Uniquely among his contemporaries, Tomas Luis de Victoria managed to publish nearly all of his compositions during his lifetime. During a twenty-year period of study and service in Rome, the Spaniard issued a series of lavish prints containing his essays into all the various Catholic sacred genres - music which would serve the Counter-Reformation in Italy, Spain, and the New world for decades to come. As early as 1572 he published, through the famous Venetian firm of Gardano, a collection of some thirty-three motets, for four to eight voices. Among the motets which held his own esteem enough to eventually serve as models for polyphonic Imitation Masses is a four-voiced setting of the All Souls' Day text O quam gloriosum.

A joyful piece like this belies the popular image of Victoria as dark and brooding in temperament. Despite the somber liturgical occasion in which it would be heard - All Souls' Day being the day of Catholic prayer for the dead, and for the saying of a Requiem Mass - Victoria selected a text jubilant in the hope of the departed to live in the Kingdom, in the presence of the Lamb of God, and in constant praise of Him with all the saints. And his setting betrays this sunny prognosis from the opening gesture, a powerfully rising series of chords which proved too distinctive a gesture for use in the Missa O quam gloriosum. The praise of the saints (text "gaudent omnes Sancti") calls forth a burst of rising melismas in all parts, and the motet even closes with a long-held imitative section, as jubilant as an "Alleluia" closing. The only thinning of the textural rhythm occurs at the text "sequntur Agnum" ("following the Lamb"), when a syncopated motive - each voice literally "following" in canon - leads to a delightful series of suspensions. The entire motet looks to the heavenly country of the Blessed with anticipation.



© All Music Guide