Victoria: Requiem: Officium Defunctorum • 1605 / Gabrieli Consort, Paul McCreesh / Archiv Produktion Audio CD 1995 Stereo / 447 095-2

UPC 028944709520

Officium Defunctorum is a musical setting of the Office of the Dead composed by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria in 1603. The texts have also been set by other composers including Morales.

Victoria includes settings of the movements of the Requiem Mass, accounting for about 26 minutes of the 42 minute composition, and the work is sometimes referred to as Victoria's Requiem. However, it is not his only requiem, in 1583, Victoria composed and published a book of Masses, reprinted in 1592, including a Missa pro defunctis for four-part choir.

Victoria's famous Requiem, fully titled Officium defunctorum ("Office for the Dead"), published in 1605, was composed for the funeral of the Dowager Empress Maria (daughter of Charles V, sister of Philip II, wife of Emperor Maximilian) in 1603 in Madrid. Paul McCreesh's recording aims to re-create that service, with prayers and chants (including the well-known Dies irae, not set by Victoria) in their liturgical sequence. This alternation of chant and polyphony gives a good idea--better than would Victoria's polyphony alone--of just how solemn and sumptuous the Empress's funeral was. This wouldn't matter, of course, if the Gabrieli Consort's performance of this bewitchingly melancholy music were anything less than excellent. It's that and more--as the music progresses, the singing becomes more involved and intense; by the time the Sanctus arrives, it is transcendent. --Matthew Westphal