Biography (read more)
Juan Bautista Comes, known in Valencian as Joan Baptista Comes (c. 1582 – 5 January 1643), was a Spanish Baroque composer born and died in Valencia. He was a pupil of Juan Ginés Pérez, and before 1613 held posts as maestro de capilla at Lleida Cathedral and at the Colegio del Patriarca in Valencia. From 1613 to 1619 he was maestro de capilla of Valencia Cathedral, and from 1619 he served as second maestro of the Habsburg royal chapel in Madrid under Philip III and Philip IV. He returned to his old post at Valencia Cathedral in 1632 and held it until his death.
Comes is counted among the leading figures of the Valencian school and of Spanish sacred music in the early seventeenth century. He is remembered above all for his villancicos and romances, such as Terremoto, que ruido, which set texts in Spanish, Portuguese and Galician alongside the Latin liturgical repertory. His polychoral church music, written for the large multiple-choir forces available in Valencia and Madrid, exploits spatial effects and vivid word painting. A substantial part of his output survives in the Valencia Cathedral archive and has been revived on record by Spanish early-music groups since the late twentieth century.
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