PHI: Tomás Luis de Victoria — Officium Defunctorum (Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe) — Audio CD

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Product Details:

• UPC: 5400439000056
• Catalog Number: LPH 005
• Product Type: Audio CD
• Brand / Label: PHI (Outhere Music)
• Composer: Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611)
• Ensemble: Collegium Vocale Gent
• Conductor: Philippe Herreweghe
• Release Year: 2012
• Genre: Classical
• Style: Renaissance sacred / a cappella polyphony

Product Features

• Format: CD
• Discs: 1
• Total time: 59′40
• Recording: DDD (digital)
• Booklet: English commentary, with French, German and Dutch texts
• Made in: Austria (EU)
• Condition: Brand new, factory sealed

Overview

Victoria's Officium Defunctorum is the great Spanish Requiem of the Renaissance — written in 1603 for the funeral of the Dowager Empress Maria, and the last major work the composer published. It is music of extraordinary restraint and gravity, six-voice polyphony that seems to glow from within rather than reach for drama.

Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent are among the finest interpreters of this repertoire alive, and they bring exactly the qualities it needs: perfect blend, unhurried lines, and a sense of devotional space. The plainchant and the polyphony breathe together.

Rounding out the disc are four motets — including the famous "O Domine Iesu Christe" and a luminous six-voice "Salve Regina." This was an early release on Herreweghe's own label, PHI, and the recorded sound matches the music's purity. Just under an hour of some of the most beautiful sacred music ever written.

Interesting Facts

• Victoria composed the Officium Defunctorum for the funeral of Empress Maria of Austria in 1603; it appeared in print in 1605 and was the last music he published before his death.
• Unlike many of his Italian contemporaries, Victoria wrote no secular music at all — his entire surviving output is sacred.
• He spent much of his career in Rome, where he likely knew Palestrina, before returning to Spain to serve as chaplain and organist to the Empress's convent in Madrid.
• Philippe Herreweghe founded Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970; the ensemble became one of the defining voices of the early-music movement.
• Herreweghe launched the PHI label in 2010 to have full artistic control over his recordings; this Victoria disc was among its earliest releases.

Track Listing

Tomás Luis de Victoria — Officium Defunctorum (Requiem, 1603, for six voices)

Motets:

• O Domine Iesu Christe (a 6)
• Domine, non sum dignus (a 4)
• Salve Regina (a 6)
• Vadam et circuibo civitatem (a 6)

Total time: 59′40.

Publishers

℗© Outhere 2012, released on the PHI label (catalog LPH 005). A European Union production, manufactured in Austria by Sony DADC. Booklet with English, French, German and Dutch texts.

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