VICTORIA Tenebrae Responsories
Tenebrae sing Victoria at St Alban the Martyr, Holborn
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Tomás Luis de Victoria
Genre:
Vocal
Label: Signature
Magazine Review Date: 12/2013
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 72
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: SIGCD344
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae Tenebrae Responsories |
Tomás Luis de Victoria, Composer
Nigel Short, Director Tenebrae Tomás Luis de Victoria, Composer |
Author: Alexandra Coghlan
The Tenebrae services of Easter Week see Christianity at its most bleak. And just as the comfort of light is denied to worshippers, so Victoria’s musical settings of the Responsories for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday refuse to veil the pain of their texts. The challenge of music that sustains a single mood is to discover textural shades within the shadows.
Short and his 13 singers achieve this both by alternating full sections with those for reduced forces (an upper-voices verse section in ‘O vos omnes’ is particularly exquisite), and by less orthodox processes. Many movements sit unusually high, finding a silvered quality to the sound lacking in other recordings, while ‘Tenebrae factae sunt’ is transposed down and performed by men’s voices alone, evoking the sudden darkness of the Crucifixion.
Tenebrae’s signature blend (already showcased this year in their recording of Victoria’s more expansive Lamentations – Archiv, 6/13) comes into its own here in the Responsories. The heart of the cycle – the imploring ‘Si est dolor’ – is almost impossibly charged, its balance of vocal fragility and tensile strength discovering the emotional paradox at the core of this music.
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