Cantoría: Oficio de Tinieblas

With Oficio de Tinieblas, Cantoría revives Victoria’s sacred music in a powerful journey of voices, silence and disappearing light.

Few ensembles embody the vitality of today’s early music scene as vividly as Cantoría. Founded in Barcelona at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, the young vocal quartet has quickly established itself as a compelling interpreter of Iberian Renaissance polyphony, combining historical rigor with a clearly contemporary presence. After emerging at the ECOS International Festival of Early Music in 2016, Cantoría’s trajectory accelerated with its selection for the European platform EEEmerging+, where it won the Audience Prize at the Ambronay Festival and remained part of the programme until 2021. The ensemble will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2026.

At the International Arte Sacro Festival in Madrid, Cantoría presents Oficio de Tinieblas, a striking reinterpretation of the Holy Friday Tenebrae Office. Originally conceived as a funerary rite structured around psalms, antiphons and lamentations, the Office evolved over centuries before disappearing from the liturgical calendar after Vatican II. The music composed for this ritual by Tomás Luis de Victoria remains one of the most profound achievements of Spanish Renaissance polyphony.

Rather than treating this repertoire as a museum piece, Cantoría revives it through a contemporary approach, in collaboration with Father Jordi-Agustí Piqué, Dean-President of the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy in Rome, and at the initiative of the Espurnes Baroque Festival. As motets and plainchant unfold, candles are gradually extinguished, immersing the audience in near darkness, where sound, space and silence converge.

Recording location Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro Festival
Genre Live Show
Production year 2024
TV Director Stéphane Lebard