Vaet’s setting of the All Saints’ antiphon
O quam gloriosum bears several close similarities to the well-known motet on the same text written some decades later by Tomás Luis de Victoria, especially in the homophonic writing and repetition at ‘omnes sancti, amicti stolis albis’ (‘all the saints, clad in robes of white’). However, Vaet’s piece adopts a distinctive rhythmic pattern at ‘quocumque ierit’ (‘wherever he goes’), with an unusual short anacrusis. Also unlike Victoria’s setting, Vaet’s ends with an Alleluia—though Victoria’s final phrase is reminiscent of the sequence that Vaet writes here—and is in the Dorian mode, rather than the Mixolydian that had become more popular by the end of the century.
from notes by Stephen Rice © 2007
