto and tenor parts singing it in imitative canon.

• VIDEO: The Tallis Scholars performing the 'Agnus Dei' movement from the Josquin's Missa l'Homme Armé Sexti Toni, which is not scheduled to be performed on the tour programme.

'War and Peace'

Calgary is the last stop on The Tallis Scholars' War and Peace tour of the US and Canada. The concert programme commemorates all those who lost their lives in the First World War, 1914-1918.

The tour concert programme will contain selections from the following:

Monody: L'Homme Armé 
Josquin: 'Kyrie' from the Missa L'Homme Armé
Guerrero: 'Gloria' from the Missa Batalla
Pärt: The Woman with the Alabaster Box
Jean Mouton: Quis dabit oculis
Lobo: Versa est in luctum
Guerrero: 'Credo' from the Missa Batalla

Interval

Victoria: 'Requiem aeternam' from the Missa pro Defunctis
Guerrero: 'Sanctus' from the Missa L'Homme Armé
Palestrina: 'Agnus dei' from the Missa Papae Marcelli
Victoria: 'Libera me' from the Missa pro Defunctis

In addition, members of Luminous Voices will collaborate on John Tavener's Song for Athene for the concert in Calgary. We'll post articles over the next weeks about some of the composers and the repertoire to be performed.

Some of the composers featured on the 'War and Peace' tour programme by The Tallis Scholars. Clockwise from top left: Josquin des Prez (c.1450/55-1521), Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594), Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611), Alonso Lobo (1555-1617).

About The Tallis Scholars & Peter Phillips

Luminous Voices is very excited to copresent THE TALLIS SCHOLARS alongside the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts. The Tallis Scholars will be in Calgary for one night only, Tuesday 24 April 2018, at the Bella Concert Hall.

“…The rock stars of Renaissance vocal music.… ”

— The New York Times

“…an uncanny ability to increase emotional intensity so subtly that you don’t realise it’s happening. Then, suddenly, pow! The music’s blazing; so are you…”

— The Times

“...one of the UK’s greatest cultural exports”

— BBC Radio 3

The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director, Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and concert performances, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music throughout the world. Peter Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create, through good tuning and blend, the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serve the Renaissance repertoire, allowing every detail of the musical lines to be heard. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned.

Photo © Nick Rutter

The Tallis Scholars perform in both sacred and secular venues, usually giving around 70 concerts each year across the globe. In 2013 the group celebrated their 40th anniversary with a World Tour performing 99 events in 80 venues in 16 countries and travelling sufficient air-miles to circumnavigate the globe four times. They kicked off the year with a spectacular concert in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, including a performance of Thomas Tallis’ 40-part motet Spem in alium and the world premieres of works written specially for them by Gabriel Jackson and Eric Whitacre. Their recording of the Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas by John Taverner, was released on the exact anniversary of their first concert in 1973 and enjoyed six weeks at number one in the UK Specialist Classical Album Chart. On 21st September 2015 the group gave their 2000th concert at St John’s Smith Square in London.

Recordings by The Tallis Scholars have attracted many awards throughout the world. In 1987 their recording of Josquin's Missa La sol fa re mi and Missa Pange lingua received Gramophone magazine’s Record of the Year award, the first recording of early music ever to win this coveted award. In 1989 the French magazine Diapason gave two of its Diapason d'Or de l'Année awards for the recordings of a mass and motets by Lassus and for Josquin's two masses based on the chanson L'Homme armé. Their recording of Palestrina's Missa Assumpta est Maria and Missa Sicut lilium was awarded Gramophone's Early Music Award in 1991; they received the 1994 Early Music Award for their recording of music by Cipriano de Rore; and the same distinction again in 2005 for their disc of music by John Browne. The Tallis Scholars were nominated for a Grammy Award in 2001, 2009 and 2010. In November 2012 their recording of Josquin's Missa De beata virgine and Missa Ave maris stella received a Diapason d’Or de l’Année and in their 40th anniversary year they were welcomed into the Gramophone ‘Hall of Fame’ by public vote. In a departure for the group in Spring 2015 The Tallis Scholars released a disc of music by Arvo Pärt called Tintinnabuli which has received great praise across the board. The latest recording of Josquin masses Missa Di dadi and Missa Une mousse de Biscaye was released in October 2016.

Photo (c) Nick Rutter

Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips has made an impressive if unusual reputation for himself in dedicating his life’s work to the research and performance of Renaissance polyphony. Having won a scholarship to Oxford in 1972, Peter Phillips studied Renaissance music with David Wulstan and Denis Arnold, and gained experience in conducting small vocal ensembles, already experimenting with the rarer parts of the repertoire. He founded The Tallis Scholars in 1973, with whom he has now appeared in over 2000 concerts and made over 60 discs, encouraging interest in polyphony all over the world. As a result of his work, through concerts, recordings, magazine awards and publishing editions of the music and writing articles, Renaissance music has come to be accepted for the first time as part of the mainstream classical repertoire. The Tallis Scholars celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2013 with 99 concerts, worldwide.

“Speaking of birds, it was also wonderful to glimpse Peter Phillips’s conducting: hands opening as if setting free a dove, or closing to punctuate with dotting-the-i’s exactitude. I found myself wishing I could get a choir’s-eye view to witness Phillips’ complete – lifelong – inhabiting of this music.”

— The Observer, September 2015

Apart from The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips continues to work with other specialist ensembles. He has appeared with the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, Intrada of Moscow, Musica Reservata of Barcelona and El Leon de Oro of Oviedo, and is currently working with the BBC Singers, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and Choeur de Chambre de Namur. He gives numerous master-classes and choral workshops every year around the world – amongst other places in Rimini (Italy), Evora (Portugal) and Avila (Spain).  In 2014 he launched the London International A Cappella Choir Competition in St John's Smith Square, attracting choirs from all over the world, which successfully completed its third run in June 2017.

In addition to conducting, Peter Phillips is well-known as a writer. For 33 years he contributed a regular music column (as well as one, more briefly, on cricket) to The Spectator, recently bidding a fond farewell to the magazine in May 2016. In 1995 he became the owner and Publisher of The Musical Times, the oldest continuously published music journal in the world. His first book, English Sacred Music 1549–1649, was published by Gimell in 1991, while his second, What We Really Do, an unblinking account of what touring is like, alongside insights about the make-up and performance of polyphony, was published in 2003 and again in 2013.

In 2005 Peter Phillips was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, a decoration intended to honour individuals who have contributed to the understanding of French culture in the world. In 2008 Peter was appointed a Reed Rubin Director of Music at Merton College, Oxford, where the new choral foundation he helped to establish began singing services shortly after. His involvement included many tours recordings and broadcasts a particular highlight being their first live broadcast on BBC Radio Three’s Choral Evensong in October 2011. Peter is now a patron of the choir and a Bodley Fellow of the college.