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.
Category: Listening
Diogo Dias Melgaz ❧ Salve Regina
The motet Salve Regina, for four voices, is probably Diogo Dias Melgaz’s best-known work. Melgaz was born in the Alentejo village of Cuba in 1638 and died in Évora in 1700 and is one of the Évora Cathedral composers whose …
Duarte Lobo • Asperges me
This polyphony setting of the antiphon Asperges me comes from Portuguese composer Duarte Lobo’s first Liber Missarum of 1621. It was one of the books Lobo printed in Antwerp at the famous Officina Plantiniana by Balthazar Moretus.
Tomás Luis de Victoria – O Quam gloriosum
One of my favourite motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria is the four-voice O quam gloriosum, a motet indicated for the feast of All Saints. It was one of his most published works with the first print in the 1572 …
Tomás Luis de Victoria • Ascendens Christus in altum
The motet Ascendens Christus in altum by Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria was first published in his 1572 book of motets, one of his finest publications where one can find other motets such as the famous O magnum mysterium …
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Alonso Lobo • Versa est in luctum
To me, one of the finest examples of the relation and message that painting and music can communicate can be found in El Greco’s The Burrial of the Count of Orgaz and Alonso Lobo’s motet Versa est in luctum. Both …
Tomás Luis de Victoria ❧ Ave Maria [a 8]
Together with Francisco Guerrero’s, Tomás Luis de Victoria’s double-choir setting of the Ave Maria (the only one actually by him) is probably one the “Ave Maria” settings from Iberian composers which I like more (although D. Pedro de Cristo’s setting is also …
Estêvão Lopes Morago • Oculi mei semper ad Dominum
On June 4th, 2014, I made some recordings with Ensemble Eborensis of the repertory we were singing at the time, taking advantage of the generous acoustic of the archaeology wing of the then Évora Regional Museum (now National Museum Fr. …
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Cistercian Plainchant from Évora
In 2014 I had the opportunity of participating in an interdisciplinary research project, ORFEUS – The tridentine reformation and the music in the silence of the cloister: the monastery of S. Bento de Cástris, that involved musicology, architecture, art history, …
Tomás Luis de Victoria • Super flumina Babylonis
This psalm-motet by Tomás Luis de Victoria has a powerful and strinking effect. His polychoral music began to appear around the same time as that of Palestrina and Super flumina Babylonis is a polychoral work, although the bassus parts are not always treated in …
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