HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In 1587, King Philip II. honoured the desire of the homesick Thomás Luis de Victoria––the finest composer that Spain ever produced––to work as chaplain for his sister, the Dowager Empress María of Austria, who had been living in retirement with her daughter Princess Margaret at the Monasterio de las Descalzas de S. Clara at Madrid from 1581.   Empress María was daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. of the House of Habsburg, widow of Emperor Maximilian II., and mother of two additional emperors.  She died on February 26^th, 1603, and Victoria composed the Officium Defunctorum for her obsequies, which were performed on April 22^nd and 23^rd 1603, almost exactly 419 years before to-day’s performance. 

Victoria published eleven volumes of his music during his lifetime, representing the majority of his compositional output.  The Officium Defunctorum, the only work to be published by itself, forms the eleventh volume and the last work that he published.  It was dedicated to Princess Margaret, who was a nun in the same convent as her mother, for “ the obsequies of your most reverend mother.”  The date of publication, 1605, is often included with the title to differentiate it from Victoria’s other setting of the Requiem Mass from 1583.  Victoria preferred the solitary life of a composer to the public life of a performer, and he faithfully remained in his post as chaplain and organist at the Royal Convent until his death in August of 1611 at the age of 53, refusing all accolades and never accepting any extra pay for his duties as chapelmaster, despite being one of the most sought-after composers of his time. 

Victoria’s 1605 Requiem is among the best-loved and most-performed musical works of the Renaissance, and is often held to be ‘ a Requiem for an age ’, representing the summation of golden-age Spanish polyphony from the twilight of the Renaissance period.

This requiem was offered in loving memory of Mrs. John McLaren.