MAESTROS DEL SIGLO DE ORO
Cristóbal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero, Tomás Luis de Victoria

Referència: AVSA9867

• La Capella Reial de Catalunya
• Hespèrion XX
• Jordi Savall

The liturgy of the Dead – including the Requiem Mass, the Burial Service and the Office of the dead, properly speaking – was granted considerable importance by the Spanish ecclesiastical authorities and by the local church composers from very early times. Throughout the Middle Ages, according to the extant documentary descriptions, the death of a great Lord, such as the Count of Barcelona or the sovereign of any of the Spanish kingdoms of León, Castile, Aragon or Navarre, was usually mourned with impressive ceremonies in which the solemnity of the liturgy was often enhanced by the addition of the planctus, a kind of lengthy optional lament that was sung monophonically and of which several examples have survived.

When the Requiem Mass began to be set polyphonically in the late 15th century, following the examples of Dufay and Ockeghem, Spanish musicians were among the first to adopt this practice in a systematic way, and thus nearly every great Iberian composer of the 16th century, starting with Pedro de Escobar and Juan Garda de Basurto, has left us at least one polyphonic setting of the Missa pro defunctis. The atmosphere of brooding mysticism that dominated so much of Spanish culture during this period as a result of the spiritual turmoil and the crisis of values into which Europe had plunged since the outbreak of the Reformation was to have a direct influence upon this question. In fact, the highly dramatic content of the texts of the Requiem seemed to cover all the topics that polarized the great fears and doubts of 16th-century Man: the rapid passage of time, the transitory nature of earthly life, the contrasting mysteries of mortality and eternity, the guilt experienced by a soul facing God, the harshness of the last judgement and the human plea for divine mercy.

+ information in the CD booklet

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