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.