Popular myth views Tomas Luis de Victoria as a passionate, yet one-sided individual, with every thought centered upon his (often dark and brooding) Catholic faith. He studied for, and achieved, the priesthood; he served a Jesuit college and the Papal establishment; he ended his career with a twenty-four year tenure at a Spanish convent. He is known to have written no secular music. But periodically, musical evidence (such as a jubilant "Alleluia" or playful madrigalism) points towards a more human image for this quintessential Counter-Reformation composer. Once in a great while, a motet such as his Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui may completely refract the popular vision.

Victoria published this motet in his first printed anthology, the 1572 Motetca (Venice, Gardano), and later complimented it with an imitation Mass setting in 1583. The text derives from the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) - the book historically posing one of the greatest challenges to theological interpretation, both Hebrew and Christian - and serves the Marian liturgy for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Now the Catholic tradition in Victoria's time had long tended to allegorize the sensuous love poetry of the Song of Solomon into a metaphor for the love of Christ for His church (so Origen), or in terms of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. And the text as set here elides the most explicit verses, skipping from Song of Solomon 7:1 to 7:4-6; this avoids a poetic celebration in verses 2-3 of the beloved's "womanly thighs," navel, belly, and breasts. However, the graceful suavity of Victoria's setting suggests that even he may not have been thinking only of the Virgin Mary when composing!

In contrast to two Palestrina settings of the same text, Victoria chooses a bright Lydian mode for his motet; he opens with a simple imitative motif, and a skipping little gesture to evoke the Beloved's feet. After an obvious cadence, he proceeds more chordally, but with a suddenly warm harmonic shift from F tonalities to E-flat chords. The text continues comparing her neck to an ivory tower. Victoria sets the first half of this phrase with an excess of fricative suspensions, and the second he positively caresses with melismas up to nineteen notes. The following images, enjoying her eyes and her hair, receive similar tenderness of setting; a strong cadential drive to the exclamation "carissima!" and a richly colored "Alleluia" close the motet. Any singer or listener made of human flesh who has experienced the gestures of this piece should have a new appreciation of Victoria the human being.



© All Music Guide