Aspice

The box contains 10 CDs and offers reference shots of all the central works such as the Psalms of David, the Cantiones sacrae, the Resurrection History, the Little Sacred Concerts, Choral Music and last but not least the Passions. The partly unpublished recordings show the Dresden Kreuzchor at the height of its development.

Vicente Lusitano’s earliest biographer, writing two centuries after his death around 1561, omitted to mention that the composer’s mother was most likely a Black African enslaved by Portuguese colonialists. Choral ensemble The Marian Consort and its unflappable director, Rory McCleery, dive deep into the sacred motets of Lusitano’s Liber primus epigramatum, the first-ever publication of works by a Black composer. Their choice of 10 pieces reveals the striking breadth of invention, subtle textures and harmonies, and sheer beauty of his music, with each of those qualities present in full measure in the sublime Emendemus in melius (Track 7) and Sancta mater, istud agas (Track 9). There’s room, too, for the meandering melodies of Heu me, Domine (Track 6), with its startling chromatic lines, and Inviolata, integra et casta es (Track 10) for eight voices, a consummate magnum opus of Renaissance polyphony.

Innovative music printer Pierre Attaingnant published the first editions of keyboard music ever to appear in France in 1531. Only one copy of each of these seven tiny but crucially important volumes has survived, in which anonymous composers made arrangements of some of the most beautiful chansons, motets and dances from the reign of Francois I- keyboard music that shows France at the forefront of developments in this field. Glen Wilson has corrected the countless errors in these original sources, restoring this rare and enchanting music and allowing it to shine in its original glory.