Kandel

With the Missa cuiusvis toni, Ockeghem achieves a veritable tour de force: a work having the advantage of being able to be executed in all church modes. In an era when composers vied with each other in virtuosity, this mass 'in whatever tone' became an unsurpassable model. Musica Nova recreates the four versions here for the first time on disc.

Johannes Ockeghem was an absolute master of counterpoint who, for more than 40 years at the end of the 15th century, ruled over Franco-Flemish polyphony under three French kings, Charles VII, Louis XI and Charles VIII. His works which are still all too rarely performed continue to fascinate to this day. The Missa prolationum, together with the Missa cuiusvis toni, is a tour de force of writing, reaching levels of complexity that can impress even the most experienced performers.

This is a lovingly designed and splendidly executed programme of secular works by one of the master wordsetters of his own or of any age, Josquin Desprez. It consists mainly of five- and six-part secular songs in French, in the Burgundian tradition, about the occasional delights but more often the wistfulness and sadness of love, with a fair helping of death and mourning added to the mixture.