Modality as orthodoxy and exegesis. Strategies of tonal organisation in Victoria’s motets

Victoria’s 1572 "Motecta" forms a modally ordered collection. An inspection of their tonal types, however, together with the analysis of their internal cadences, shows a very idiosyncratic tonal organisation. In fact, Victoria: (1) does not make use of any ‘most problematic’ tonal type (according to the classification proposed by these authors in an article published in Acta Musicologica 2008); (2) reduces the cadential goals to the "cadentiae principales" of each mode (with rare occurrences of cadentiae minus principales); (3) adopts very clearly the eight-mode system; and (4) gives a distinct and substantial role to Tenor voice in the establishment of the authentic vs plagal dimension of each composition (even when no cantus prius factus is used). All these factors, taken together, determine an almost one-to-one correspondence between tonal types and modes, which is extremely uncommon in sixteenth-century polyphony. In this way, Victoria seems to configure a programmatic and intentional ‘modal orthodoxy’ integrated in his compositional style and not in conflict with other innovative music techniques. This orthodoxy, far from being a passive conservative tendency, can then be seen as a stylistic peculiarity intentionally pursued. In this respect, a comparison between Victoria’s and Palestrina’s usages is extremely revealing, given that recent research has shown how the latter composer is not so ‘modally orthodox’ as the historiographical Vulgate has imagined in the past. The article therefore examines the different paths the two composers follow in order to reconcile orthodoxy and innovation.