Rating: 5/5
Review:
A very fine disc
I think this is a very fine disc. The music is wonderful
and it is very well sung.
The music is a parody mass based on Richafort's motet Quem dicunt homines, possibly by Josquin,
and Factum est autem which is an undisputed Josquin motet. Whatever their authorship, both are truly
lovely works.
The singing is excellent, with faultless intonation, very
nice balance and blend, and a lovely
fluency of line. The singers bring out
all the depth and spirituality in the text and the overall sound is
lovely. There's a resonant (but not
over-resonant) acoustic which makes the basses in particular really ring,
perhaps at the cost of a little distinctness of individual parts sometimes, but
that's fine with me. It's wonderfully
beautiful and just a pleasure to listen to.
The notes by David Wyatt are very interesting. He makes some very good points about the
methodology used to try to authenticate works attributed to Josquin and
presents a very plausible case to consider this mass as authentic. I am not qualified to pronounce on the
matter, but to my ears it's certainly good enough to have been written by him.
Thank you, Sid!
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