Millennium of Music
Music List # 03-20
Victoria and Palestrina in Rome
 
NOTE: These performances from the Holland Festival of Early Music at Utrecht 2002 are by the Orchestra of the Renaissance directed by Richard Cheetham. They are supported in part by Radio Nederland and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C
 
This programme presents early work by the Spanish composer Victoria alongside his Italian contemporaries Giovannelli and Palestrina. Victoria was a chorister at the cathedral of Avila and a pupil of the Jesuit college of San Gil. When his voice broke he was sent to the Collegio Germanico in Rome, where he wrote his eight-part Super flumina Babylonis in 1573 for a farewell caremony when German students were separated from their Spanish, Italian and English colleagues. The grand Salve Regina, likewise for double choir, reflects Roman taste and contrasts with the madrigal-like Nigra sum sed Formosa on a text from the Song of Solomon.
 
The six-part Missa Gaudeamus is a parody mass based on Jubilate Deo omnis terra by Cristóbal de Morales. One of Victoria's successors at the Collegio Germanico was Ruggiero Giovanelli, a student of Palestrina and later maestro di cappella at St Peter's. The works on the program reflect two quite different ways in which sacred choral music was performed in Rome: while the a cappella tradition of the Sistine Chapel is familiar, around the corner in St Peter's the singers were actually accompanied by wind instruments on all important festivals. This raises questions on the performance of the music of Palestrina, who was maestro di cappella at St Peter's for the last twenty-three years of his life.

                       
Tomás Luis de Victoria 1548-1611
1. Salve Regina                                                           
Nigra sum sed formosa a6                                            
Ardens est cor meum a6 (instrumental versione)
O magnum mysterium a4                                              
Super flumina Babylonis a8 (twochoir)              
           
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 1525/26-1594
2. Regina caelorum                                                        
Venit Michael archangelus a5 (instr.)                          
Ruggiero Giovannelli ca.1560-1625

3.  Voce mea (duet)                                                       
Beatus vir                                                                    
           
Cristóbal de Morales ca. 1500-1553
4. Jubilate deo omnis terra a6                                        
 
Tomás Luis de Victoria
5.  Missa Gaudeamus a6                                                   
            Kyrie                                                                          
Gloria                                                                     
Credo   
                                                                       
Girolamo Frescobaldi 1583-1643
6.  Recercar cromaticho post il Credo per organo 
           
 Tomás Luis de Victoria
7.  Missa Gaudeamus                                                       
Prefatio & Sanctus
Agnus Dei