As with other composers of the 16th century, recordings of the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria have begun to explore the large undiscovered repertory beyond his magnificent short motets that put a somber cast over the restrained Palestrina style. The Spanish (mostly Catalan) group La Colombina, which is a vocal quartet, recorded several albums of Victoria works, organized into loose categories of liturgical uses but not presenting specific liturgical reconstructions. The one-voice-per-part performances are not ideal: even ...
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As with other composers of the 16th century, recordings of the music of Tomás Luis de Victoria have begun to explore the large undiscovered repertory beyond his magnificent short motets that put a somber cast over the restrained Palestrina style. The Spanish (mostly Catalan) group La Colombina, which is a vocal quartet, recorded several albums of Victoria works, organized into loose categories of liturgical uses but not presenting specific liturgical reconstructions. The one-voice-per-part performances are not ideal: even if there is evidence that Victoria's music was performed this way, that does not constitute evidence that such performances were desirable, and Victoria's ultimate model, the Sistine Chapel Choir, had 24 singers. But La Colombina's singing is tonally precise and free of madrigalisms, and it does not constitute a major distraction. The recording was made in 1997, and both the engineering (from a wonderful small Baroque church in French Catalonia) and the repertory have held up well. It...
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