Hyperion Records

The motet Trahe me post te comes from a collection of motets, mostly by Victoria, published in Rome in 1585 by Alessandro Gardane. The text of the motet is taken from the first chapter of the Song of Songs and appears, in a slightly amended form, as the fifth antiphon at second vespers in the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, kept on 8 December. The motet, reflecting its opening words ‘Draw me after you’, is based on a double canon at unison in which the second tenor imitates the first tenor at a distance of three bars and the first alto starts a similar canon half a bar after the first tenor, but with a different theme, this being answered, again at three bars distance, by the second alto. Despite this apparently rigid technical ground-plan, the general effect of the music is one of gracious and flowing, but not cloying, sweetness.

from notes by Jon Dixon © 1994