Vails, Francisco

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Vails, Francisco

Vails, Francisco, Spanish composer; b. Barcelona, 1665; d. there, Feb. 2,1747. He was maestro de capilla at Mataró parish church, at Gerona Cathedral (1688-96), and at S. Maria del Mar in Barcelona (1696). In 1696 he became assistant to the maestro de capilla at the Barcelona Cathedral, where he later served as interim maestro (1706-09) and titular maestro (1709-40). Vails won distinction as a composer of sacred music, which included 12 masses, 16 Magnificats, 22 responsories, 12 Psalms, some 35 motets, and about 120 villancicos. He also engendered great controversy with his use of an unprepared dissonance (9thchord) in his Missa Scala Aretina (1702), a practice he defended in his treatise Mapa armónico práctico (MS).

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire