The familiar salutation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin - "Hail, Mary, full of grace!" (Luke 1:28) - figures prominently in the liturgy for two major Marian feasts, the Annunciation (March 25) and the Immaculate Conception (December 8), and has been sung on the last Sunday in Advent since the time of Pope Gregory the Great. The current form of the text, expanded to include part of the dialogue of Mary and Elizabeth (Luke 1:40-55) and a closing prayer for intercession, comes from the writings of Girolamo Savonarola. It has served as a tool in the private devotions of generations of Catholics, and as a text for generations of devout composers. The Spanish priest-composer Tomas Luis de Victoria wrote two Ave Maria settings, this one for four voices, and a more elaborate setting for eight voices.

The four-voiced version, one of very few works not published by Victoria in his lifetime, appears rather in a later seventeenth-century manuscript. Perhaps the composer deemed it too simplistic for inclusion in his splendid Roman motet publications. Indeed, much of the music in this setting uses fairly simple homophony, though Victoria's characteristic level of harmonic inflection colors it throughout. The uppermost voice paraphrases the liturgically proper Gregorian chant melody. Echoes of this melody also impregnate the bass voice in imitation ("gratia plena," "in mulieribus"); once (at "et benedicta tu") three voices imitate the chant, lending more weight to the coming cadential arrival on the name of Jesus Christ. The singers' personal prayer for intercession at "Sancta Maria" begins a jaunty and insistent triple-meter section, which leads to a drawn-out "Amen" peroration.



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