CANTARA EL ALMA: Sebastián de Vivanco (ca. 1553-1622)

Salamanca Cathedral launches its new label with a sumptuous recording of sacred music by Spanish Renaissance composer Sebastián de Vivanco, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the composer’s death in Salamanca in 1622. This is the first album on the Cathedralis label, which will be releasing further collections of Renaissance polyphony.

A priest as well as a composer, Vivanco was maestro di cappella of Salamanca Cathedral from 1602 until the end of his life. Musically, Vivanco may be considered to be on a par with the more celebrated Tomás Luis de Victoria, with whom he shares the birthplace of Ávila, but his music has not been as widely disseminated and deserves a larger audience. With this recording, the singers of Ensemble Plus Ultra and Schola Antiqua, instrumentalists of La Danserye, and artistic director David Martin, hope to go some way towards rectifying that imbalance by bringing Vivanco’s exquisite polyphony, which beautifully combines voices and early instruments, to more listeners than ever before. The recording has been coordinated by the musicologist Michael Noone, a great scholar of Vivanco and initiator of this endeavour.

World First Recording