Escobar

There have been two recordings so far of this Requiem by the Portuguese renaissance composer Pedro de Escobar, the other being Requiem , sung by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois directed by Dominique Vellard. The present disc, by the one-voice-per-part ensemble Quodlibet, was recorded in 1989 and reissued in 2005. The group sing with spirit and conviction; their ensemble and blend are not always ideal, but they rise to the occasion as we get to the Requiem itself halfway through the programme. In fact, among the motets and other items we find on the first eight tracks, there are also some lovely things, including a beautiful `Stabat Mater' (track 3) and a splendidly theatrical `Clamabit autem mulier' (A Canaanite woman cried out, track 5), where the ensemble admirably conveys the human drama of this gospel story.

Pedro de Escobar (c. 1465-c.1535) was a composer of the same renaissance generation as Josquin, Isaac, Mouton and De La Rue. He was born in Porto, Portugal but was of Castilian ancestry; his work was in great demand in his time and he spent part of his working life in Spain, much of this in the service of the Catholic Queen Isabella I. His best-known works today are a Requiem Mass (recorded twice so far), a Magnificat setting and a handful of motets, but this present CD brings us the first recording of a complete ordinary Mass setting, simply titled ‘Missa 4v.’