Owen Rees is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, and Fellow in Music at The Queen's College, University of Oxford. He specialises in Spanish and Portuguese sacred music of the 'golden age' and has published on the principal composers of the period – Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria – and on numerous other repertories, genres, and sources from the Iberian Peninsula.

'In his wide-ranging and masterful study, Owen Rees examines Victoria's Requiem as both text and icon. He does so with a scholar's nose for forensic minutiae, an analyst's eye for the telling detail, and a choral director's ear for precision and rigour. His study is a model of its kind … Without a doubt, Rees's study of Victoria's Officium defunctorum will help bring us closer to an understanding of this astonishing work as a Requiem for a Habsburg empress and as a Requiem for us.' Michael Noone, Early Music History

• Introduction: 'Requiem for an age'?; 1. Chaplain of the Empress; 2. María's exequies in context; 3. Publishing the Officium Defunctorum; 4. Fashioning the Requiem; 5. 'The crowning work of a great genius'; Epilogue: Requiem for our age?

Owen Rees is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, and Fellow in Music at The Queen's College, University of Oxford. He specialises in Spanish and Portuguese sacred music of the 'golden age' and has published on the principal composers of the period – Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria – and on numerous other repertories, genres, and sources from the Iberian Peninsula.

'In his wide-ranging and masterful study, Owen Rees examines Victoria's Requiem as both text and icon. He does so with a scholar's nose for forensic minutiae, an analyst's eye for the telling detail, and a choral director's ear for precision and rigour. His study is a model of its kind … Without a doubt, Rees's study of Victoria's Officium defunctorum will help bring us closer to an understanding of this astonishing work as a Requiem for a Habsburg empress and as a Requiem for us.' Michael Noone, Early Music History

• Introduction: 'Requiem for an age'?; 1. Chaplain of the Empress; 2. María's exequies in context; 3. Publishing the Officium Defunctorum; 4. Fashioning the Requiem; 5. 'The crowning work of a great genius'; Epilogue: Requiem for our age?