Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Copyright 2020 Melanie Spiller. All rights reserved.
Composer Biography: Tomas Luis de Victoria (c1548-1611)
Melanie Spiller and Coloratura Consulting
Also Tommaso Ludovico da Vittoria (the Italian version of his name)
When people think about the 16
th
century, there are three names that come to mind: Giovanni Pierluigi
Palestrina (c1525-1594), Orlando de Lassus (1532-1594), and Tomas Luis de Victoria. It’s interesting to note
that the other two are Italians—Victoria was a Spaniard, although he spent time in Italy, and may have
studied under Palestrina.
Sometimes called the “Spanish Palestrina,” Victoria had a very polished style, and his Masses, along with
those of Cristobal de Morales (c1500-1553), Francisco Guerrero (1528-1589, biography coming shortly),
and Palestrina, were popular in the recently colonized New World. It’s no coincidence that three of those
four composers were Spanish.
Victoria was born into a distinguished family in the province of Avila, possibly in the town of Sanchidrian.
His parents, Francisco Luis de Victoria and Francisca Suarez de la Concha married in 1540. He was the
seventh child of eleven children.
There were important relatives on both sides of the family, including three cousins on his mother’s
side—Cristobal was a naval commander, Hernando was a Jesuit pioneer in Mexico, and Baltazar was a
merchant in Florence and became a nobleman when he married Grand Duke Cosimo I de Medici’s sister-in-
law. An uncle on Victoria’s father’s side (after whom Tomas was named) was a lawyer who pled cases
before the royal chancery at Valladolid. This uncle entered the priesthood after his wife’s death and in 1577
was installed as a canon of Avila Cathedral. Avila Cathedral is going to come up frequently in this story.
Victoria’s father died in 1557, and another priest uncle, Juan Luis, took charge of the orphaned family.
Victoria’s classical education took place at Saint Gil, a school for boys in Avila that was founded by Jesuits. It
was a school of such high reputation that St. Theresa of Avila (1515-1582) insisted that her own nephews
attend the school
In Avila, Victoria was choirboy at the Avila Cathedral. You’ll recall that his namesake uncle was a canon
there. When his voice broke, Victoria was sent to the Jesuit Collegio Germanico in Rome, around 1563,
although some sources suggest 1565. The Jesuit Collegium Germanicum was a German seminary in Rome,
founded by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) to combat Lutheranism.
At the Collegio Germanico, there were two kinds of students: those in training for the German missionary
priesthood, and a larger group of English, Spanish, and Italian boarders, whose fees helped to maintain the
college. Victoria was among the latter and was specifically enrolled as a singer.
At the college, young Victoria achieved fluency in Latin, and had a very rewarding time there. In his first
collection of motets in 1572, he acknowledged his debt to one of the chief benefactors of the college.
Victoria surely knew Palestrina, who was maestro di cappella of the nearby Seminario Romano, and may
have been taught by him. Victoria was the only Iberian Peninsula composer before Manual Cardoso (1566-
1650) to master the subtleties of Palestrina’s style.
By the time he was 20, it was time for Victoria to start earning a living. From 1568 until 1571, he may have
been maestro at the private chapel of Prince-Bishop of Augsburg, Otto Truchsess von Waldburg (1514-
1573).
From 1569 until 1574, Victoria was a singer and organist at Saint Maria di Monserrato, the Aragonese
church in which the two Spanish popes are buried. He earned a single scudo (worth about $0.06) for one
month’s salary.
In 1571, he was engaged to teach music at the Collegio Germanico to interested boarders at a salary of 15
giulios (a giulio was about 1/100
th
of a scudo). In 1573, college authorities decided to separate the Italian
boarders from the German seminarians, and there was a parting ceremony. Victoria composed a piece for
it, Super flumina Babylonis (one of his biggest hits), and Victoria’s pupils and others sang the eight-part
psalm. (The psalm, number 137, speaks of the sadness of Jews exiled from Jerusalem.) After the separation,
Victoria taught the German seminarians, with Latin as their mutual language. He was appointed maestro di
cappella and paid two scudi a month, increasing to three in 1574 (from $0.12 to $0.18).
In 1574, the college was given the Apollinare as their new home and the adjoining church, on the condition
that the student body sing the entire Office on at least 20 days of the church year. Victoria stayed until the
end of 1576. He graduated into the priesthood and was ordained deacon by the last pre-Reformation
English Bishop, Thomas Goldwell (d.1585).
In 1591, he became godfather to his niece, Isabel de Victoria, his brother’s child.
When Victoria arrived in Rome in 1565, other Spaniards, such as Cristobal Morales (c1500-1553) and
Francisco Guerrero (1528-1589, biography coming shortly), were already working to perfect the
Netherlandish style. Victoria worked on this too, and may have studied with Palestrina at the nearby
Roman Seminary. He succeeded Palestrina there as choirmaster in 1571 and held the same post at the
Collegio Germanico from 1573 to 1578.
He was a singer and organist at Saint Maria di Monserrato from 1569 until at least 1574 and he joined a
chaplaincy at Saint Giralamo della Carita in 1578. He stayed until 1585. During those years, he published
five sumptuous volumes containing hymns, Magnificat settings, Masses, an Office for Holy Week, and an
anthology of motets. In the last of these five collections, there were also two motets by Guerrero and
another by the Italian Francesco Soriano (c1548-1621).
From 1579 until 1585, his income came largely from five Spanish benefaces conferred by Pope Gregory XIII
(1502-1585), which earned him 307 ducats a year (a ducat is worth 1.09 scudi, so $20.08). He further
increased his income by occasionally serving at Saint Giacomo degli Spagnoli, who gave him four scudi
($0.24) for Corpus Christi services. In 1579, he received six scudi ($0.36), and 60 baiocchi (not quite $0.04)
and in 1580, nine scudie and 60 biaocchi (about $0.58). In 1582, he and a number of choristers received
nine scudi ($0.54) for singing at the celebration of the victory by Spanish naval forces at the Battle of
Terceira in the Azores.
In 1577, he was ordained as a priest and joined the Oratory of Saint Filippo Neri. He also took up a
chaplaincy at San Girolamo della Carita. He resigned in 1578 and went on to work as a priest at Saint
Girolamo della Carita.
In the dedication to Philip II in his Missarum libri duo (1583), Victoria expressed a desire to return to Spain
and lead a quiet life as a priest. In response, the king named him chaplain to his sister, the Dowager
Empress Maria, daughter of Charles V, wife of Maximilian II, and mother of two other emperors, and who,
from 1581, lived in retirement with her daughter, Princess Margarita at the Monasterio de las Descalzas de
Sainte Clara, in Madrid.
The convent was established in 1564 by Juana de la Cruz, sister of Saint Francisco de Borja, and was
liberally endowed by Charles V’s daughter Juana, who married John III of Portugal. The 33 cloistered nuns
there heard Mass daily in an elegant small chapel, attended by priests who were required to be
accomplished singers of plainchant and polyphony. Victoria served the dowager empress at the convent
from 1585 until her death in 1603, with an annual salary of 120 ducats ($7.20). He stayed on, serving the
Empress’ daughter and as maestro of the convent choir until 1604.
Life at the convent was pretty good, and no cathedral job could tempt him. In 1587, he turned down
invitations to Seville and Saragossa, for instance. But that doesn’t mean that he lived in ignominy. The elite
in Madrid often went to services at the convent, where Victoria’s works were a regular feature.
In 1592, he was granted an extended leave to supervise the printing of his Missae liber secundis in Rome,
which he dedicated to Empress Maria’s son Cardinal Alberto.
In 1593, his motet Surge Debora et loquere canticum was performed by his alma mater, the Collegio
Germanico, in his presence during Mass and Vespers at Saint Apollinare to celebrate the defeat of the Turks
at Sisak. He joined the cortege at Palastrina’s funeral in 1594 not returning to Madrid until 1595.
In 1598, he engaged a man to produce 200 copies of a collection of polychoral Masses, Magnificat settings,
motets and psalms in partbooks, all of which eventually appeared in 1600. The printer was paid 2500 reales
(about $188 in today’s money—a reale was a “piece of eight” and worth roughly the equivalent of a
Colonial dollar), in three installments, was allowed an additional 100 copies to sell, 12 months after
publication. The Masses of this collection were very popular at the time, but are rarely performed today.
The nine-part Missa pro Victoria was a favorite work of Philip III, the eight-part Missa Ave regina coelorum
and Missa Alma Redemptoris mater were so popular in Mexico City that, by 1640, they had to be recopied
by hand because the original part books had worn out.
When Empress Maria died, she bequeathed three chaplaincies to the convent, one of which went to
Victoria. Most of his income derived, however, from numerous simple benefices which had grown, by 1605,
to 1227 ducats ($73.62) through the addition of pensions from the dioceses of Cordoba, Segovia, Siguenza,
Toledo, and Zamora.
From 1601 until his death, Victoria held the less arduous post of organist at the convent chapel. As a
chaplain, he enjoyed a luxurious life, including a personal servant, meals served in his private quarters
adjacent to the convent, and a month’s holiday every year. Chaplains were required to participate in the
daily singing of two Masses. When Victoria arrived, the choir had 12 priests (three to a part) and four boys.
Instrumentalists were engaged for special occasions, like Easter and Corpus Christi. In 1604, a royal decree
provided for a bassoonist, who was to play in all musical services, and for two clergymen chosen for their
excellent voices and to replace three of the foundation’s 12 chaplains. At the same time, the number of
choirboys increased to six. They were required to practice daily and to learn plainsong, polyphony, and
counterpoint from the maestro--Victoria.
Victoria or his agents sent sets of his music to such distant places as Graz, Austria, Urbino, Italy, and Bogota,
Columbia. In accompanying letters, he asked for contributions to cover printing costs and in at least one
instance, solicited money to secure the release of a younger brother from prison! His strong family ties
were especially evident during the last years of his life when two of his brothers and two of his sisters also
lived in Madrid. One of the brothers, Agustin, had one of the three chaplaincies of the Descalzas convent.
Victoria wrote 20 Masses, of which 11 are parody Masses on his own motets. He didn’t write any parodies
on secular motets, not even the very popular L’Homme arme, like most of his contemporaries. There are 16
Magnificat settings, eight that begin with Anima mea and include only the odd-numbered verses, and eight
beginning with Et exultavit and including only the even-numbered verses—the other verses are to be
performed in their plainchant form. Six of the 16 Magnificats were in print by 1576 and the rest by 1581.
He wrote 32 hymns in four voices, in which, unlike Palestrina, he left the odd-numbered stanzas in
plainsong and wrote polyphony for the even-numbered ones. Although he didn’t write any madrigals, his
motets show the influence of them. He also wrote about 50 motets (sacred madrigals), 13 antiphons, eight
psalms, and three sequences. (Antiphons, pslams, and sequences are movements of the Ordinary—not the
Kyrie, Sanctus, etc.—that are sung to punctuate various activities during the Mass service, such as before
and after the readings.)
He wrote exclusively Latin sacred music. Most was printed in his lifetime. In 1600, a sumptuous collection
of 32 of Victoria’s most popular Masses, Magnificats, psalms, and motets was printed in Madrid.
When Felix Mendelssohn sang Victoria’s St. John’s Passion on Good Friday in 1831, he wrote to his teacher
and complained. He really didn’t like the scene where the crowd calls for Christ’s execution, thinking it not
energetic enough. This same music has been criticized more recently as being too dramatic.
Like Palestrina, Victoria wrote in a serious, devotional style, often responding emotionally in the texts with
dramatic word-painting. Some of his more poignant pieces are characterized by a sort of mystical fervor.
Also like Palestrina, Victoria strove to write religious music that truly served the purpose of the liturgy,
providing a stimulus to prayer and an accompaniment to ritual while remembering that music was not the
most important part of worship. This attitude endured in Rome long after the rest of the Catholic world
yielded to the brilliance of Baroque church music in the next century.
His hymns often use soaring contrapuntal limes against a plainsong cantus firmus, while the Masses are
mostly of the parody type. (For more on parody, see Composer Biography: Bartolomeo da Balogna.)
Victoria was less prolific than Palestrina or Lassus. He had a habit of reissuing works that he’d already
published. He also succeeded in publishing the entirety of his work, unlike Palestrina, and most other
composers of the period.
Poignancy and mystical fervor weren’t the only hallmarks of Victoria’s work, although they are the
predominant ones. He was the master at overlapping and dividing choirs with multiple parts and a gradual
lessening of rhythmic distance. Not only does he incorporate the voices in an intricate way, but the organ is
treated like a soloist rather than accompaniment or support. John IV of Portugal (1604-1666) mentioned
Victoria’s liberal use of instruments doubling vocal parts, and confirmed that the practice was widespread
in Spain.
Victoria claimed that he composed his most creative works under his patron Otto, Cardinal von Truchsess
(1514-1573) but it wasn’t all flowers and unicorns. During his years with King of Spain Philip II (1527-1598),
Victoria expressed exhaustion from composing. Most of the works he dedicated to Cardinal Michele Bonelli
(1541-1598), Philip II, or Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) weren’t properly paid for.
Victoria doesn’t use counterpoint, like many of his contemporaries, keeping his lines simple and with
homophonic textures, but still including rhythmic variety and occasional intense and surprising contrasts.
He uses dissonance more freely than Palestrina, sometimes using intervals that are prohibited by the strict
application of 16
th
century counterpoint, such as ascending sixths or diminished fourths. He sometimes
uses dramatic word painting, like that usually found in madrigals.
His use of chromatic harmonies lies in the direction of what later periods called passing modulations rather
than sudden chordal contrasts. Another striking characteristic is his use of repeated notes, which was a
quasi-dramatic device used effectively much later, by early 17
th
century composers, particularly Claudio
Monteverdi (1567-1643), was to stress the importance of a word. Victoria’s best-known motet O vos omnes
contains many examples of this practice.
His music moves by step more often than leaps, and he uses spaced harmonic euphony that produces a
sense of timelessness by the absence of marked rhythm and only gentle dissonance.
Joquin dez Pres’ (c1440-1521) Mass Pange lingua used this too, but in Victoria’s (and Palestrina’s), it’s all-
pervading, incantatory—some might say that it’s the ideal music of mystical faith, totally purged of human
emotions and vanity.
There are 20 authentic Masses by Victoria, all published in his lifetime. Fifteen of these are parodies and
four are paraphrases (Ave maris stella, De Beata Maria, Pro defunctis of 1583, and the Mass sections of the
Officium defunctorum). He modeled eight Masses on his own motets, but sparsely, rather than treating it as
a theme. He also based Masses on his own antiphons and psalms.
Eleven of his 20 Masses are parodies of his own motets, and none have secular models. His most famous
work is the Office of Holy Week (1585), which includes polyphonic settings of all the Proper chant texts
from Palm Sunday to Easter. Much of this music displays a mystical passion that has been compared with
the writings of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591).
Victoria wrote three Masses based on his own Marian antiphons, Salve Regina, Alma Redemptoris, and Ave
Regina, and he wrote the Missa Laetatus sum based on his own psalm.
Three other parody Masses were based on works by Guerrero, Morales, and Palestrina. Probably his most
famous Mass, the Missa pro Victoria is one of several Spanish battle Masses based on Frenchman Clement
Janequin’s (c1485-1558) La guerre. Victoria wrote the piece in 1600, breaking from traditional church music
by using an organ as one of the voices.
Most of his Masses are imitation Masses, based on his own motets, including Missa O magnum
mysterium’s Kyrie, which is based on his own O magnum mysterium motet. At the opening of the Kyrie,
Victoria preserves the paired entrances of the motet but changes them from almost exact imitation into a
dialog between two subjects. Compared to Palestrina’s work, Victoria’s Kyrie is remarkably brief. In the
other movements of the Mass, Victoria reworks material from his motet in a new way, exemplifying the
high value placed on variety that was a consistent feature of polyphonic Mass cycles.
Victoria’s “swan song” as he himself termed it, was a six-voice Officium defunctorum, written for the
funeral of the Empress Maria in 1603 and published in Madrid in 1605 with a dedication to Princess
Margaret.
Victoria’s Passions were performed in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week for over 300 years. They’re
probably the most known polyphonic settings of the Latin words. (I can hear you screaming “What about
Bach’s settings????” You have to remember that Bach was a Lutheran. Things might have relaxed a little
nowadays, but back then, it was a very clearly drawn line and you couldn’t sing a Lutheran’s work in the
Vatican.)
Victoria is considered the first Spanish composer to master Palestrina’s style of polyphony, but his music
departs from it in several respects: Victoria’s tends to be shorter, with fewer florid melodies, more frequent
cadences, more chromatic alterations, and more contrasting passages in homophony and triple meter. All
of these characteristics are evident in his best known work, the Magnificat, O magnum mysterium.
Despite their perfection, Victoria’s Magnificat settings never found as much favor in Spain or its colonies as
did those of Morales or Guerrero. They were, however, quite popular in Italy long after their printed copies
were exhausted.
Victoria’s Lamentations are aptly sorrowful, and reveal the most of his Spanish traits. In accordance with
both Spanish and Roman traditions, they’re mainly chordal, but Victoria varied the textures and contrasted
high and low voices with great ingenuity. The responsories are mainly homophonic (with a single voice
carrying the melody and the rest providing supporting chords), but the St. Matthew Passion, for Palm
Sunday contains some contrapuntal writing, including canon.
His Holy Week Offices contain the famous Tenebrae Responsories that have heartrending and intense
melodies while the text repeats.
Victoria’s posthumous reputation has largely rested on some of his earliest motets, and on the Officium
defunctorum of 1605, composed on the death of Empress Maria. O vos omnes and Vere languores nostros
have a poignancy rarely encountered in other music of the period.
Despite his ability to create a somber mood, his reputation was sunny. Victoria reveals his cheery
disposition in the parody Masses that he based on his own motets. There were seven like this: Ascendens
Christus, Dum complerentur, O magnum mysterium, O quam gloriosum, Quam pulchri sunt, Trahe me post
te, and Vidi speciosam. The Masses are parodies of the motets for Ascension, Pentecost, the Circumcision,
All Saints, the Conception, any Lady feast, and the Assumption. Five of these end with joyful Alleluias.
He composed four settings of Salve Regina (two for four voices, one for six voices, and one for eight), and
two each of Alma Redemptoris, Ave Regina, and Regina caeli (one on five and one in eight voices for each).
Yay! I love the Marian plainchant antiphons the best, and it’s clear that Victoria did too. How different the
four settings of the Salve Regina are from each other is also noteworthy because they are all in the same
mode, based on the same plainsong. They were popular in their own day and continued to be popular into
the 17
th
century. They were also popular in Italy in his own lifetime.
Like his Magnificats, Victoria’s hymns have been less popular than they deserve to be. He provided
polyphony for the even-numbered strophes where Palestrina did the same for the odd ones. Victoria,
unlike Guerrero and Palestrina, never used canon. In fact, sometimes, he’d reduce the number of voices
from four to three, and then bring the fourth voice back for a full sound at the conclusion.
Victoria didn’t begin the development of psalm settings or antiphons for two choirs, but he furthered its
popularity. All of Victorias published psalms are polychoral. The Laetatus sum is for three choirs and is also
unique in that they begin in triple meter, where the others only end with triple. His Liber primus of 1576
contains Nisi Dominus (Psalm 126) and Super flumina Babylonis (Psalm 136), two of his most often-
performed works. He set all the verses in polyphony (the fashion of the tine was to alternate with
plainchant), and to avoid any monotony in these through-composed pieces, he also alternated choirs. In
the longer psalms, he included some verses for a single choir of soloists.
When he reprinted his Psalms in 1600, he added an organ part that duplicates, and on occasion simplifies,
the vocal parts for the first choir. The substitution of the organ for the first choir made it possible for
smaller musical establishments to perform it. For larger venues, the organ added an extra bit of flavor.
Victoria died near the convent in the chaplains’ residence in 1611. He was buried at the convent, but his
tomb has not been identified.
Sources
“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.
“The Encyclopedia of Music,” by Max Wade Matthews and Wendy Thompson. Lorenz Books, Leicestershire,
2012.
“The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music,” edited by Stanley Sadie. W.W. Norton & Co., New York,
1994.
“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W> Norton
& Co., New York, 2010.
“The Pelican History of Music, Part 2: Renaissance and Baroque,” edited by Alec Robertson and Denis
Stevens. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973.
“The Pelican History of Music, Part 1: Ancient Forms to Polyphony,” edited by Denis Stevens and Alec
Robertson. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1960.
“A Dictionary of Early Music, from the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford
University Press, New York, 1981.
“Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music,” by Don Michael Randel. Belknap Press of Harvard University,
Cambridge, 1978.
“The New Grove High Renaissance Masters,” by Jeremy Noble, Gustave Reese, Lewis Lockwood, Jessie Anne
Owens, James Haar, Joseph Kerman, and Robert Stevenson. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1984.
“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton & David Fallows. University of
California Press, Berkeley, 1997.
“Music in the Renaissance,” by Gustave Reese. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1959.