Victoria, Tomás Luis de [key], c.1548–1611, Spanish composer. He went to Rome in 1565 to study for the priesthood at the German Jesuit College. In 1571 he became music master of the Collegium Romanum, succeeding Palestrina, who may have been his teacher. Mutual influence is evident in their works. In 1578, Victoria gave up the position he had held since 1573 as music master at the Collegium Germanicum to become a resident priest at the Church of San Girolamo. All of Victoria's known compositions are religious. His first book of motets (1572) contains the well-known O quam gloriosum and O vos omnes. He also composed masses, canticles, settings of all the hymns for the church year (1581), and two settings of the biblical accounts of the Passion. His polyphonic technique, equal to any in the Renaissance, expresses a passionate mysticism that is essentially Spanish. In 1587 he returned to Spain to be chaplain and choirmaster to Empress Mary (wife of Emperor Maximilian II), in whose memory he composed his last and greatest work, Officium defunctorum (pub. 1605).
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