Everything about Officium Defunctorum totally explained
Officium Defunctorum is a musical setting of the
Office of the Dead composed by the
Spanish Renaissance composer,
Tomás Luis de Victoria in 1603.
Officium Defunctorum includes a setting of the
Requiem Mass, which accounts for about 26 minutes of the 42 minute composition; the piece is often referred to as
Victoria's Requiem.
History
Officium Defunctorum was composed for the funeral of the Dowager
Empress Maria, sister of
Philip II of
Spain, daughter of
Charles V, wife of
Maximilian II and mother of two emperors; it was dedicated to Princess Margaret for “the obsequies of your most revered mother”. The Empress Maria died on February 26, 1603 and the great obsequies were performed on April 22 and 23. Victoria was employed as personal chaplain to the Empress Maria from 1586 to the time of her death.
Victoria published eleven volumes of his music during his lifetime, representing the majority of his compositional output.
Officium Defunctorum, the only work to be published by itself, was the eleventh volume and the last work Victoria published. The date of publication, 1605, is often included with the title to differentiate the
Officium Defunctorum from Victoria's other setting of the Requiem Mass (in 1583, Victoria composed and published a book of Masses (Reprinted in 1592) including a
Missa pro defunctis for four-part choir).
Structure
Officium Defunctorum is scored for six-part
SSATTB chorus. It includes an entire Office of the Dead: in addition to a Requiem Mass, Victoria sets an extra-liturgical funeral
motet, a lesson that belongs to
Matins (scored for only SATB and not always included in concert performances), and the ceremony of
Absolution which follows the Mass.
Polyphonic sections are separated by unaccompanied
chant incipits Victoria printed himself. The Soprano II usually carries the
cantus firmus, though "it very often disappears into the surrounding part-writing since the chant doesn't move as slowly as most cantus firmus parts and the polyphony doesn't generally move very fast." The sections of the work are as follows:
- Taedet animam meam » Second Lesson of Matins (Job 10:1-7)
- Missa Pro Defunctis (Mass for the Dead) » With the Council of Trent, the liturgy of the Requiem Mass was standardized. Victoria sets all of the Requiem Mass sections except the Dies Irae sequence.
- Versa est in luctum cithara mea (Funeral motet)
- The Absolution: Responsory
- Libera me (includes Dies irae)
- Kyrie
Other Officium Defunctorum
Late in his career,
Jan Dismas Zelenka, a czech late baroque composer, composed an Officium Defunctorum, but with different structure.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Officium Defunctorum'.
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