However, his fortunes are changing. When, just a couple of years ago, my colleagues in the Orchestra of the Renaissance and I decided that Vivanco’s glorious motet Veni dilecti mi should go at the head of our Song of Songs CD of sixteenth-century Spanish polyphony (Glossa GCD 921403), even we were a little surprised at the warmth of the reaction. Here was a piece that, in performance, surprised even some colleagues who had known it on paper for years. We were convinced that we should all hear more of maestro Vivanco, and our new all-Vivanco disc for Glossa (GCD 921403) is an attempt to meet that need.

Master Musicæ

Though we hope the balance will shift at least a little in Vivanco’s favour, an accident of birth will ensure that the temptation to compare him with Victoria will never disappear. Victoria was born in Ávila in 1548 and was a choirboy in the cathedral there until around 1565, when he was sent away to study in Rome. On the evidence of the title page of one of his own publications, where he is described as “abulensis”, Vivanco was also born in Ávila; and, though his exact date of birth is not known, it is likely that he was no more than two or three years younger than Victoria. Moreover, it is usually assumed that the two boys knew each other and sang together in the capilla of Ávila cathedral.

Vivanco was also born in Ávila; and, though his exact date of birth is not known, it is likely that he was no more than two or three years younger than Victoria. Moreover, it is usually assumed that the two boys knew each other and sang together in the capilla of Ávila cathedral.

Ávila cathedral was one of the great musical institutions of the late-medieval Spanish Church. Most of the music heard in the magnificent building, as elsewhere in that era was the immemorial plainsong of the liturgy, under the direction of a singer known as the sochantre. However, Ávila was also served during the sixteenth-century by a professional polyphonic choir, or capilla, of as many as ten priest-singers, a core of talented boy choristers (known as the Seises, or “the six”, on account of their original number), an organist (a new large organ had been installed there in the late 1520s, replacing a number of small medieval instruments), and an ensemble of ministriles, instrumentalists who added the sounds of era shawms and sackbuts to Mass and Vespers on Sundays and great feasts. The polyphonic music was under the direction of the maestro de capilla, himself a priest and singer. Long before Vivanco’s time, in the mid 1520s, the young Cristóbal de Morales, served as maestro at Ávila, before departing for Rome and the Papal Choir. Vivanco, too, would eventually come to be remembered as one of the great ma-estros of the cathedral of his home town.

Though we have no firm information concerning Vivanco’s boyhood years, it is possible to recapture some of the detail of a chorister’s life in Ávila in the 1550s and 1560s. Vivanco would have been only eight or nine when the Ávila cathedral chapter elected the composer Bernardino de Ribera (c.1520-c.1572) as its new maestro de capilla. This was in 1559, and he must have found the cathedral’s musical resources somewhat depleted. Within a year, those of the cathedral’s altar boys able to sing polyphony were being granted special privileges to encourage their talent. Not only were they given monetary incentive in the form of three extra ducats in pay annually, but they were also excused attendance at the long early morning service of Matins which was usually sung entirely in plainsong.

For boys like Victoria and Vivanco, undoubtedly raised to become members of the Seises, their special duties included participating in the polyphonic works performed on Sundays and Saints’ feast days at High Mass in the morning, and Vespers in the evening. Unfortunately, none of the manuscript choir books of polyphonic music in use at Ávila during the middle of the century have survived. However, from a list of books owned by the cathedral in the mid-sixteenth century, we do know that they included Masses by the great Flemish composers Josquin and Noel Bauldeweyn. In addition, it is likely that the music they sang included Masses, Magnificats and motets not only by Ribera, but also by Morales, who since his own Ávila days had gone on to become the pre-eminent Spanish master of the age. For instance, in 1550 Ribera’s predecessor as maestro, Gerónimo de Espinar, acquired for the cathedral choir a copy of Morales’s great collection of Magnificats, printed in Venice in 1545.

When Ribera left Ávila in 1563 to take up a post as maestro at Toledo cathedral, Victoria and Vivanco would both have been senior choirboys. Their new master, in the couple of years left before their voices broke, was Juan Navarro (c.1530-1580). Navarro, a one-time protégé of Morales, was probably a far more important influence than Ribera on the young Vivanco. It was conceivably from Navarro, a composer, according to Victoria’s friend Francisco de Soto, of “supreme erudition” that Vivanco inherited a lifelong love for contriving ingenious canons. In particular, Navarro’s wonderfully artful Magnificat settings composed during the 1560s and 1570s seem to have served as models for Vivanco’s own later settings of the same text. There is no doubt that Navarro and his music were highly prized at Ávila, for when in 1566 he was offered a post at Salamanca cathedral, the Ávila authorities offered to raise his salary handsomely if he would agree to remain in Ávila for life. Their ploy failed, however, and Navarro became Salamanca maestro, a post Vivanco himself would occupy some forty years later. Meanwhile, by 1566, Vivanco’s voice was on the verge of breaking, and in the coming years his studies must have been directed (like Victoria’s) toward training for the priesthood.

Ávila, Lérida, Segovia

By his mid-twenties, Vivanco had left Ávila and his native Castile for Catalonia, where, as a cleric still in sub deacon’s orders, he was for a while maestro de capilla at the cathedral in Lérida, presumably his first official posting.

At Lérida, Vivanco received his initiation into the profession he would practice for the rest of his life. As maestro, he had charge of all the polyphonic music performed in the cathedral, and was also responsible for the musical training and education of the elect group of boy singers, the seises (as distinct from the larger body of altar boys who participated only in the singing of plainsong). Every maestro (no matter how inexperienced) was also expected to be a composer, and by tradition was required, annually, to provide occasional motets and Christmas villancicos for performance in his cathedral. Vivanco’s tenure at Lérida came to an abrupt and unexplained end on 4 July 1576. He was summarily dismissed by the cabildo (the cathedral chapter, its governing body); however, lest anyone assume gross misconduct on his part, the Lérida authorities noted that the dismissal, though just, was “for causes that do not affect his honour”. And, indeed, he must have returned to Castile with his reputation intact, for by February 1577 he had been appointed to the more prestigious and well-paid post of cathedral maestro at Segovia. Vivanco, who had presumably returned to nearby Ávila in the interim, received a relocation allowance of 50 ducados, and on the proceeds of this he and his mother (his father presumably having died already) moved to Segovia in March.

Vivanco remained in Segovia for the next ten years. He was raised to the diaconate and then ordained priest there in 1581, but otherwise we know little more about his activities there than at Lérida. From records of bonus payments he received for special music on feast days, we know he was valued as a composer, though none of his compositions can be positively dated to this time. We can be sure, however, that it was a period of marked change in the life of any Spanish maestro.

Gradually, during the mid 1570s, the traditional medieval diocesan liturgies of all the Spanish cathedrals were superseded by the reformed Roman Missal and Breviary, books promulgated for universal use in the Catholic Church in the wake of the Council of Trent. Vivanco became especially attuned to the contents of the new Missal, for many of the motets he published later in life draw directly upon texts found in it. Vivanco also knew and chose to perform at Segovia music by other Spaniards tailored to the new liturgies. Pre-eminent among them was the great Liber vesperarum of Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), published in 1584. Vivanco bought a copy of this book from Guerrero for the Segovia choir early in 1585.

Between Seville and Ávila

In mid-1587 Vivanco received an invitation from the elderly and eminent Guerrero himself to come to Seville to work as his assistant there, and in particular to take over the training of the seises. At around the same time, however, he was also invited to become maestro de capilla of Ávila, his hometown. For the next eight months, he was courted by the cathedral chapters in both towns. A welter of documentary references reflect his indecision. Though he had accepted the Ávila post by the end of July, he was soon using a counter offer from Seville to bargain for better terms and conditions. To their credit, the Ávila chapter made every effort to retain the services of a man who was already proving “an ornament to the cathedral”. In doing so, they noted especially “his eminence as a musician, and his willingness to do more than is contractually required of him”. Since they could not match the salary offer from Seville, the Ávila authorities responded by granting Vivanco a more senior prebend than that usually assigned to the maestro, with rights and privileges similar to those of a cathedral canon. Despite this, Vivanco elected to make the journey south to Seville early in 1588, to spend a trial period in the post there. For a week or two he gave every appearance of wanting to settle. However, on 17 March he petitioned the Seville chapter for payment to cover his expenses for returning to Ávila for good.

Vivanco then remained in Ávila for over a decade and records of his activities there, with one notable exception, are scarce. Thanks to a splendid account of the translation of Ávila’s patron saint Segundo published by Antonio de Cianca in 1595, we have a very detailed account of the ten days of celebration that accompanied this remarkable event in September of 1594. In addition to the processions, bullfights, fireworks, and theatrical presentations, Cianca provides precious details about the performance of liturgical music while Vivanco was maestro de capilla. To take but one example, Cianca provides the following details of the Pontifical Mass celebrated at the cathedral on the Feast of san Segundo: “On the same feast, the bishop celebrated pontifical mass with much music for three choirs: one choir comprising the organ and six singers, another of minstrels and a further six singers, and a third choir made up of the rest of the chapel and located in another part, all three choirs playing and singing motets, instrumental pieces, and other kinds of music, all with great skill”. A recent issue of Goldberg (No. 10) highlighted an opinion that “the evidence that instruments doubled vocal lines in Spain is fairly scant”. Such views surely need to be moderated in the face of detailed eyewitness accounts of instrumentalists and voices performing the same pieces.

We cannot be sure about Vivanco’s compositional activity in Ávila, but it does seem likely that a significant proportion of the three huge retrospective collections of compositions he published late in life was composed there. Certainly a number of hymns, possibly composed during these years, do still exist in a very late copy (dated 1796) at Ávila.

Vivanco left his hometown for a second time in 1602, when he moved to became maestro de capilla of Salamanca cathedral, following the footsteps of his former master Navarro almost forty years earlier. This was the last and most significant move of his career, and musically it is the best documented. Indeed, apart from a handful of compositions surviving in manuscript, the great corpus of his music is traceable to three publications (books respectively of Magnificats, Masses, and motets) that Vivanco saw through the presses at Salamanca between the years 1607 and 1610. Before then, on 19 February 1603 he won a public competition to become professor of music at Salamanca University, and was duly awarded an honorary degree of Master of Arts on the following 4 March. At the university he was required to lecture on both theoretical and practical aspects of music, and one of his few known international contacts dates from this time.

In 1606, the Dublin-born Jesuit priest and musical theorist William Bathe (1564-1614) settled in Salamanca. Previously a tutor to Elizabeth I and author of a musical primer, A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Song (London, 1596), Bathe spent his late years in Salamanca at work on a language tutor, Janua linguarum, which appeared in print in 1611, the year after Vivanco completed his own publishing enterprise. Vivanco continued to hold both cathedral and university posts until his death in Salamanca on 26 October 1622, though again we have no sure information concerning his final years. Nor do we know if, after publishing the great retrospective collection of his works, he continued to compose in the decade and more left to him.

It is probably only due to an historical accident that the bulk of Vivanco’s music has survived at all. From 1602 until his death in 1610, the Antwerp publisher, Artus Taberniel, was official printer to the university in Salamanca. Had Taberniel not relocated to Salamanca, and had he been inexperienced in music printing, Vivanco’s music may never have found its way into print at all and come down to us in such quantity. As it was, between 1607 and 1610 Taberniel lived up to his reputation as a master craftsman in printing three huge and sumptuous volumes of music for Vivanco (we also have him to thank for volumes of masses and motets by Esquivel). These were: a book of eighteen settings of the Magnificat, the Liber Magnificarum (1607); a book of ten masses (1608); and a book of motets numbering around 70. The correct title of neither of the last two books is known, since title-pages are missing from the few surviving copies. The first book preserves our only known likeness of the composer on its superbly engraved title page.

Issued under Vivanco’s own supervision, these volumes surely represent the composer’s own selection of his best work from a career then spanning over forty years, and contain more than enough music to feed an ongoing revival of interest in his work. Meanwhile, the task of identifying and collating other works by Vivanco in Spanish manuscript archives is still “work in progress”. At Salamanca, a handful of motets and hymns appears uniquely in some early seventeenth-century manuscripts belonging to the cathedral. Otherwise, it appears that only one other manuscript source copied during his lifetime contains an appreciable number of works not otherwise found in the printed collections. A pair of choir books copied for the Jeronymite Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Estremadura in the early years of the seventeenth century contains three further Masses by him, as well as extracts from the Office of the Dead, a setting of the Passiontide hymn Vexilla regis, three Lamentation lessons for Holy Week, and a couple of other small items. Fittingly, Vivanco’s music shares pride of place there with works by Palestrina and Morales.

Magnificats

All of Vivanco’s eighteen surviving Magnificat settings are found in a single source, the mammoth Liber Magnificarum published by Taberniel in Salamanca in 1607. As well as being a key musical source, this volume of some 270 pages in choirbook format, is also the single most important document we have concerning the composer. For its title-page Vivanco commissioned a fine engraving in which he himself is pictured, wearing a soutane and academic gown, kneeling in adoration before a crucifix. Around it is engraved a series of complex musical canons, one of which takes up the theme of the portrait in its text: “O come let us adore Christ the King who offered himself up for us”. Typically a mere priest-musician like Vivanco would have sought patronage from some powerful lord to underwrite the printing of such a handsome volume. For instance, Esquivel’s two books of masses and motets published on Taberniel’s presses in the same year, were paid for by his patron, the bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo. Significantly, then, Vivanco appears to have issued his book of Magnificats without such patronage, and instead of offering its contents to an earthly lord, dedicates them directly to Christ. How he paid for the print remains a mystery. Perhaps it was inherited money that enabled him to undertake this expensive project.

The 1608 volume includes at least two settings of the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin composed upon each of the eight plainsong tones. They follow the format, standard until well into the seventeenth century, whereby alternate verses only of the text are set to polyphony, the remainder sung to the plainsong tone itself. Even in the polyphonic verses, however, at least one of the voices always carries a paraphrase of the plainsong tune. For our new disc, we chose to perform the remarkable Magnificat quarti toni (based upon the fourth tones). In this, as in his other Magnificats, Vivanco provided two different settings of the final polyphonic verse “Gloria Patri”, one simple, the other usually remarkable for some feat of technical brilliance.

We performed Vivanco’s quite extraordinary alternative version, in which the choir, previously divided into only five parts, is divided into eight. One of the two soprano voices paraphrases the fourth-tone chant on which the whole work is based. However, above one of the tenor parts, Vivanco places the label “Hic Tenor in ordine decantat octo tonos”, indicating that this tenor sings in order the tunes of all eight plainchant Magnificat tones. In practice, this is not quite the musical sleight of hand one might expect, since the contours of the other seven tones are modified to match the prevailing fourth tone. However, there is more to come, for simultaneously other voices sing the words and melodies of three more chants in honour of the Virgin: in the Alto the hymn Ave maris stella, in the first Bass the antiphon Ave Maria, and in the second Bass the hymn O gloriosa Domina.

Elsewhere among the Magnificats, Vivanco exercises a range of contrapuntal skills. Two of his Magnificats have sections based upon ostinatos, a favourite technique of Spaniards deriving from the “Gaudeamus” theme in Morales’s Jubilate Deo (an idea also taken up by Fernando de las Infantas, Victoria, and many others). He also offers a dazzling array of ingenious canons. At the end of the volume, Vivanco prints two settings of Benedicamus Domino, the short dismissal verse from the close of Vespers.

Masses

In all, thirteen Mass settings are attributed to Vivanco. Ten of these are found in the printed book of masses issued by Taberniel at Salamanca in 1608, copies of which are known to survive in Granada (fragmentary), Seville (fragmentary) and Salamanca. At least three of the Masses are based in part upon plainsong melodies. These include two four-part Masses for the Blessed Virgin Mary (one designated for feasts of the Virgin, the other for the weekly votive mass of the Virgin on Saturday), and the four-part Missa Doctor bonus on a chant for the feast of St Andrew. Three masses have abstract designations: namely the Missa quarti toni and Missa sexti toni (in the fourth and sixth tones respectively), and the interesting Missa super octo tonos (upon eight tones) whose recurring “theme” contrives to quote the endings of all eight plainsong psalm tones. Finally, there are four “parody” masses derived from Vivanco’s own motets. The Missa Crux fidelis is scored for 6 voices and is based on a motet of the same name preserved uniquely in a Salamanca manuscript. Two others, Missa Assumpsit Jesus (5 voices), and Missa O quam suavis, are based on motets that appeared later in the 1610 motet book.

The final Mass of the 1608 collection, scored for eight voices, is the impressive Missa In manus tuas, featured on our new CD. Paradoxically, as Vivanco’s single most expansive composition, it is based upon the very smallest work from his pen, In manus tuas Domine (“Into your hands Lord, I comment my spirit”, also recorded), uniquely preserved at Guadalupe and labelled there “Del M[aestr]o Vivanco”. The tiny four-voice In manus tuas is not even, strictly speaking, a motet, but a ritual piece whose text, adapted to the form of a short responsory sung at the late evening office of Compline, quotes the final words of Christ on the Cross (Luke 23:46). As a self-parodist, Vivanco was hardly alone among his contemporaries, though his approach to the task is highly individual. Not once in the openings of the Mass’s movements, or elsewhere later, does he quote the full texture of the tiny original in a literal manner. Rather, at the outset of each of the movements and many of the main internal divisions, he uses its characteristic rising opening phrase and its continuation as a sort of variable cantus firmus, often in longer note values, around which he creates new counterpoints. Sometimes, when it is in the uppermost voice, as in the opening of the Kyrie, Credo and Sanctus, this is clearly audible. Elsewhere, as in the opening of the Gloria and Agnus, the cantus is hidden in the inner parts, or, at the Benedictus, in the bass. Likewise, for the opening of internal sections such as the “Christe eleison”, Vivanco paraphrases the main descending phrase from the second half of his model (beginning “Commendo spiritum meum”). These two simple phrases, ascending and descending, are the main material with which he works, sometimes imitatively, at others homophonically, sometimes reworking them separately, sometimes in close alternation. Two far-reaching changes, however, ensure that little other sense of the original is maintained. Rather than adhering to the original’s piece’s Tone 6 (notated in F), Vivanco bases his reworking in a bright Tone 7 on G (perhaps one of the reasons for this is that, immediately preceding this work in the 1608 book, is the Mass actually entitled Sexti toni). Meanwhile, he derives an entirely new sense of energy and excitement from his use not of one, but of two four voice ensembles, often in close alternation. Miraculously, though, while little of the Mass could truly be said to sound anything like the original, almost all of it is somehow related.

Finally, three Masses are preserved uniquely in the Guadalupe manuscripts. Possibly the finest of these was the four-voice Missa Tu es vas electionis, based on Vivanco’s own motet (also found in the 1610 book); however, all but the Kyrie and the beginning of the Gloria are lost. The manuscripts also include a Ferial Mass (a setting of the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus only, for use on the weekdays of Advent and Lent), and a sombre but highly effective four-voice alternatim Requiem Mass, based upon the traditional plainsong.

Motets

To date, no complete copy of Vivanco’s 1610 motet book has been discovered, though a copy at Salamanca (rediscovered by Vivanco scholars as recently as 1971 and missing only a handful of pages) allows us to conclude that it contained some seventy separate items. Vivanco designed this massive volume as an essentially practical collection, consisting of items suitable for performance during Mass on Sundays and major saints’ days. Many of his motets, in particular a set of twenty for penitential season leading up to Holy Week and Easter, take their texts from the Gospel of the Mass for each day as set out in the post-Tridentine Roman Missal (issued in 1570). Predictably, there is also a large number of the motets designated De beata Maria. Notable among them are three settings of texts from the biblical Song of Songs, traditionally associated with the Virgin in her allegorical role as Mother of the Church and Bride of Christ.

One need only mention two of sixteenth-century Spain’s great Carmelite mystics, saint Teresa (1515-1582) and John of the Cross (1542-1591), both from Ávila, to be reminded of the pre-eminent place of that one small biblical book, the Song of Songs (or to use its Latin title, the Canticum Canticorum Salomonis) in their spiritual writings. From early medieval times, this tiny book of love poems generated a huge exegetical literature. Much of it was an attempt to reconcile the apparently erotic imagery of the poems with a theological interpretation more suitable to their biblical context, in which the Bridegroom of the original text is mystically identified with Christ, and the Bride with the Church. With the coming of the second millennium, and the greater popular proliferation of the cult of the Blessed Virgin, many Song of Songs texts were also deployed for use in the liturgy of Marian feasts, and duly provided with plainsong melodies. Thus the verse “Tota pulchra es, amica mea” (from the fourth chapter of the Song) was adapted as an antiphon Tota pulchra es Maria for the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in December, and “Quæ est ista” (one of the poetic refrains of the Song) for the feast of Mary’s Assumption in August. Under the influence of the Marian cult, polyphonic composers began to turn to the Song of Songs for suitable motet texts in the mid-fifteenth century, and in the next century few composers of sacred music omitted to set at least one of its more common extracts. Spanish composers were no exception. They composed numerous new settings of the texts, while Spanish choral institutions also imported internationally popular Song of Songs motets like those of Févin (Morales based a mass upon his Song of Songs motet Vulnerasti cor meum) and Palestrina into their local repertories.

Of the three Vivanco Song of Songs motets we have recorded, all are in jubilant major modes. More homophonic than thoroughly imitative in style, they are among the most modern and outward looking of Vivanco’s compositions, cast in the international style of the last decades of the sixteenth century. They demonstrate that, while he himself never left Spain, Vivanco was as fully abreast of musical developments in Italy as was Victoria, who had actually lived there for two decades. All three motets are in eight parts, scored as two alternating ensembles of four parts each. Veni dilecte mi has been recorded previously by the Orchestra of the Renaissance (Glossa GCD 921 403), while the two other motets appear on our new disc. In the jubilant Surge propera amica mea, Vivanco effectively contrasts rapid-fire declamatory exchanges between the ensembles (in what the Italians called nota nere, or black notes of short value, like crotchets and quavers), as for example at Flores apparuerunt (“The flowers bloom”), a musical counterpart of the text’s images of teeming growth, with sonorous passages in longer note values (breves and semibreves), as at Tempus putationis, in fact a learned pun on the equivalence of the musical terms brevis and tempus.

The stylistic contrast between these sprawling polychoral designs and the intimate O quam suavis est, in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, could hardly be greater. In only four parts, and in a plangent minor mode, it is a classical piece of freely-composed polyphony, probably intended to be sung during the elevation at Mass, the most solemn point of the liturgy (indeed Vivanco later composed his own parody mass based upon it).

Also featured on our disc is the six-part Ecce sacerdos magnus, a true “musicians’ motet” in honour of St Gregory the Great, the late sixth-century pope traditionally held responsible for the composition of the church’s great repertory of plainsong, accordingly known as Gregorian Chant. Fittingly then, the plainsong melody associated with the main part of the text is quoted in long notes in one part, around which Vivanco composes a freely contrapuntal texture. A little later, he adds a second brief chant in one of the upper voices, quoting from the Litany of the Saints: “Saint Gregory, pray for us”. It seems quite likely that this piece was composed and performed in Ávila during the 1594 translation of san Segundo, Ávila’s own “great priest”. Because of its musical connections, we chose to perform it for the disc with instruments alone. It should be mentioned that the practice of performing motets such as this one with bands of instruments alone was well-known in Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century. All large cathedrals employed bands of wind instruments in addition to their singers, and there even exist manuscript collections of motets shorn of their texts, clearly copied for use by such cathedral bands. Though none of Vivanco’s music survives in this manner, motets by his contemporaries Guerrero, Alonso Lobo, and Philippe Rogier (music master of Philip II’s royal chapel), including, incidentally, another setting of Ecce sacerdos magnus (by Rogier), exist rearranged for wind band.

Among the crowning glories of the 1610 collection are several motets for large choirs, some of which employ number symbolism. Caritas pater is in nine parts (three-three-three), signifying the Holy Trinity, for whose feast day it is intended. Lætetur omne sæculum is for the feast of Mary Magdalene (22 July), and Vivanco’s decision to set it in seven parts is also symbolic: according to tradition, Mary Magdalene not only succumbed to all of the seven deadly sins, but was brought back to holiness through the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere, Vivanco scores in many parts for the sake of sonority alone. The text of Christus factus est pro nobis was traditionally recited as the final antiphon at Lauds on the last three days of Holy Week. Vivanco borrows the opening figure of its traditional chant melody to use as his own opening motif for a freely evolving motet in no fewer than twelve voice parts. In the 1610 book it is designated for use on the Wednesday of Holy Week, and it was probably at Mass on this day that Vivanco himself performed it annually at Salamanca cathedral during his tenure there.

Apart from the seventy-odd motets of the 1610 book, a handful of other motets and related items survive in later manuscript sources. Assumpta est Maria, for the Assumption of Mary (15 August), uniquely preserved in an early seventeenth-century manuscript choirbook at Salamanca, is scored not only with high clefs but at an unusually high pitch throughout (the lowest voice part is written in the Alto clef), and captures the airy imagery of the text (“Mary is taken up into heaven”). Finally, one extremely late eighteenth-century source apparently contains several more motets. On closer inspection, it appears that the copyist merely borrowed the music of at least four items found in the 1610 collection and fitted it out with new texts. One other piece, however, is not found elsewhere, a sombre setting of the funeral motet, Versa est in luctum in six parts. This text from the book of Job was set by a number of Spanish composers from Francisco Peñalosa onward as a motet for use in Requiem Masses. With its clearly musical imagery (“My harp is tuned to mourning”), it became the quintessential musician’s lament upon the death of a patron or prince. Victoria composed a setting of it for the death of his benefactress, the dowager Empress Maria, in 1603, whereas Alonso Lobo’s setting was composed earlier on the death of Philip II in 1598. Alas, as with so much about his life, the particular recipient of Vivanco’s setting, if indeed there was one, is not known.