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.