Francisco Valls: the Barcelona chapel master who divided opinion

About Francisco Valls

Valls was born in Barcelona, probably in 1665 and possibly in 1671, and died there on 2 February 1747. In 1696 he left the church of Santa Maria del Mar to become mestre de capella of Barcelona Cathedral, a post he held for the rest of his working life. He wrote ten masses, seventeen psalm settings, thirty motets and a large body of secular music, much of it surviving in manuscript in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

His name is inseparable from the Missa Scala Aretina, which takes its cantus firmus from Guido of Arezzo's scale. In 1715 the Valencia organist Joaquín Martínez de la Roca attacked the work's unprepared dissonances and its handling of the modes, and the argument ran for five years in some seventy-eight pamphlets; Alessandro Scarlatti was asked for an opinion and gave one mildly against Valls. The Christe eleison from that Mass survives in the Mapa Armónico Práctico, the treatise Valls wrote in retirement, of which a facsimile appeared in 2002.

The catalogue reflects that mixture. Alongside Mass movements sit Latin motets such as Fulcite me floribus and Diffusa est gratia, Spanish villancicos including Quien ser decid, and pieces for the Virgin Mary, to whom much of his sacred output is addressed.

Listening and playing notes

Valls writes for choirs that can hold a line without much help. The Latin works often divide into cori with separate continuo groups, so the first decision is spatial: who stands where, and which organ or harp doubles which choir. His dissonances are prepared by voice-leading rather than by chord colour, which means they only tell if the tuning is clean. In the Spanish villancicos the rhythm should stay dance-like even when the harmony darkens. Let the text govern tempo; the examples in the Mapa repeatedly change metre and dynamics to follow the words.

Selected scores

1. Te Joseph celebrent

   The most-viewed entry in the Valls bucket is credited to Franz Xaver Witt, a nineteenth-century German church-music reformer, not to Valls. The hymn text belongs to the feast of St Joseph; check the attribution on the file before using it as a Valls piece.

2. Quien ser decid

   A Spanish villancico, one of the large-scale settings that survive in the Mapa Armónico Práctico. The catalogue gives the title without accents, and the source literature also prints it as 'Quien será decid'.

3. Hosanna in excelsis

   The Sanctus acclamation, filed under Valls without a named source. It may be a movement from one of the masses rather than a separate motet, and the catalogue does not say which.

4. Fulcite me floribus

   A motet on the Song of Songs, 'stay me with flagons'; the text is used for feasts of the Virgin, a constant theme in Valls's sacred music.

5. Diffusa est gratia

   The offertory for feasts of virgins, set here as a Latin motet. The text opens 'Grace is poured abroad in thy lips'.

6. Miserere

   A setting of Psalm 51, the penitential psalm sung during Holy Week. The catalogue gives no scoring or date.

7. O Gloriosa virginum

   A Marian hymn, one of several pieces in the collection addressed to the Virgin Mary.

8. Missa a 5 (hypodorian mode)

   One of Valls's ten masses, for five voices and built on the second church mode. The catalogue gives no name or publication for it.

9. Christe eleison (Scala Aretina)

   The Christe from the Missa Scala Aretina, preserved in the Mapa Armónico Práctico and the passage at the heart of the 1715-1720 dispute over dissonance.

10. Corta las jarcias, corta las velas

    A Spanish-text piece whose title means 'cut the rigging, cut the sails'. The catalogue gives neither genre nor source, and it may be a villancico or a tono.