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The large Palestrina series undertaken by The Sixteen and its director, Harry Christophers, is useful; few of the pieces are receiving world premieres, but a systematic exploration of a substantial body of Palestrina's music is not so common. He tends to be known for a relatively small number of hits. Moreover, it is heartening somehow; The Sixteen have undertaken increasingly adventurous programming, but here, they return to their roots in 16th century sacred polyphony. Here, The Sixteen are actually "The Twenty" for much of the program. The performances are all to a high standard, and the sonic environment of St. Augustine's Church, Kilburn, London, is ideal, which leaves the music itself. It is a bit atypical for Palestrina, which might not commend the album to series newcomers, but which may well fascinate those deeply engaged with Palestrina. The opening work, and really the centerpiece, is the Missa ut re mi fa sol la, otherwise known as the Hexachord Mass. This is a cantus firmus mass, an old-fashioned form by Palestrina's time, and the cantus firmus, a six-note rising scale, was one cultivated by many other composers as an exercise or a kind of tradition. It is music in which the "bones" are unusually exposed for Palestrina. Sample the Benedictus for an idea. There are also motets, many of them on the subjects of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and there is a lovely trio of settings from the Song of Songs. Beautifully executed as usual, this is a release that exposes new sides of Palestrina's music.© James Manheim /TiVo

Josquin Desprez, princeps musicorum, the prince of musicians, as his contemporaries called him, is best known today for his sacred works, the masses and motets, which have been widely performed and recorded. Surprisingly, his chansons have received little attention from performers, except for the pieces for five and six voices, printed after his death by the Antwerp publisher Tilman Susato in his seventh book of 1545. Doulce Mémoire has chosen to focus on the chansons for three and four voices, which are probably the earliest in the Hainault master’s output; with their diversity of language and themes (sometimes folk-derived), these songs constitute a varied programme that is at once serious and bawdy, a testament to the unequalled art of Josquin Desprez. © Ricercar

Man, is this ever a lot of Ockeghem. Gaudeamus' The Ockeghem Collection includes all of the surviving masses and most of the motets, along with a chanson and a couple of attributed works thrown in for good measure. What would be left of Ockeghem's work list afterward is a motet or two, a motley assemblage of chansons, and a few more attributions, perhaps enough to fill up two CDs, if that. Naturally, not all of these pieces have been recorded at one time; these performances, by the Clerks' Group under Edward Wickham, were issued over about seven ASV/Gaudeamus CDs from 1994 to 2001. The ordering of the program, however, is completely different from any of the earlier releases, which contained some pieces not by Ockeghem and a few additional Ockeghem chansons not included here. Therefore, this isn't a case of revitalizing old stock through changing the cover and putting it out again; The Ockeghem Collection represents a rethinking of the whole of the Clerks' Group recorded output of the composer.In musical history, Johannes Ockeghem stands between the renaissance poles of Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez, though in contemporary sources, he is often cited as being the top composer of the day, and he may have been a close contemporary of Dufay that lived into very old age. His music is noted for its separateness from other sacred music of the time; the tricks of the trade -- parodies, cantus firmus, imitation, and other devices used by renaissance composers -- sink so far into Ockeghem's music that they become invisible. In most cases, they are there, and one can deduce them from looking at the music on the page. However, the music does not sound as it looks; when sung, it takes on a magical characteristic all its own. The late musicologist Edward Lowinsky once took a whole lot of flack from his colleagues in suggesting that Ockeghem had developed a "secret chromatic art." While scholars remain divided as to whether Ockeghem's art is specifically chromatic in nature, there is no doubt that whatever makes his music tick is something that yet remains a "secret." Ockeghem's three-part writing is matchless, but what makes it so is a mystery.The Clerks' Group does a terrific job not only of interpreting Ockeghem's music as it appears on the page, but in finding the center of each piece in terms of divining the proper pace of one piece versus the next and developing a sound that still blends but in which individual voices are still apparent. This is significant as Ockeghem's music, though superficially calm and devotional; is quite complex, even in three-part textures; and often things are going on in the background that one doesn't catch the first or even second time through. All of the singing is transparent, well intoned, clear-eyed, dedicated, and pious; for such a large swath of Ockeghem, these performances are ideal. Ockeghem's music, however, is best taken in relatively small doses, say a mass and a motet per sitting; this is not background music, and time seems to stop when Ockeghem gets going, so one will want to pay attention. Although The Ockeghem Collection is only five discs -- about six hours and 20 minutes of listening -- and parts of it will seem eternal, obtaining it should be regarded as a commitment. One cannot praise this fine set highly enough, and with so much extraordinary music here, it would be a pity for a copy of this to sit, untouched, gathering dust on the shelf.© TiVo

Here's a recording that, to use the terminology of African-American vernacular music, is old school in every way. It begins with a decidedly odd sound, which has a hollow, boxy quality, with distortion at the frequency extremes, that could almost have been heard on a 1950s LP. The booklet indicates that the disc was recorded by Swiss Radio, but it's not clear whether the performance was actually taken from a radio broadcast; even if it was, it's subpar. The list of vintage qualities continues with veteran conductor Michel Corboz and the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne. Despite the suggestion of modest dimensions in these names, the combined forces are large, maybe not Mormon Tabernacle Choir plus Philadelphia Orchestra large, but bigger than the current fashion for music of the early nineteenth century. And of course the old school hangs on for a good reason: Corboz and his Swiss choristers have a warmth, clarity of articulation, and vigorous response to the text that are hard to find these days. Corboz catches the almost operatic quality of Schubert's final mass, which asks us to believe not in a holy catholic and apostolic church (the composer leaves those words out of the Credo) but that Christ came into the world to the strains of a transcedently beautiful Ländler, sung by a Viennese vocal trio of the streets. Corboz's Schubert deliberately traces outlines of light and shade, lands firmly but not over-heavily on dramatic strokes, and shows the kind of control over large-scale architecture that makes for really good Schubert. The bottom line is that this is a Schubert disc that, though brand new, will feel familiar. Corboz has been doing this kind of performance, and doing it well, for almost 50 years now, and it's still worthwhile even if there are various fresher recordings to choose from. © TiVo

"Jubilation vénitienne" is an invitation to celebrate joy with two outstanding composers: Antonio Caldara and Antonio Vivaldi. By establishing a dialogue between their two musical worlds, this program aims to recreate, in all it's diversity of colors, a concert in Baroque Venice where children's voices combine with the singing of the flautino, the oboe, the trumpet and the strings, in an explosion of joy and jubilation. © Mirare

This 16-track, 63-minute CD is compiled from the best material off of the Swingle Singers' classic mid-'60s LPs. The sound is excellent (and offers a serious edge over the original LPs which, unlike later Philips classical releases, were pressed here in America and were usually fairly noisy), and the repertory is chosen perfectly. Among the highlights is the group's version of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," featuring their version of the closing "Rondo," which became the closing theme of The Clay Cole Show (a cooler version of American Bandstand, out of New York) for at least a year after its 1965 release. Among the singers featured here is soprano Christianne LeGrand, who subsequently sang on Procol Harum's Grand Hotel album.© TiVo

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in August 1572 did not bring only death and desolation: on 5 September of this dark year, Pope Gregory XIII had the massacre celebrated as a liberation of the kingdom of France, and requested a Te Deum to be sung to thank God for saving the Most Christian French King from the heretics. The ensemble Huelgas has decided to explore the French Protestant music of that period (including that of composer Jacques Goudimel who was one of the victims of the ongoing murderous rage who had begun in Paris, but went on throughout France for another month or so, in Lyon in Goudimel’s case), but also that of Catholics who applauded the anti-Huguenot frenzy of the Pope. This album, a superb overview of sixteenth-century music, is divided in three parts: psalms set to music by several Huguenot musicians (with the texts by Clément Marot and Theodore de Beze taken from the famous Genevan Psalter published by Calvin), the papal rejoicings including a piece by Palestrina, and finally the profane and the sacred works in the Huguenot world. The Huelgas ensemble offers a deep insight on music, vocal and instrumental, on both sides of the Reformation in these troubled times. © SM/Qobuz

Here's a recording that, to use the terminology of African-American vernacular music, is old school in every way. It begins with a decidedly odd sound, which has a hollow, boxy quality, with distortion at the frequency extremes, that could almost have been heard on a 1950s LP. The booklet indicates that the disc was recorded by Swiss Radio, but it's not clear whether the performance was actually taken from a radio broadcast; even if it was, it's subpar. The list of vintage qualities continues with veteran conductor Michel Corboz and the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne accompanied by the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne. Despite the suggestion of modest dimensions in these names, the combined forces are large, maybe not Mormon Tabernacle Choir plus Philadelphia Orchestra large, but bigger than the current fashion for music of the early nineteenth century. And of course the old school hangs on for a good reason: Corboz and his Swiss choristers have a warmth, clarity of articulation, and vigorous response to the text that are hard to find these days. Corboz catches the almost operatic quality of Schubert's final mass, which asks us to believe not in a holy catholic and apostolic church (the composer leaves those words out of the Credo) but that Christ came into the world to the strains of a transcedently beautiful Ländler, sung by a Viennese vocal trio of the streets. Corboz's Schubert deliberately traces outlines of light and shade, lands firmly but not over-heavily on dramatic strokes, and shows the kind of control over large-scale architecture that makes for really good Schubert. The bottom line is that this is a Schubert disc that, though brand new, will feel familiar. Corboz has been doing this kind of performance, and doing it well, for almost 50 years now, and it's still worthwhile even if there are various fresher recordings to choose from. © TiVo

It may seem hard to believe that the brilliantly progressive keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti and the almost Renaissance-style (the term of the time was stile antico) polyphony heard here were written by the same composer. But listen again, and these pieces begin to appear as new facets of the same diamond. The Stabat Mater is not an exercise in Renaissance polyphony but an entirely original adaptation of it to a new time, every bit as much as Bach's fugues but in a different way. Its ten voices are not divided into two groups in the manner of the late Renaissance but are instead independent entities that carry on a variety of interlocking conversations and are capable of tonal diversions and dramatic expression of the hymn's implacable three-line stanzas depicting Mary standing at the feet of the crucified Christ. It is not known exactly when or for whom the work was composed, and even opponents of the one-voice-per-part procedure are likely to agree that it clarifies the uniquely complex textures of this work. A light harpsichord accompaniment also seems to help hold together a beautifully expressive reading. The rarely heard four-voice work known as the Madrid Mass (although its origins too are unknown) comes much closer to the pure Renaissance style, and here Ensemble Jacques Moderne director Joël Suhubiette assigns two perfectly blended voices to each part. The program is rounded out by a short motet and a Te Deum that shows Scarlatti's mastery of the dual-choir style (this work is accompanied by an organ), and everything is expressively performed and beautifully recorded. A highly recommended point of entry into the still underappreciated world of stile antico choral music of the 18th century, and a must for Scarlatti lovers. © TiVo