The Masses of Victoria

The mystic does not walk the heavens. He moves on earth among earth-saddened men, though his ear is attuned to God. Teresa was a saint—and a highly practical woman. John of the Cross knew that the dark night of the soul was fallible man’s only answer to the incandescent fires of Hell—but his feet touched the baked soil and sharp stones of the Castilian plain. Tomas Luis de Victoria found the mystic’s way—but his music reached out to people as they aspired to God. All three were of Avila—Castilian in the austerity of their passion.

That they were contemporaries says something for the Spain of Philip II. It says far more for that outpouring of art which can occur only within the liberating discipline of tradition. Victoria, who knew Saint Teresa and may have known John, was a choirmaster and a writer of masses. His music was the logical and emotional response to the Council of Trent, which sought to eradicate from the liturgy a prevailing secular influence. Unlike his great musical contemporaries — Palestrina, for example—he never transposed for religious use the popular melodies of the day but derived his cantus firmus from the older and richer chant of the Church.

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Ralph de Toledano

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The mystic does not walk the heavens. He moves on earth among earth-saddened men, though his ear is attuned to God. Teresa was a saint—and a highly practical woman. John of the Cross knew that the dark night of the soul was fallible man’s only answer to the incandescent fires of Hell—but his feet touched the baked soil and sharp stones of the Castilian plain. Tomas Luis de Victoria found the mystic’s way—but his music reached out to people as they aspired to God. All three were of Avila—Castilian in the austerity of their passion.

That they were contemporaries says something for the Spain of Philip II. It says far more for that outpouring of art which can occur only within the liberating discipline of tradition. Victoria, who knew Saint Teresa and may have known John, was a choirmaster and a writer of masses. His music was the logical and emotional response to the Council of Trent, which sought to eradicate from the liturgy a prevailing secular influence. Unlike his great musical contemporaries — Palestrina, for example—he never transposed for religious use the popular melodies of the day but derived his cantus firmus from the older and richer chant of the Church.