Gregorian Missa

It is my opinion that Jean Langlais has written some of the noblest, richest and most awe-inspiring sacred music there has ever been. He wrote more organ music than J. S. Bach, and most of it is as suitable for liturgical performance as sung music. His style is a powerful mixture of chant-like motifs (including actual quotations from Gregorian chant), organum, and bold dissonances that give way to pure, radiant tonality. He draws on a wide range of expressions too, from radiant and blazing to quiet and ecstatic. He was truly a craftsman of the highest calibre, and a credit to the distinguished musical heritage of his native France.

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.’

Most recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem in D minor are based on the completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, which has become the standard performing version, though some of these offer minor modifications of the orchestration and alterations of Süssmayr's awkward counterpoint. Yet as far as historically informed reassessments of the Requiem are concerned, perhaps only Arthur Schoonderwoerd's performance with the Gesualdo Consort and Cristofori on the Accent label is an attempt to re-create the experience of a funeral mass in Vienna in the 1790s.

All gathered around a single music stand, the Cappella Pratensis sings from facsimiles of 15th-century manuscripts, adding plainchant between the movements of a Mass, using the pronunciation of Latin particular to the Low Countries in the 15th century–all in an effort to get as close as possible to the sound composers such as Josquin and Ockeghem intended. On this record, Rebecca Stewart and her singers bring their unique approach to Ockeghem's famously somber Missa Mi-mi–with extraordinary results. The Cappella doesn't have the robust sound or sense of momentum the Clerks' Group brings to this Mass; rather, their performance has a gentleness and an extraordinary stillness about it that feel genuinely devout.

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.

Jordi Savall - Cristóbal De Morales (ca.1500-1553) - Officium Defunctorum & Missa Pro Defunctis (1992) {Astrée-Naïve ES 9926 rel 1999}
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© 1992, 1999 Auvidis / Astrée / Naïve | ES 9935
Classical / Renaissance / Sacred

Morales's five-part setting of the Requiem is one of the masterpieces of the 16th century and was actually published twice during his lifetime. The 'Missa pro defunctis' follows the customary pattern of the time. Each section begins with a unison Gregorian intonation, which then continues as a cantus firmus in the upper part as the other voices spin a polyphonic texture underneath. The work avoids obvious madrigalisms, but maintains an austere, meditative texture, which is both spiritual and moving.