Requiem & Motets (Jacobus Clemens non Papa)

Album review

Clemens non Papa -- don't look for his name under "P," but under "C." "non Papa" is not a surname, it is the way his contemporaries referred to him to distinguish him from the other well known "Clement" of his day -- Pope Clement VII. One good way to remember it is to slip it into a familiar Mario Lanza aria, "O Mein Papa," like so -- "Clemens non Papa -- to me, he's simply not the Pope..." Although the Dutch composer was a figure of sufficient stature in the sixteenth century to require distinction from the chief resident of the Holy See, for some reason the music of Jacob Clemens non Papa is almost never recorded. Given the size of his output, including 15 masses, more than 230 motets, nearly 160 psalm settings, and 100 secular ditties, once can imagine it would be hard to determine where to begin. However, in the case of Loft Recordings' Jacob Clemens non Papa: Requiem & Motets, it appears Doug Fullington, leader of the Tudor Choir, has found the way in. The Requiem mass of Clemens forms the centerpiece of the disc, and it is followed by a short motet written as an observance of Clemens' own death at age 50, which might not have been a natural one, by his contemporary Jacob Vaet. The program is filled out by seven additional, carefully chosen motets of which the first, Ecce quam bonum, is a stunning thing, a continuous outpouring of vocal beauty from first to last, and mostly situated on the tonic. All of the Tudor Choir's singing is pure, spot-on in terms of pitch, and seamlessly fluid in terms of expression and relative volume. It does not state where this is recorded, probably in a studio; wherever it was done, the recording wisely favors the voices over any reverberation, ambient or artificial, and it is just the right balance. Few recordings are perfect, but Loft Recordings' Jacob Clemens non Papa: Requiem & Motets seems to be. Even if one may not wholly agree, chances are excellent that one will be unlikely to find a disc of Renaissance music as immediately appealing and satisfying in the long term as the Tudor Choir's Jacob Clemens non Papa: Requiem & Motets. It is superb.
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