Dip Your Ears, No. 233 / Ionarts CD of the Month (The New Victoria Standard)

Tomás Luis de Victoria, Tenebrae Responsories (from Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae) stile antico Harmonia Mundi

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) is known to a wider audience for his magnificent six-part Requiem. The Tenebrae responsories, eighteen motets for four voices a cappella, are not as relatively lush but they make for a sparse, serious late renaissance delight that early-music buffs will gladly embrace. This is territory already traveled by the pioneering Tallis Scholars (Gimell) who were so many a listener’s introduction to the world of Victoria and his contemporaries. For the emotional footprint the 'Tallisians' have left, they are still the reference. But 28 years haven’t passed without advances among early music acapella ensembles and Stile Antico is one of those groups that are setting the present-day standard.

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