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 Musicć

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.