Victoria O quam gloriosum and Missa O quam gloriosum 

Byrd Gradualia Propers for All Saints

Lassus Justorum animae

*  Victoria's motet O quam gloriosum has been called “the greatest hit of the 16th   

    century.”  It marvelously depicts in music the text of the Magnificat Antiphon at

    Vespers on the Feast of All Saints, “ O how glorious is the kingdom where the

    saints rejoice with Christ.”

*  Victoria’s joyous Missa O quam gloriosum, based on the motet, has become

    perhaps the best known and loved of the composer's Masses in modern times. 

    Tovey called it one of the most perfect Masses ever written.  Its masterful

    polyphony has a marvelous controlled fervor typical of Victoria.

*  Byrd's Propers for All Saints are part of his monumental Gradualia, which includes

    music for the Propers of the Mass for all major feasts in the liturgical year, a feat

    achieved by few composers.  Composed at Byrd's personal risk (in Elizabethan

    England) for clandestine celebration of the feast by Jesuit missionaries and English

    Catholics, Byrd's celebratory music depicts the individual words of the Propers in

    a way strikingly parallel to St. Ignatius of Loyola's technique of meditating word by

    word on sacred texts.

*  Chantry also sings this music for a special Latin Mass for the Feast of All Saints at

    7:30 p.m. on Monday, November 1, at St. Mary Mother of God, 727 Fifth St. NW in

    Washington, DC.