Guerrero and his contemporaries

There is no obvious reason—it's not an anniversary year or anything—but Guerreromania seems to be sweeping the world. Three CDs of his music arrived in my mail at once, and I happen to know of at least one more, a fine recording at last of some of the Canciones y villanescas espirituales by La Trulla de Bozes. I am not sure why all this is, but let us be grateful: Francisco Guerrero (1528-99) has deserved his own mania for quite some time.

The programme of Hispalensis (Enchiriadis EN 2009, rec 2004, 59') by Raúl Mallavibarrena and Musica Ficta is a brave one in a couple of ways: it is restricted to works for four voices, sung one to a part, and it includes not just conventional motets and Marian antiphons but a fair amount of music—a Magnificat, a Salve regina and a Libera me—that alternates polyphony with substantial amounts of chant. These are not easy works to pull off with such a small group, and the quartet goes at them with discipline and thoughtful vigour. Sometimes it is marred, to my ear, by a tremulous quality, especially in the upper voices, but their rendition of the Alma redemptoris mater setting is 3 minutes and 37 seconds of near-perfection.

Michael Noone directs the Sydney Chamber Choir and the Orchestra of the Renaissance in an only recently released performance of Guerrero: Missa Surge propera (ABC Classics ABC 476 9236, rec 1998, 59'), which combines Guerrero's sole six-voice mass with some Marian motets and a big psalm setting. This is a much larger ensemble, 20 singers and a 'loud band' of six, and the programme includes music in up to eight parts. Most of the motets are sung a cappella ; one is done by instruments alone; and the mass and psalm combine them. In all it is rather tastily done: nobody understands 16th-century Spanish music better than Noone; the Orchestra of the Renaissance has made it a speciality for years; and the Sydney Chamber Choir, not by nature an early-music group, rises to the occasion splendidly.

Further thoughts anon, but first, the Tallis Scholars have taken on Guerrero too, in a CD of the Missa Surge propera (Gimell CDGIM 040, issued 2006, 67'). You may notice a certain similarity in the titles; yes, this is the same mass, and in fact the two discs have three motets in common as well: the eight-voice Regina caeli, Surge propera (unrelated to the mass) and the composer's greatest hit in his own day, Ave virgo sanctissima. (This last, for anyone who is interested, now holds the record for the composition that appears on my iPod the most times, at seven. Perhaps I can stop at this suitably Marian number.) If you have read this far, I'm sure you already know the sound of the Tallis Scholars, and suffice it to say, here it is again: unaccompanied, clean, energetic, brilliant, irresistible. It is enough to give you the strength to go on.

Maybe I had heard of Fernando de las Infantas, maybe not; he was, it emerges, a wealthy nobleman and controversial theologian, a few years younger than Guerrero, and published four volumes of sacred music in 1578-9. Almost none of this music has been accessible in a modern edition, but fortunately it caught the eye of Michael Noone and his Ensemble Plus Ultra, and induced them to make a disc of Infantas: Motetes (Almaviva DS-0140, rec 2004, 73'). These are the performers who knocked us all out a couple of years ago with their recording of newly discovered liturgical music by Cristóbal de Morales (reviewed by Bernadette Nelson in EM, xxxiv (2006), pp.152 -5), and if the Infantas CD doesn't have quite the shock-power of the Morales, it is only because we care less about Infantas. You will care about him now, though: this really is terrific music, from the intimate, relaxed intensity of the four-voice O sacrum convivium to the overwhelming chocolate-cream-pie sound of Congregati sunt inimici nostri a7, to the controlled confusion, appropriate...