Two upper voices begin a duet in reverential awe, imitating a "great" fall of a melodic fifth, and an intense half-step—thus opens one of the most famous motets of the entire sixteenth century, Tomas Luis de Victoria's O magnum mysterium. And yet the young Spanish composer offers nothing truly revolutionary in the work; rather he demonstrates his traditional musical training in conservative Counter-Reformation Rome, which resulted in a characteristically intense attention to each minute detail of his composition. An overused, but still apt, comparison to the painting of the Spanish artist El Greco notes the similar attention both men placed on the emotional content of each brushstroke and how the totality of these individual strokes creates the complete affect. Victoria published this motet in his first musical anthology (the Motecta of 1572, published by Gardano in Venice), when he was only 24. Its inscription assigns it to the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, though the text actually comes from a responsory of the Christmas Matins service, and more appropriately matches the Christmas celebration. What a great mystery, cries the text, that the lowly animals may view the Messiah born in a manger and the blessed Virgin who bore Him. Alleluia. Victoria's setting moves from its long-breathed and reverential opening into a suave series of imitative passages, concluding with the text "laid in a manger." For the exclamation "O beata Virgo" ("O Blessed Virgin!"), a general pause sets up a hushed and mystical passage of homophony: the outer voices move in parallel, with relative immobility in the center blurring the rhythmic lines. This passage proved too extraordinary to feature at all in the mass which Victoria based upon this motet, though he did quote the gesture in a later motet, Vere languores. Two jubilant "Alleluia" sections (one in a dance-like triple time) close the motet and suggest necessary revision of the popular image of Victoria as merely a pale, brooding kind of Catholic.

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