• Repertoire

    Francisco Guerrero: Conditor alme siderum

    This is the third in a series of “lessons” about how Renaissance composers explored the musical potential of the plainchant melody in Conditor alme siderum. In English translation (“Creator of the stars of night”) this hymn has been our Sequence hymn during Advent. (The earlier pieces featured compositions by Victoria and Dufay.) Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) shares Spanish nationality with Tomás Luis de Victoria. But while Victoria spent much of his career in Rome, Guerrero spent most of his life in Spain, and most of that time making music at the Cathedral in Seville. His setting of the 6 verses of Conditor alme siderum — like Victoria’s — alternates between plainsong (odd-numbered…

  • Repertoire

    Francisco Guerrero: Conditor alme siderum

    This is the third in a series of “lessons” about how Renaissance composers explored the musical potential of the plainchant melody in Conditor alme siderum. In English translation (“Creator of the stars of night”) this hymn has been our Sequence hymn during Advent. (The earlier pieces featured compositions by Victoria and Dufay.) Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599) shares a Spanish origin with Tomás Luis de Victoria. But while Victoria spent much of his career in Rome, Guerrero spent most of his life in Spain, and most of that time making music at the Cathedral in Seville. His setting of the 6 verses of Conditor alme siderum — like Victoria’s — alternates between plainsong…