This release from the fine vocal group
Siglo de Oro and director
Patrick Allies showed up on classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2022, an unusual feat for a fairly specialized album of 16th century music. Perhaps buyers were intrigued by the
Mysterious Motet Book concept and hoped for an answer to the mystery. As it happens, they won't really get one. The motet book in question, entitled Cantiones quinque vocum selectissimae, was published in Strasbourg in 1539 after having been sent there by a Milanese musician. The mystery is why a publisher in Strasbourg, then under Germanic Protestant rule (the powers that be even fired the choristers at the city's magnificent cathedral), would have issued a book of Catholic choral music in Latin, for which there would have been no local market. The annotations, which are quite detailed, suggest that the publisher might have been trying to reach buyers in nearby Catholic lands. Whatever the case, the music itself is gorgeous, and much of it is all but unknown. The most familiar composers are Adrian Willaert and Nicolas Gombert (someone once called them the "Ert Brothers"). The dense polyphony of both has always been something of a tough slog for modern listeners, although both were hugely admired in their own time, and here, one can see why. Their music is the most complex and variegated on the album. Against these are set works by composers who are not even names in the history books, and these are simpler and luminous, making for a convincing and varied program. Sample the Christmas motet Haec dies quam fecit by (probably) Johannes Sarton or Simon Ferrariensis' Ave et gaude gloriosa virgo. The small
Siglo de Oro choir is richly sonorous, and St. George's Church in Chesterton near Cambridge is an ideal acoustic environment. This is a rare example of a specialist Renaissance album of great general appeal. ~ James Manheim