Of the leading Renaissance music vocal groups, the
Brabant Ensemble
may lean most in the direction of reviving obscure material, and so it is here. The group offers a mass and a group of motets by
Francisco Guerrero
, and all the works have been sung from manuscripts (some of them microfilmed, a term not often heard these days) and apparently appearing on recordings for the first time.
Guerrero
spent his whole life in Spain except for one ill-fated attempt to visit the Holy Land (his ship was waylaid by pirates), and he has been proposed as the most "Spanish" of the great 16th century composers from that country. From these works, that is hard to hear; the music offers limpid, melodically smooth settings with judicious handling of dissonance with little of the dark coloration of
Victoria
. Although he lived in Spain,
's music was published in Rome and other Italian cities, where he must have been heard as a foreigner who had mastered the lessons of
Palestrina
. Some of the motets have an immensely appealing simplicity that masks the art of the counterpoint; sample
O crux splendidior
. The mass, incorporating plainchant in a variety of ways, is more intricate but equally beautiful; sample the perfectly measured Incarnatus or the first Agnus Dei. The
is a mixed-gender group of the right size, with 12 or fewer performers; there might possibly be purer-sounding groups, but these are entirely adequate to the task at hand, which is to introduce some gorgeous unknown music.
Hyperion
's sound, from the All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London, is superb, and the graphics, showing a detail from a painting of Saint Thomas of Villanova, are noteworthy. A major Renaissance release of 2023. ~ James Manheim