ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

London's Westminster Cathedral is the leading Catholic Church in England. The Benedictine monks who built and owned Westminster Abbey reclaimed part of the marsh around Westminster. Over the centuries, the land has had several uses. The monks operated a market and a fairgrounds there. After the Protestant Reformation in England, the land was used as a maze, a pleasure garden, and as a bull-baiting ring.

Westminster Abbey (by that time property of the Church of England) sold the land for use as a prison. When the prison was retired approaching the turn of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church acquired the land in 1884 for a new major Cathedral Church. It is actually one of the newest major churches in London. Its design, by John Francis Bently, is based on early Christian Byzantine architecture, with a strikingly tall bell tower. Its foundation stone was laid in 1895, and the Cathedral was consecrated in 1910. Its interior is not yet completed.

From the initial planning of the Cathedral by Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, music was given great weight in the church's activities. Cardinal Vaughan had been inspired by the Solesmes Abbey's revival of Gregorian Chant and by the accomplishments of the Anglican Church's choral tradition. Music is the largest single item in the Cathedral's budget. It operates a full-time choral school for its choristers. Westminster Cathedral is the only church in the world that celebrates a fully sung Mass every day.

The Westminster Cathedral Choir, among a few others, can credibly be called the best choir in Europe. Sir Richard Terry, the church's first Master of Music, was a devoted scholar of pre-Baroque polyphonic church music and revived choral masterpieces of Tudor-era English composers and their contemporaries on the Continent. He also vigorously championed new composition. Over the years composers of the stature of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lennoc Berkeley, Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, William Mathias, and David Sanger have composed for the Cathedral Choir

It made one of the earliest British choral recordings, an acoustic disc cut in 1908. In the compact disc age, it has made a highly acclaimed series of recordings for the British label Hyperion, ranging in repertory from Renaissance polyphony to music of Britten, Poulenc, Langlais, and Stravinsky. It sings concerts and tours as its church service schedule permits, and frequently broadcasts. It joined the Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral (the largest Anglican Church) in 1992 to inaugurate that church's newly-restored organ. ~ Joseph Stevenson

It can be difficult to separate myth from reality in the life of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. He was one of the most highly acclaimed musicians of the 16th century, but was not the "Savior of Church Music." He did write a tremendous number of musical works, refining the very musical style of his time. He did not single-handedly transmit the way to write spiritual music, but apparently he was a diligent and reasonably pious family man, hard-nosed in his business dealings and savvy in manipulating professional contacts. He was not a priest, though he once considered Holy Orders after losing a wife and two sons to the plague. The balance and elegant moderation of his music may derive more from conservative melodic and harmonic style than from divine mediation. But centuries after his death, Palestrina's music is still actively serving devotional needs across the world, and echoes of his first biographer's awe still cling to his name. Palestrina's life is generally well documented: He spent all of his career around Rome, working in churches with good archival records. His exact birth date remains unknown, but his age at death is given in a famous eulogy. Whether he was born in Rome or in the provincial town of Palestrina, "Gianetto" received his first musical training in Rome as choir boy at Santa Maria Maggiore by 1537. In 1544, he accepted a post as organist for the Cathedral of Palestrina. While there, he married Lucrezia Gori and met the future Pope Julius III (whom Palestrina honored with the dedication of his First Book of Masses). He returned to Rome in 1551, serving as Master of the Boys for the Vatican's Capella Giulia and then, at Pope Julius' instigation, singing in the Sistine Chapel. Fired by a later pope because of his marital status, he quickly became choirmaster for Saint John Lateran (a job previously held by Lasso). The 1560s were a time of great professional development for Palestrina: He served the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Seminario Romano and the wealthy Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, published four more books of music, and turned down an offer to become chapelmaster for the Holy Roman Emperor. His last professional appointment was a long tenure (1571-1594) as master of the Capella Giulia in St. Peter's. In addition, he performed freelance work for at least 12 other Roman churches and institutions, managed his second wife's fur business, and invested in Roman real estate. Palestrina marketed his immense compositional output in nearly 30 published collections during his lifetime; many more of his roughly 700 works survive in manuscripts. He is best known for the 104 masses, though he composed in every other liturgical genre of his day, as well as nearly 100 madrigals. The polished reserve of his style helped fuel the myth first published in 1607 that his Pope Marcellus Mass was written to save polyphony from banishment in the church; the German theorist Fux enthroned Palestrina's style for centuries to come in his 1725 Gradus ad parnassum. ~ Timothy Dickey

James O'Donnell is among the leading British organists of his generation. While some might further define him as a church organist and choir director -- roles he has fulfilled with the utmost commitment -- he has been active on the concert stage both as an organist and conductor. His choice of repertory has been broad, taking in the music of Renaissance-era icons like Palestrina and Josquin Desprez, as well as that of 20th century masters like Stravinsky and Poulenc. O'Donnell has made more than 40 recordings for the Hyperion label.

O'Donnell was born in Scotland on August 15, 1961. While in his teens, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. Later he was chosen as an organ scholar at Cambridge University (Jesus College), where he would go on to win several prizes and honors for organ performance. His teachers there were Nicholas Kynaston, Peter Hurford, and David Sanger. Shortly after his 1982 graduation, O'Donnell began his long relationship with Westminster Cathedral, serving there initially as assistant master of music. His first recordings as organist (with the choir) soon appeared, as Hyperion issued Victoria's Missa Vidi Speciosam (1984) and a recording of works by Francisco Guerrero and other Spanish composers entitled Treasures of the Spanish Renaissance (1985).

In 1988, O'Donnell assumed the post of master of music at Westminster Cathedral, thus taking control of the renowned choir. He frequently led them in concerts and concert broadcasts over both television and radio. He also made numerous acclaimed recordings with the choir, including Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms (1990) and Duruflè's Requiem (1994). From 1997 until 2004, O'Donnell served as a professor of organ at the Royal Academy of Music, remaining as a visiting professor after his tenure. In 2000, he accepted a post at Westminster Abbey as director of daily choral services and music at state occasions. The post also included leadership of the Abbey Choir in its concerts, recordings, and tours throughout Europe, Japan, Australia, and the United States. As a conductor, O'Donnell has often worked with period-instrument ensembles such as the Hanover Band and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. As a keyboard soloist or continuo player, he has frequently appeared with the Gabrieli Consort and the King's Consort. He served as president of the Royal College of Organists from 2011 through 2013.

Though O'Donnell has mostly recorded for the Hyperion label, he's also been heard on Chandos, Decca, and Signum Classics, among others. His recordings with the Westminster Abbey Choir include an album of works by Christopher Tye in 2012 and a 2020 recording of Hubert Parry's Songs of Farewell. In 2022, O'Donnell announced that he would be leaving his Westminster post at the end of the year to take a teaching position at Yale's School of Music and its Institute of Sacred Music. That year, his choral work Present Yourselves as a Living Sacrifice was recorded by the Gesualdo Six for its album Lux Aeterna. Also that year, O'Donnell led the Westminster Abbey Choir at the funeral services of Queen Elizabeth II. These duties included a performance of his Psalm 139: Lord, thou hast searched me out, and known me, with the Choir of the Chapel Royal, for the reception of the Queen's coffin on September 14, as well as Judith Weir's Like as the hart at the Queen's state funeral on September 19. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Even in an era so richly stocked with great names, William Byrd demands particular attention as the most prodigiously talented, prolific, and versatile composer of his generation, and together with his continental colleagues Giovanni Palestrina and Orlando de Lassus, one of the acknowledged great masters of the late Renaissance, due to his substantial volume of high-quality compositions in every genre of the time. Byrd's pre-eminent position at the beginning of music publication in England allowed him to leave a significant printed legacy at the inception of many important musical forms. It would be impossible to overestimate his subsequent influence on the music of England, the Low Countries, and Germany. Byrd was a Roman Catholic, and in addition to the church music that he composed for the Anglican services, he wrote Masses and liturgical music for the Catholic Church. He was also a composer of motets, polyphonic songs, and keyboard and consort music.

Byrd was born about 1540, and it is assumed that he was a chorister in the Chapel Royal (his brothers were choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral) and a student of Thomas Tallis. He certainly was a close friend of Tallis', as they worked closely together, and Byrd's second son was the godson of Tallis. Byrd was named organist and master of choristers of Lincoln Cathedral at the age of 20, where he wrote most of his English sacred music. In 1570 he was appointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he shared the post of organist with Tallis. Queen Elizabeth I, despite Byrd's intense commitment to Catholicism, was one of his benefactors, and granted him and Tallis a patent to print music in 1575. Their first publication was a collection of five- to eight-part, Latin motets, but they published little else. Around the same time, Byrd began composing for the virginal. His contribution to the solo keyboard repertoire comprises some 125 pieces, mostly stylized dances or exceptionally inventive sets of variations that inaugurated a golden age of English keyboard composition. Many of these pieces are found in one of two manuscripts: My Ladye Nevells Booke and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In 1573 he became a permanent member of the Chapel Royal. Byrd contributed heavily to the developing genre of the English anthem, including the newer "verse" style with organ accompaniment, composing his widely regarded Great Service in this format. However, during the 1580s and 1590s, Byrd's Catholicism was the driving force for his music. As the persecution of Catholics increased during this period, and occasionally touched on Byrd and his family, he wrote and openly published music for Catholic services. This was inaugurated in 1575 with the volume of Cantiones Sacrae, a joint collection with Tallis.

Upon Tallis' death in 1585, the publishing monopoly became entirely Byrd's, and he took it up again in earnest, printing the first English songbook, Psalmes, Sonets and Songs, in 1588. This and his other songbooks include Byrd's compositions in the leading secular genres of the day: the ayre or lute song, the madrigal, and the consort song for solo voice and viols. The consort song's finest hour came at his hands. He preferred texts of a high moral (frequently religious) or metaphysical tone. They are notable for the way the viol parts lead an existence independent of the vocal line. Although the first Cantiones was not especially successful, Byrd followed it up with two more collections in 1589 and 1591 that represent the most significant English contribution to the motet repertory. Byrd also composed three Latin Masses (for three, four, and five voices) during the period 1591-1593. These are unusual not only because they could no longer overtly have a liturgical function, but also because they include settings of the "Kyrie" -- something not previously done in English mass composition. He published two Gradualia, in 1605 and 1607, with music for all the major Catholic feast days. His last collection, Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets from 1611, consisted mostly of previously published works, but did include two of his viol consort works. Byrd was at his most distinguished in the "In Nomine" fantasias for consort, particularly the later pieces in five and six parts, works of exceptionally luxurious texture. The Parthenia, a collection of virginal pieces by John Bull, Orlando Gibbons, and Byrd, was also published in 1611. Byrd's last songs were published in a collection in 1614. He lived out his life comfortably at Stondon Massey, where he died in 1623. ~ TiVo Staff

Robert Parsons contributed mightily to the first generation of English Protestant composers, though the only historical documentation of his life begins but 11 years before his death. At Michelmas and Christmas of 1560, the Master of the Royal Chapel authorized payment from the Royal Exchequer to Parsons. His duties, which probably had been going on for some time, likely involved training and "ushering" the boy sopranos of the Chapel; some of Parsons' English songs may even have been written for the boys' participation in the Elizabethan theater. Parsons apparently applied for, and attained, a vacancy in the Chapel Royal itself in 1563; he was enrolled as an "epistoler" in October of that year, and became a full "Gentleman" of the Chapel in January 1564. Only three other documentary traces of his life survive. He was granted the Crown leases for three rectories near Lincoln in 1567, he married his wife Helen by November 1571, and the poor man died in January 1572. It seems he was on a journey to recruit new choirboys for the Chapel Royal, had an accident of some sort, and drowned in the River Trent at Newark.

Some evidence for his earlier career surfaces from the extant musical compositions. Certainly as with English musicians of his time (and ours), he was raised steeped in the music of the church. Some of his earliest compositions, like those of Thomas Tallis, must have suited the Catholic Chapel of Queen Mary. Also like Tallis, Parsons continued to write some Latin-texted music after Elizabeth I returned England to the Protestant faith. Some of these even suggest that Parsons himself may have remained Catholic in his own heart, though he also wrote Anglican service music and courtly instrumental entertainments. The young William Byrd may have known Parsons in Lincoln, and took his very place in the Chapel Royal.

A prolific composer of sacred vocal music during the transition from Renaissance to Baroque styles, Lodovico Viadana was born and died near Parma, but spent his career at other centers of Italian musical activity: Rome, Cremona, Mantua, Padua, and near Venice. He used to be credited with the invention of the basso continuo, although figured-bass parts have since been noticed in slightly earlier works by Peri and Banchieri. Indisputably, though, Viadana was the first composer to write church concertos with few enough vocal parts that the organ continuo became absolutely necessary for harmonic support.

His family name was actually Grossi, but he assumed the name Viadana (after his birthplace) when he entered the order of the Minor Observants at some point before 1588. His early education and career are not well documented; from 1594 to 1597 he definitely served as maestro di cappella at Mantua Cathedral. From there he may have moved to Padua, and spent some time in Rome. The year 1602 found him in Cremona as maestro di cappella at the convent of St. Luca. He changed jobs fairly often; he spent 1608-1609 at the Concordia Cathedral near Venice, then 1610-1612 at Fano Cathedral. In 1614, he earned the title of definitor (or assistant to the head administrator of a district within the diocese) of the province of Bologna. This job he managed to hold for three years. Viadana may have repeatedly fallen victim to little religio-political intrigues among his associates; this at least is the reason for his being ordered to leave the town of Viadana in 1623 and relocate to Busseto. He ended up in the convent of St. Andrea in Gualtieri.

The first dozen of Viadana's published works, regarded as quite expressive in their day, focused on a cappella music, but by his Opus 13 he was adding an organ bass line, not quite a full basso continuo. His most important works are his Masses of 1596, his Opus 22 Lamentations, and his Opus 16 Completorium. It was his Concerti ecclesiastici, Op. 12, published in 1602, that was formerly believed to be the first instance of continuo writing. At any rate, it remains the first published use of continuo with sacred vocal music; the partly figured bass line is designed to allow any number of voices, from one to four, to sing the music, with the organ filling in the missing parts.

The career of Thomas Tallis, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, spanned a period of spectacular change in the English liturgical climate. Born early in the sixteenth century, his first musical appointment was as organist to a Benedictine (Catholic) Priory in Dover, two years before Henry VIII's definitive break with Rome in 1534. By 1537, Tallis was serving a London parish church as organist; in 1538 he was performing the same task for the Abbey of Holy Cross, Waltham, though this position evaporated when King Henry dissolved the monasteries in 1540. After a brief clerkship at Canterbury Cathedral, Tallis joined the Chapel Royal, where he played, sang, and composed for the remainder of his life, serving in turn Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I. Among the lavish rewards he eventually reaped was a famous bequest of 1575, giving him and his young pupil, William Byrd, a complete monopoly on the printing of music and ruled music paper in England.

The liturgical music in England during this time underwent great changes, not the least of which was the shift between Latin and vernacular texts. At the outset of Tallis' career, the prevailing English style of Latin music followed the soaring treble-dominated textures of the previous century, as exemplified in the Eton Choirbook; his early Latin motets reflect this. But by the late 1540s, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was working toward a standard liturgical practice, built around his Book of Common Prayer, that would finally replace the Sarum (English Latin) rite in 1559 with exclusively vernacular worship music. The reign of the Catholic "Bloody" Mary Tudor briefly interrupted this trajectory towards the vernacular with a militant resurgence of Catholic music in an older style; Tallis' Missa Puer natus and the motet Gaude gloriosa apparently date from this time. Stylistically, the church music of England over the second half of the century was yielding to the influence of the Continental imitative style, through the music of the transplanted Italian, Ferrabosco.

Through all these changes, Tallis appears to have retained a professional steadiness and respectability, making music and composing with grace and equanimity as his situation changed. His English-language settings range from simple treatments of the psalms to anthems (such as Hear the Voice and Prayer) to three complete settings of the Anglican Service; this music is commonly imbued with a somber and penitential mood. His Latin-texted pieces, whether following the stylish "modern" mode of pervasive imitation or not, demonstrate restraint and even tenderness. (One of the few exceptions, though, is his best-known work today, an over-the-top and still rather mysterious experiment in polychoral writing, the 40-voiced Spem in alium). Surprisingly little of Tallis' instrumental music survives, despite his over 50 years of professional organ playing.

Philips was an English composer and organist who spent most of his working life in Belgium. He was a Catholic, and as such chose to leave England after a tenure as singer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. He first went to Brussels, and then quickly on to the English College in Rome where he met the English Catholic landowner Lord Thomas Paget. Philips and Paget traveled throughout Europe together, before settling in Antwerp shortly before Paget's death. There, Philips obtained a position as organist to the chapel of the Archduke Albrect, and met his colleagues John Bull and Pieter Cornet, and probably Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck as well. He was also highly regarded as a virginal player, and made a living teaching on this instrument.

Philips was one of the most prolific northern composers of Latin sacred choral music, with a few hundred surviving motets. He also composed music for both instrumental consort and keyboard, many of these pieces surviving in arrangements of both types. These pieces involve the best-known genres of English instrumental music of the time, the fantasia, pavan and galliard. Philips' motets also contain something of the English style in that they are all written with organ accompaniment; his style of vocal composition, however, is more in keeping with the great continental masters of the period, such as Lassus. His vocal and instrumental writing is extremely smooth, with well-planned harmonies, and a general lack of contrapuntal artifice. Philips was one of the outstanding vocal composers of his day, publishing motets in German as well as Latin. ~ Todd McComb

Born in 1582, Gregorio Allegri, an Italian priest, singer, and composer in the tradition of the stile antico, is primarily known for his Miserere, a nine-part setting of Psalm 51. He spent much of his life working in Roman churches, joining the papal choir in 1629 and eventually becoming its choirmaster. According to a legend, Mozart wrote out the full score of this work after hearing it only once, thus effectively circumnavigating the rule that prohibited anyone from removing any parts of the score from the Sistine Chapel, where it was guarded. During the Romantic period, when composers and literary figures embraced the ideals of the stile antico, Allegri's Miserere was much admired. Allegri's other works include motets and instrumental concertini. He died in 1652.

Giovanni Gabrieli is an important transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque eras and their associated musical styles. The distinctive sound of his music derived in part from his association with St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, long one of the most important churches in Europe, and one for which he wrote both vocal and instrumental works. Through his compositions and his work with several significant pupils, Gabrieli substantially influenced the development of music in the 16th century.

Very little is known about his early years; he probably studied with his famous uncle Andrea Gabrieli, who was also a composer, and an organist at St. Mark's. Like his uncle, Gabrieli lived in Germany for several years, and was employed at the court of Duke Albrecht V in Munich from around 1575 until the Duke's death in 1579. Soon afterward, Gabrieli returned to Italy, and in 1585 became the organist for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a religious confraternity; he would hold that post for the rest of his life. That same year (1585), Gabrieli became organist at St. Mark's and, on his uncle's death in 1586, assumed his position as its principal composer (Gabrieli also edited a number of his uncle's compositions for posthumous publication).

At that time, Venice was a very cosmopolitan city and something of a musical crossroads. Much of the city's musical activity centered around St. Mark's Cathedral, which had long attracted many great musicians. The Cathedral's unusual layout, with its two choir lofts facing each other (each with its own organ), led to the development of what has been called the Venetian style of composition -- a colorful and dramatic style often involving multiple choirs and instrumental ensembles; many of Gabrieli's motets and other religious choral works are written for two or four choirs, divided into a dozen or more separate parts. Gabrieli also became one of the first composers to write choral works including parts for instrumental ensembles; the motet In ecclesiis, as an example, calls for two choirs, soloists, organ, brass, and strings. Gabrieli wrote a number of secular vocal works (most or all of them before 1600), and a number of pieces for organ in a quasi-improvisational style.

Gabrieli composed many purely instrumental works in forms such as the canzoni and ricercari, which had become increasingly popular in the 16th century. Several of these were published with some of his choral music in the collection Sacrae symphoniae (1597). This publication was very popular all over Europe and attracted a number of prominent pupils to Gabrieli, the best known of whom were Heinrich Schütz (who studied with him between 1609 and 1612) and Michael Praetorius. More of Gabrieli's instrumental pieces were published posthumously in Canzoni e sonate (1615). Some of these works were particularly innovative: the Sonata pian e forte was one of the first documented compositions to employ dynamic markings, and the Sonata per tre violini was one of the first to use a basso continuo, anticipating the later trio sonata. His instrumental works are now seen as the culmination of the development of instrumental music in the 16th century.

From around 1606, Gabrieli suffered from kidney stones that reduced his activities and eventually led to his death. ~ Chris Morrison

Antonio Lotti was an Italian Baroque composer of sacred and secular music. He was one of the top composers in Venice in the early 18th century and an important influence on his younger contemporaries, which included Bach, Handel, and Zelenka. He was born in 1667 in Venice, and while he was still a baby, his family moved to Hanover, where his father began an appointment as Kapellmeister. Later in 1682, he moved with his family to Venice, where he studied music with Lodovico Fuga and Giovanni Legrenzi at St. Mark's Basilica. Lotti's first professional appointment began in 1689, as an alto at St. Mark's. Three years later, he was promoted to the post of assistant to the second organist, and then he became the second organist in 1692. He was also active as a composer, and that same year, his debut opera, Il trionfo dell innocenza, was premiered in Venice. It was very successful, and Lotti's reputation quickly grew thereafter. In 1698, he published a book of masses, and in 1704, he was promoted to the position of first organist at St. Mark's. For the next ten years he continued in his position at St. Mark's and composed over a dozen operas. It was also around this time when he met the famous soprano Santa Stella, whom he married in 1714. She sang in several major opera productions of the time, including Lotti's Sidonio, Achille placato, and La forza del sangue. From 1717 to 1719, Lotti and his wife were employed at the court of Friedrich August I, Elector of Saxony in Dresden. Lotti was tasked with composing Italian-style operas for the King's newly formed Italian opera ensemble, and he completed Giove in Argo, Teofane, and Li quattro elementi. J. S. Bach was also in Dresden in late 1717 for a highly publicized keyboard duel against Louis Marchand, and he could have met Lotti there, but there is no record of any such encounter. After Lotti fulfilled his obligations in Dresden, he stopped composing theatrical works altogether and returned to Venice in 1719, where he resumed his duties at St. Mark's. Additionally, he served in an unknown position at St. Maria dei Carmini, and he became highly respected as a music educator. Some of his more prominent students included Baldassare Galuppi, Benedetto Marcello, and Domenico Alberti. In 1736, he became the Kapellmeister at St. Mark's, and he continued teaching and composing until his death in 1740. ~ RJ Lambert

Tye was an English organist and composer of choral and instrumental music. Apparently a native of East Anglia, Tye received a doctorate in Music from Cambridge in 1537 and was later associated with the Priory of Ely. Tye was a contemporary of Thomas Tallis, and contributed to the assimilation of continental structural principles into English music during the first half of the 16th century. Rather little survives of his sacred choral music, but what does remain represents an interesting personal synthesis of the older English florid style and the techniques of structural imitation and syllabic text setting. Tye's sparing use of imitation and the general absence of soloist passages gives his music a tighter cohesiveness than that of the previous generation -- his mass Euge Bone is perhaps the most impressive example of the period.

Today, Tye is at least as well known as a composer of instrumental ensemble music for viol consort. He left 31 such compositions, apparently composed late in his life. These include 21 settings of the "In Nomine" type -- based on Taverner's cantus firmus and incorporating all manner of instrumental ideas within a purely polyphonic context. Tye is credited as the first significant composer of instrumental chamber music, and his examples are of uniformly high quality. They represent a substantial legacy for Western music. ~ Todd McComb

The dominating figure of sixteenth century Spanish music, Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in Avila. He was sent to Rome to study, possibly for a time under Palestrina during the latter's years at the Roman Seminary. In 1571 he succeeded Palestrina there as choirmaster, a post he also subsequently occupied at the Jesuit Order's German College. Later he became active as a priest, working at St. Girolamo della Carità. Following his return to Spain in 1585, Victoria served the Empress Maria and her daughter as teacher, organist, and choirmaster until his death in 1611.

By the time Victoria arrived in Rome, the conservative ecclesiastical establishment and the Council of Trent had ensured that any musical hint of the "lascivious or the impure" was largely banished (Palestrina was even moved to dismiss his publication of secular madrigals as a youthful peccadillo). It is therefore not surprising to find that Victoria's output consists solely of religious music that eschews even the use of secular cantus firmus, and that displays the formal perfection and the well-smoothed vocal writing of the Palestrina style. What is surprising is that despite his Roman training and years of service in the city, Victoria so strongly retained his Spanish roots. Some of his finest works were composed after his return home, and many of them contain features that seem to epitomize the deeply mystical approach of so much Spanish Renaissance music. Comparison with Palestrina reveals a greater emphasis on chromatic color and use of dynamic contrast; Victoria's block harmonies and multiple choirs look forward to the Baroque. His response to words is acute and highly personal, a characteristic particularly suited to the comparatively dynamic and plastic form of the motet and to other texts which allow full rein to subjective treatment. Of Victoria's 44 motets, the early four-part O quam gloriosum can perhaps be allowed a special mention, since it is pervaded by a youthful vigor and joyous radiance that gives lie to the understandable impression that Spanish Renaissance composers were preoccupied with somber religious subjects. His widely performed Christmas motet, O magnum mysterium, exudes a quiet sense of wonder. Victoria's fame as a motet composer has tended to overshadow his masses, yet at their finest, as in the lovely Missa Ave maris stella, they are not inferior to those of Palestrina.

To discover Victoria at his greatest, however, one must ultimately return to the darker side, and in particular to the two works by which he is best known, the Tenebrae Responsories (first published in 1585) and the Requiem of 1605, a work of timeless serenity. The former is a setting of 18 pieces that adhere to the traditional form of the responsory, with its alternation of verse and refrain. The work takes us through the Passion story in music that relies not so much on the drama of the events themselves as on a quite extraordinarily direct and profound response to the text, a response frequently achieved by means of the greatest simplicity, or, perhaps more accurately, apparent simplicity.

If one were to name the composer that bridges the gap between the Renaissance and the Baroque, it would likely be Claudio Monteverdi -- the same composer who is largely and frequently credited with making the cut in the first place. The path from his earliest canzonettas and madrigals to his latest operatic work exemplifies the shifts in musical thinking that took place in the last decades of the 16th century and the first few of the 17th.

Monteverdi was born in Cremona, Italy on May 15, 1567. As a youth his musical talent was already evident: his first publication was issued by a prominent Venetian publishing house when he was 15, and by the time he was 20, a variety of his works had gone into print. His first book of five-voice madrigals, while bearing a dedication to his Cremonese mentor Ingegnieri, succeeded in establishing his reputation outside of his provincial hometown, and helped him find work in the court of the Duke Gonzaga of Mantua. His compositions from the Mantuan period betray the influence of Giaches de Wert, whom Monteverdi eventually succeeded as the maestro di cappella. It was around this time that Monteverdi's name became widely known, due largely to the criticism levied at him by G.M. Artusi in his famous 1600 treatise "on the imperfection of modern music." Artusi found Monteverdi's contrapuntal unorthodoxies unacceptable and cited several excerpts from his madrigals as examples of modern musical decadence. In the response that appeared in the preface to Monteverdi's fifth book of madrigals, the composer coined a pair of terms inextricably tied to the diversity of musical taste that came to characterize the times. He referred to the older style of composition, in which the traditional rules of counterpoint superseded expressive considerations, as the prima prattica. The seconda prattica, as characterized by such works as Crudi Amarilli, sought to put music in the servitude of the text by whatever means necessary -- including "incorrect" counterpoint -- to vividly express the text.

In 1607, Monteverdi's first opera (and the oldest to grace modern stages with any frequency) L'Orfeo, was performed in Mantua. This was followed in 1608 by L'Arianna, which, despite its popularity at the time, no longer survives except in libretti, and in the title character's famous lament, a polyphonic arrangement of which appeared in his sixth book of madrigals (1614). Disagreements with the Gonzaga court led him to seek work elsewhere, and finally in 1612 he was appointed maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice.

His earliest years in Venice were a rebuilding period for the cappella, and it was some time before Monteverdi was free to accept commissions outside his duties at the cathedral. In 1616 he composed the ballet Tirsi i Clori for Ferdinand of Mantua, the more highly favored brother of his deceased and disliked ex-employer. The following years saw some abandoned operatic ventures, the now-lost opera La finta pazza Licori, and the dramatic dialogue Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.

The 1630s were lean musical years for Monteverdi. Political battles and an outbreak of the plague left him without commissions from either Mantua or Venice. However, with the opening of Venetian opera houses in 1637, Monteverdi's operatic career was revived. A new production of L'Arianna was staged in 1640, and three new operas appeared within two years: Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, Le nozze d'Enea con Lavinia (also now lost), and L'incoronazione di Poppea. This resurgence preceded his death by just a few years: he passed away in Venice in 1643. ~ Jeremy Grimshaw