A welcome return to Hyperion for Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore, whose exuberant recordings of Baroque music from around the world have made them one of the best-loved ensembles of today. These magnificent liturgical settings from the heart of the Venetian polychoral tradition are full of drama, wonder and extraordinary spatial effects. His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts and Concerto Palatino provide the sonic gilding that would have been an essential part of the original performances, when extra musicians crowded the galleries of St Mark’s for special occasions.

This is a very different musical interpretation of Psalm 51 than we saw last week in Allegri’s Miserere. In Allegri’s composition the intensity of the soaring, unaccompanied voices lead us to contemplation of the Divine Mercy of God in Heaven. Here the urgent, dramatic orchestration pulls us down into King David’s turbulent emotions as he comes to acknowledge his sinfulness and his need for God’s mercy. This clip is only the first part of a much longer composition, and contains only the first line of the Psalm: Miserere mei, Domine, secundam misericordiam tuam, “Have mercy on me, Lord, according to your compassion”. As the focus of the Psalm moves from David’s sinfulness to the abundance of God’s mercy, the music in the later parts of the piece changes with it.

This is the second disc to come from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli forces and it is already their second Gramophone Award. When I reviewed their Virgin Classics' recording of a reconstruction of a dogal coronation of 1595 (5/90) I admired their stylish blend of informed scholarship and sensitive musicianship allied to performances from musicians well-versed in the language of the period. Added to that the music was recorded with great immediacy in the acoustically impressive surroundings of Brinkburn Priory in Northumberland. For this reconstruction of a Vespers that could have be held in St Mark's, Venice McCreesh shows a real understanding of the placing and choreography of the participants in the musical aspects of the liturgy.

Paul Goodwin’s A Christmas Collection (his debut disc with the Academy of Ancient Music) offers an anthology of Schütz’s shorter dialogues and motets by way of an alternative to the composer’s own Christmas Oratorio. Anyone who has ever endured that drily austere work will be pleasantly surprised by the rich textures and vocal expressivity of much of the music here, and by the dramatic wit, say, of the little Annunciation scene, ‘Sei gegrüsset Maria’, for male alto Angel and soprano Mary, in which the mother-to-be can’t help interrupting her heavenly visitor, first in sheer amazement, then in her eagerness to confirm her unblemished virgin state.

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.

Although the first violin virtuosos came mainly from Cremona, Brescia or Mantua, it was Venice that swiftly emerged as the principal centre for the development of instrumental music. Moreover, it was there that most collections of this music were printed all through the seventeenth century. It is curious to note that all these virtuosos obviously enjoyed sharing their success with their colleagues: for, alongside works for one or two violins and continuo, almost all the composer-violinists gathered together on this disc conceived sonate, canzone or sinfonie for ensembles of three or four violins. In addition, these compositions often make use of bichoral or echo effects.

Around 1600, when opera was invented in Italy, venice was resplendent with the works of Giovanni Gabrieli in the Basilica of San Marco. A daring amalgamation of Flemish and Italian styles, this is a corpus of virtuoso pieces in which voices compete with cornetts and trombones for polyphony of rare beauty. In an Italy ravaged by wars, where the Condottieri were the modern Heroes, the souls of these captains rise again thanks to the music of the brilliant Gabrieli, the ultimate representative of a Renaissance that put the fighting Princes into the last cherished armours… Adrien Mabire and his Mercenaries have been recruited to serve under Maestro Gabrieli, to enable his works to resound loud and clear, where we hear the triumphant flapping banners of the Victory at Lepanto, Glory be to the Serenissima!

The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

The fifth release in the Rediscoveries series from Virgin Classics is the celebrated 1990 recording A Venetian Coronation 1595 by Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli Consort & Players. The album presents a musical reconstruction of the coronation mass for Venetian Doge Marino Grimani. Gramophone wrote of the recording: "Without doubt, this is one of the finest records of Italian Renaissance polyphony to appear for a long time; imaginative in conception, varied in content, and both exciting and thought-provoking in execution."

There is some grand and characteristically sumptuous music on this record of motets and instrumental pieces that might have been heard during the feast of Christmas in St Mark's or one of the other great churches of Venice round about 1600 or a little later. A strong point in its favour, too, is the unhackneyed choice of programme: the instrumental Sonata pian' e forte, of course, is an old favourite, and the two earlier double-choir motets of Gabrieli, Angelus ad pastores and 0 magnum mysterium, are also relatively familiar; but the three remaining Gabrieli motets, all taken from posthumous publications and among his most elaborate polychoral pieces, are much less often tackled—not surprisingly, since they call for exceptional resources.

It is well known that in Venice a "Golden Age" of compositional, vocal, and instrumental musical creativity and virtuosity emerged, and then flourished during the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s. The 16th century experienced a substantial development in the cappella ducale of Saint Mark's, which, until the end of the 17th century, remained the leading center of musical activity in the city. Evidence of this comes from the profusion of significant musicians that it received in that "Golden Age": either as maestri di cappella, or as organists (Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli), or as virtuoso instrumentalists (the cornet player Giovanni Bassano). Claudio Merulo and Andrea Gabrieli played a decisive role in the simultaneous emergence of Venetian keyboard and stile concertato music.

There is no shortage of discs around featuring transcriptions of Renaissance music for brass. Whilst played on modern instruments the main difference here however is that London Brass, several of whom play period instruments in other ensembles, have enlisted the specialist knowledge of Philip Pickett to direct them.

The senses reign, and Reason now is dead (Petrarch). Giovanni Antonini, flautist and founder of the legendary Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, enjoys musical voyages, the discursiveness of music. He begins with an anonymous 16th century pavane, La Morte della Ragione (The Death of Reason), which he believes refers to In Praise of Folly, in which its author Erasmus distinguishes between two forms of madness: a sweet illusion of the spirit, and a negative form, one that the vengeful Furies conjure up from hell…

Many people imagine the music of 17th century Venice was so fabulous that the great 16th century polyphonists were forgotten. Not so–particularly in the case of Masses. (Indeed, after arriving at San Marco, Monteverdi ordered copies of Masses by Palestrina and Lassus.) Paul McCreesh's Venetian reconstruction reflects this practice, adding motets and canzonas by the Gabrielis to Lassus's Missa Congratulamini. Particularly interesting is the ceremony opening the service, where the Doge and the Archbishop reenact the arrival of the disciples at the empty sepulchre.

To visit the great Venetian cathedrals in the 17th century was to bow deeply to the polychoral or “cori spezzati” style that reigned there, pioneered by Giovanni Gabrieli. The young Heinrich Schutz was no exception. Unable to resist the sparkling sounds arising from polychoral writing and antiphonal placement, Schutz carried the style back to his native Germany. Capella Murensis and Les Cornets Noirs here present with absolute fidelity works by Schutz and Gabrieli that epitomize the high Ventian style.