ARTS RICK JONES MORNING STAR
This year on their pilgrimage of Britain’s cathedrals, Harry Christophers and the Sixteen sing music by a sixteenth-century Spanish priest composer who was a towering figure of his time
T
he choice of repertoire for this year’s annual “pilgrimage” tour was not a difficult one for the choir of the Sixteen, as 2011 is the
400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), one of the supreme polyphonic masters of the High Renaissance. He is usually placed in the company of Palestrina, Lassus and Byrd, but Harry Christophers, founder and conductor of the Sixteen, rates him higher than that. “He’s the greatest composer of the Renaissance,” he says. “Palestrina is the master craftsman of line and form,” the conductor tells me down the phone from early-morning Boston where he has been honoured with the directorship of one of the United States’ most illustrious choral societies. “So is Byrd, but there’s a political side to him. Victoria is a master craftsman too, but with him there is some- thing extra. It’s the setting of words which is so personal. With the others you sense a back- ing-off sometimes, but Victoria has a way of getting right inside the meaning of a text. He creates music, you sense, that exactly inter- prets his feeling.” Excitedly, Christophers reels off examples of what he means from the tour programme. “The motet Congratulamini mihi has this staggering opening, so daring. From an incredibly quiet beginning – the translation is ‘for though I am very little’ – it just bursts out at a particular point (the words ‘placui altissimo’, ‘I have pleased the Highest’). In Sancte Maria, the tenor sings the word ‘refove’ or ‘revive’ at the end of the first page and from that moment the piece just opens up. This happens a lot in Victoria. It’s a very special quality.”
Both these works, like the rest of the pro-
gramme, are dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Christophers finds a unity in the Marian works. “We know that audiences relate very strongly to the dark, penitential music of Renaissance composers,” he says. “But this can give a false impression with Victoria. The
28 | THE TABLET | 12 March 2011
Requiem and other well-known works like O Vos Omnes are not that representative. The Marian music, however, is very evocative and often very sensual. There is a particular light- ness in Victoria’s Marian scores.” Although he was born and died in Spain,
Victoria worked in Rome from the age of 18 and so experienced the dark, dangerous excitement of the Counter-Reformation at close hand. It’s not too far-fetched to think that the lightness Christophers notices is a reaction to his troubled era. He was employed throughout by the Church first as singer, organist and composer; later, after his wife died and before his return to Madrid in 1585, as a priest. He was a fervent Catholic: indeed, in this respect, Christophers links him not with his contemporaries, but with composers of our own time, Francis Poulenc and James MacMillan. Audiences too have responded to Victoria’s ability to communicate with us on our own modern terms. “We were sur- prised by the reaction when we took Victoria on tour in 2006,” says the conductor. “It made this year’s decision obvious.” Victoria’s Marian works express natal joy, maternal compassion and feminine sensuality. The last of these is the substance of the motet Vidi Speciosam (“I saw the Beautiful One”), its fragrant text taken from the Song of Solomon. Although obviously not scripturally appropriate, it became fashionable during the Marian cult of the Middle Ages to apply this most beautiful of love songs to Mary. The Virgin is thus a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies just as Christ is. She has many sides, each explored by items on the tour pro- gramme. Her identity as Mother of the Redeemer is exemplified by the Mass setting Alma Redemptoris Mater, the central work on the tour. “Or certain movements from it,” says Christophers. “A whole Mass is inappro- priate to a concert. We’ll do the Sanctus, for instance, which is really, really beautiful, but not the Agnus as there’s one at the end of the Litaniae Beatae Mariae which closes the con- cert. That’s an extra ordinary piece. It
The Sixteen in rehearsal
summarises practically all Mary’s attributes from Most Chaste to Health of the Sick to Paradise of Pleasure”.’ Much of the programme and the complete
Mass are included on the Sixteen’s latest CD, Hail Mother of the Redeemer, boxloads of which accompany the choir on tour and sell as souvenirs after the concerts. After 10 years, the choir has the routine to a fine art. It was a brilliant but obvious idea to take the reper- toire to the buildings – the cathedrals and abbeys – for which it was written, and other choirs kick themselves for not having thought of it themselves. The concerts sell out and the CDs disappear faster than from any shop. The tour began in Oxford last night, con- tinues in Liverpool’s Cathedral of Christ the King tonight and ends in Brighton on 4 November, visiting 30 other towns and cities on the way. One of these, the sole overseas destination, is the extraordinary palace-cum- monastery of El Escorial 30 miles north of Madrid, built by Philip II of Spain and com- pleted in 1584, the year before Victoria returned to Spain. He had written to Philip of his plans for a quiet retirement as a priest and the king had duly set him up as chaplain to his sister the Dowager Empress Maria at the Monasterio de las Descalzas in Madrid. He will have known El Escorial and it is a singular honour for the Sixteen to be per- forming his music there in so significant an anniversary year. Victoria seems to have enjoyed a blessed
life. He was not as prolific as his contempor - aries but he appears to have had a more contented view of himself and his work. He knew his own greatness, understood how to sell himself when he needed to, but was hum- ble enough to retire into the shadows at the end. “Everything he wrote was of the highest quality and you can’t say that about every- body,” says Christophers. “Do you know, we’ve made four CDs of his music now and there isn’t a duff piece among them.”
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