The Spanish priest Tomas Luis de Victoria was, along with Lassus and Palestrina, one of the triumvirate of great composers working in Rome at the end of the 16th century. He returned home to Spain to serve as private chaplain for the Empress Maria, whose death in 1603 inspired Victoria to write his finest work, the six-part Officium Defunctorum, or Requiem. This performance of the Requiem Mass aimed to place it in something close to its original context by interspersing Victoria’s polyphonic movements with the proper plainsong chants.
