Briefly Noted

The Golden Age of English Polyphony. The Sixteen / Harry Christophers. Hyperion CDS44401/10, 2009.

Masters from Flanders: Polyphony from the 15th & 16th Century. Capella Sancti Michaelis; Currende Consort / Erik van Nevel. Etcetera KTC 1380, 2008.

Late 2009 saw the release of two ten-disc boxed sets, each packaged in a clamshell box with a small booklet and its component discs in cardboard sleeves, and each featuring performances of Renaissance vocal music by a preeminent choral ensemble. There the similarities between these two releases end. The Golden Age of English Polyphony focuses specifically on the work of four English composers retained by the House of Tudor between 1490 and 1590: Robert Fayrfax, John Taverner, John Sheppard, and William Mundy. Its ten discs contain previously-issued recordings made by The Sixteen under the direction of Harry Christophers between 1982 and 1992, several of which brought the works of these composers to large audiences for the first time. The repertoire focuses on Masses and motets, and the program features such usual suspects as Taverner's and Sheppard's parody Masses on "The Western Wynde" and Taverner's glorious Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, as well as a wonderful selection of more obscure small-scale works by Mundy, including a song for countertenor and organ. The Sixteen have always had an ensemble sound that some may find a bit hard-edged, and like the Tallis Scholars they favor a colorful blend rather than a creamy and homogeneous one, but the conviction with which they interpret this repertoire is unsurpassed and their sound is often soaringly lovely.

The second ten-disc box under consideration, though it gathers together music from roughly the same period, could hardly be more different in every other way. Where The Golden Age of English Polyphony focuses closely on major works by four significant composers working in one royal chapel, Masters from Flanders offers a broad survey of polyphonic music both sacred and secular, and both instrumental and choral. Featured composers include Orlando de Lassus, Johannes Ockeghem, Phillipe Rogier, Guillaume Dufay, and Philippe de Monte, among others. It is odd, given how many important and influential Masses were written by these composers, that there are none to be found on the program (apart from an isolated Kyrie or Gloria section here and there). Also odd is the complete lack of explanation as to where these recordings originated; the minimal packaging and budget-line pricing lead one to suspect that these discs have been previously released, but the skimpy booklet offers no information about when or where the recordings were made, nor does the label's Web site (to which the booklet refers, promising "more information"). The intrepid researcher, turning over retail stones online, will eventually discover that these discs originated as a series titled De Vlaamse Polyfonie on the Eufoda label in the early 1990s. The music itself is wonderful, as anyone familiar with both the composers and the work of Erik van Nevel and his various ensembles would expect. The program's wide variety of settings, styles, and intended contexts makes it a delightful listen from beginning to end (whereas the Golden Age of English Polyphony set is better ingested piecemeal), and the performances are uniformly excellent. Only its lack of detailed notes keeps Masters from Flanders from being as useful as it is enjoyable.

The Bad Tempered Consort: Portugese Polyphony from the 17th Century. A Imagem da Melancolia Recorder Consort. Challenge Classics CC72321, 2009.

With this beautiful and somewhat whimsical recording, the Portuguese ensemble A Imagem da Melancolia proposes a "historically improbable programme built on criteria of historical probability." The program's "improbabilities" are several, not least of them the fact the group has arranged sacred organ music from the early 1600s for a consort of recorders—an instrument that was not only used almost exclusively for secular music, but was in some instances actually banned from church use. Although the notes by ensemble leader Pedro Sousa Silva wax a bit defensive on the subject of "authenticity," this music must ultimately be defended on its merits as a listening experience, and by those criteria it needs no justification. The tighter a recorder ensemble...