Recent attention on the Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano

There’s been a lot of buzz online since the publishing of several yesterday in some British media such as the BBC or The Guardian regarding the Portuguese-born composer Vicente Lusitano.

Lusitano is described in these pieces as the most renowned black composer in sixteenth-century Europe. Indeed, he is the author of two music treatises, one of which was printed, as well as a book of motets also printed in 1551/5.

I must say in advance that these articles do not bring anything new that the musicological/scientific community hasn’t already researched (mostly based on Maria Augusta Barbosa’s monumental PhD research in the 1970s) and not much is known about his life. But it’s truly great to seed big media outlets bringing awareness about his music and, hopefully not focusing solely on the social aspects of his presence in the sixteenth-century European world. His music is amazing and it sounds as well as any other great composer of his time.

I have published a small article note (in Portugues) on one of his most strange motets: the four-voice Heu me Domine, as well as provided a modern edition of the work. But he has so much more amazing music as the examples below show. [ Read the article ]