The influence of Spanish composer Bernardino de Ribera, and the intrinsic value of his music, have been partially obscured by an act of historical vandalism: someone cut the illuminations out of the manuscript from Toledo Cathedral in which most of his works were preserved, taking as well the musical notation on the back of the page. Not be confused with the Spanish-Mexican composer Bernardino de Ribeira Sahagún, Ribera was born in Játiva, Spain, in 1520, where his father was a university church chapel master. He studied with his father and with his father's successor, Jayme López, as the family moved to Arihuela and then to Murcia. Little is known of his activities until he appeared at Ávila Cathedral in 1559 as maestro de capilla. There he taught the young Tomás Luis de Victoria; historians disagree as to whether the somber mood cultivated by the two composers was the result of direct influence or merely representative of a wider style, but the general listener is likely to find a spiritual commonality. Ribera moved on in 1563 to Toledo Cathedral, where a handsome manuscript copy of his works was made. The subsequent vandalism was thought to have made most of his work unperformable, but musicologist Bruno Turner, working with surviving pages of the Toledo manuscript and with other sources, reconstructed some of them in the 2010s, although several large masses have apparently been permanently lost. Ribera took a leave of absence because of illness in 1570 and was thought to have died soon after that; by 1572 he had disappeared from the cathedral's payroll. But later research revealed that he returned to his youthful home of Murcia and became chapel master there until his death in 1580. His surviving works -- two masses, eight Magnficat settings, and about a dozen motets -- often show intensely expressive qualities.