Guillaume Dufay. Missae Sine Nomine, Ave Regina Coelorum, Caput Clemencic Consort (vinyl Lps)

This superb disc of music by one of Spain's most talented early 16th century composers is exactly the sort of boost that the less well-known repertoire needs in its search for a place in today's CD collection. It is in every way a model of what a recording of Renaissance polyphony ought to be… The all male vocal ensemble sings with enormous conviction as well as firm control of rhythm and phrasing. Combining the voices with energetically played sackbuts produces a rich and dark-hued sound that feels authentically Spanish, and does full justice to this very fine music.

The music of Guillaume Dufay is often said to lie on the boundary between medieval and Renaissance. It is complex in the manner of medieval polyphony, sometimes with multiple texts in different languages, and intricate rhyme schemes. Yet, in its evocative use of vertical sonority and its original texts in the songs, it approaches a manner of text-setting that you can recognize as modern. His chansons are not often recorded, so this release of 18 chansons from the Orlando Consort would be welcome on general principles; it has virtues considerably beyond that.

The cube made with matches which appears on the cover of this disc, showing on flames in the inside of the digipak and afterwards completely burnt, plays with the ideas that inspire this dazzling recording: the four ways to the knowledge of numbers through the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), which are expressed through something as ephemeral assound, where also the unexpected and the emotion of the moment take place.

Music appreciation textbooks and timelines in magazines often name Guillaume Dufay as the first great composer of the European Renaissance, but one might equally call him the last great composer of the Middle Ages. This disc presents all 13 of Dufay's isorhythmic motets–the final masterpieces of a very medieval-minded genre. During the Middle Ages, music was considered a science (just like mathematics), and isorhythmic motets are constructed according to strict arithmetical principles. In addition, each voice generally has a different text, while the fundamental voice (called the tenor) usually has no text at all and is often (as here) performed by instruments.

This is CPO’s second release of Pejačević’s chamber music. The internationally active and renowned Sine Nomine Quartet from Switzerland and Oliver Triendl are outstanding advocates on behalf of this versatile composer. The last movement of the Piano Quintet Op. 40 is a highlight; with a solemn introduction and animated theme, which pervades the entire movement with kinetic energy.

The works of the 15th-century composer Guillaume Dufay are often considered to be where medieval music ends and Renaissance music begins. Yet Dufay sounds quite different from later, better-known Renaissance composers such as Palestrina, Victoria, and Josquin: Dufay's music is less densely scored, with more stratified voice ranges, very complex rhythms, and a somewhat neutral emotional affect. Pomerium, a New York-based choir with extensive experience in Dufay, presents here one of the composer's largest works: a setting of both the ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.) and the propers (texts specific to the occasion) of the Mass for the feast of St. Anthony of Padua. Pomerium's polished performance makes this a fine addition to the Dufay discography.

Guillaume Dufay is one of the key representatives of the French musical genius. His masterful work is a comprehensive and brilliant apotheosis of the middle ages. During his long career, the master from Cambrai gave us not only an impressive series of motets and masses, but also more than 80 profane songs, jems of melodic, rhythmic and poetic creativity. These small masterpieces show extreme refinement and an extraordinary command of counterpoint. Whatever the form, ballad, rondeau, bergerette or motet-song, the expression remains surprisingly natural and exquisitely simple. Most of these songs hail lightness of mind, joy, optimism, modestly restrained amorous pleasure, though some are melancholic or dwell on more austere feelings.

Guillaume Dufay was undoubtedly the greatest musician of the fifteenth century. The Missa Se la Face ay Pale is the first of the four Great Masses of his maturity. While ushering in the Renaissance period, this work represents a culmination in the music of the Middle Ages.

What did it mean for Guillaume Du Fay (ca. 1397-1474), chameleon-like expert in every musical genre of his day, to compose four settings of the Mass Ordinary toward the end of his life? Looking back from the vantage point of the next generation, when the polyphonic mass reigned supreme, it might be tempting to interpret these works as a self-conscious summa of Du Fay’s career – an achievement akin to Haydn’s London Symphonies or Beethoven’s late string quartets. On a purely musical level these comparisons are apt. Each mass stakes out unique musical terrain; they are often strikingly experimental; and the entire set is shimmeringly beautiful from beginning to end, revealing a composer at the height of his powers.

Famous as its title has become through Carl Orff's work of the same name, the original Carmina burana—a German manuscript collection of mostly secular songs, probably compiled in the early thirteenth century—is all but unknown to modern listeners. That it should be so is hardly surprising, since many of the pieces in the manuscript pose formidable editorial problems (inasmuch as they can be deciphered at all), and since virtually nothing is known about the manner in which they would have been performed and accompanied, nor about the circumstances under which they would have been heard.