Reinassance Spanish religious music

Renaissance Spanish religious music

 Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548 – 1611), was the most famous composer of the 16th century in Spain, known as the "Spanish Palestrina“, because he was one of the most important composers of the Counter-Reformation, as well as an accomplished organist and singer. Victoria was a master at overlapping and dividing choirs with multiple parts with a gradual decreasing of rhythmic distance throughout. His musical work was eminently religious and was the most important of the first teachers who put music to the new liturgy renewed, emerged after the Council of Trent. His most important works include several books of motecta and of course, his Officium Defunctorum. You can listen to its Sanctus Benedictus here:




                                     
                                      Tomas Luis de Victoria - Officium Defunctorum 

 Cristóbal de Morales (1500 – 1553) was born in Seville. Almost all of his music is sacred, and all of it is vocal, though instruments may have been used in an accompanying role in performance. He wrote many masses, some of spectacular difficulty, most likely written for the expert papal choir; he wrote over 100 motets, 18 settings of the Magnificat, and 5 settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. His musical work was soon known, although in only twenty years came to print more than forty editions in different countries in Europe: Italy, the Netherlands, Germany or France. Here is an example of his music, the motet entitled Inter Natos Mulierum.



                                 
                                   Cristóbal de Morales (1500 - 1553) - Inter Natos

 

 

 

Francisco Guerrero (1528 –1599). Of all the Spanish Renaissance composers, he was the one who lived and worked the most in Spain. Guerrero's music was both sacred and secular. He wrote numerous secular songs and instrumental pieces, in addition, to masses, motets, and Passions. Stylistically he preferred homophonic textures, rather like his Spanish contemporaries. Like Palestrina, his music was austere, sharp and clear, so that that both listeners and performers can clearly see the purity of his music. He used in his vocal work Latin and Castilian.



Here his polyphonic song A un niño llorando al hielo.

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) - A un niño llorando al hielo