The 14-member
A:N:S chorus of Hungary has recorded various Renaissance masses that might be considered hardcore -- they require the listener to delve a bit into the work's structure and background, which would have been more apparent to a chorister of the year 1500 than to a listener of the early twenty-first century. This disc offers three masses by Jacob Obrecht, perhaps the least understood and appreciated of the major composers of the early Renaissance. They are claimed to be world-premiere recordings, and certainly performances of these works of any kind have been rare. All three works are cantus firmus masses, based on secular songs -- masses in which one voice presents a melody, usually a preexisting one, more or less intact in a single voice in each movement of mass. Later on this preexisting tune would often be sung in the tenor voice, but here, in two of the three pieces, it is in the top or superius voice. (Two of the masses are for three voice parts; one, the Missa cela sans plus, is for four.) Ideally a recording of a mass of this kind should present the model along with its polyphonic elaboration, but here there is a less desirable substitute: the melodies are printed in the booklet in musical notation. This complaint aside, the disc is ideal for the listener who wants to grapple with the early Renaissance mass, both the most ambitious and most difficult genre of the era. The composer's skill was measured partly by how elegantly he incorporated the preexisting material into the texture -- it might be hidden, or highlighted in unusual ways, or it might spin off fragments of itself into the other voices. With the aid of schematic diagrams the booklet leads the listener through what is happening at any given moment. The
A:N:S chorus (one hopes in vain for any explanation of the unusual name in the booklet) has sharpened its performances over the course of its several recordings and now ranks with the top Western European ensembles in the clarity and beauty of its music-making; even the listener who does not follow along with the structural complexities will notice as tension rises where the cantus firmus clashes with the surrounding lines. Periodic reduction to solo voices adds variety and lyricism. To top it off, the Hungarian Catholic church where the music was recorded is a superb environment for this music. Strongly recommended for lovers of Renaissance choral polyphony and especially for libraries -- even if the works involved are not the ones in the textbooks, the student of music history could hardly find a better embodiment of how the ideas of the Renaissance mass were put into practice.