Rebecca Stewart together with the vocal ensemble Seconda Pract!ca explores the music of Josquin Desprez and his contemporaries Brumel and Willaert, commemorating the 500th anniversary of his death. The central piece of this recording is the famous Missa Mater patris by Josquin. Founded in 2012 by international musicians gathered in The Netherlands for their studies, Seconda Prat!ca has become one of the leading ensembles of the new generation of early music performers. The ensemble’s main goal is to bridge the gaps between performers and audience, revitalizing western musical heritage by bringing it back to a shared living experience.

Auf »The Landscape of the Polyphonists« präsentieren das Huelgas Ensemble und Paul Van Nevel auf zwei fantastischen CDs den intensiven melancholischen und imitatorischen Stil der französisch-flämischen polyphonen Musik und erkunden, wie die Musik durch den besonderen Charakter der Landschaft, in der jeder Komponist sein Leben verbrachte, geprägt wurde. 24 ausgewählte Landschaftsaufnahmen und Bilder von flämischen Kathedralen und ihrer Umgebung versetzen den Zuhörer in die Welt der flämischen Länder der Renaissance, während das Huelgas Ensemble die Werke von außergewöhnlichen Komponisten wie Antoine Busnois, Nicholas Gombert, Josquin Desprez sowie von weniger bekannten, aber ebenso bemerkenswerten Komponisten wie Josquin Baston, Jean l’Héritier oder Jean Mouton aufführt. Das Publikum kann die komplexe Wechselwirkung zwischen historischen Landschaften, Architektur und Musik an ihren jeweiligen Herkunftsorten unmittelbar erleben.

The Gesualdo Six and director Owain Park (also the group's bass) have expanded their mission quite a bit beyond performances of music by their namesake, recording Renaissance polyphony from various countries. Their precise, close-up sound is instantly appealing and arguably more emotionally involving than the classic cathedral choir recordings of repertory like that on this 2021 release. A specific aspect of Josquin's legacy is explored here: music of the composers who worked after Josquin at the court of the Este family in Ferrara. The program begins with a motet by Ockeghem, possibly Josquin's teacher, and the inspiration for Josquin's magnificent ode Nymphes des bois, memorializing Ockeghem.

Decca Classics announces the release of the first in a trilogy of recordings from the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble Stile Antico to celebrate major anniversaries of three Renaissance masters. The first release, The Golden Renaissance: Josquin des Prez is dedicated to the Franco-Flemish composer to mark the 500th anniversary of his death and features a world premiere recording of Josquin's chanson, Vivrai je tousjours.

This release is the last in a series of nine Josquin mass recordings by The Tallis Scholars and their director, Peter Phillips. The series began in 1986, and Phillips has been the group's director since it was founded in 1973. The Tallis Scholars are, thus, a well-oiled machine, and they're capable of a flawless vocal blend that's hard to match even among England's superb collection of small choirs (the Scholars are ten strong). There are other ways to sing Josquin, but their hyper-clarity works well in his music, for it brings out the music's striking, Bachian complexity. This particular album, despite its ultimate position, is especially good, for in the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie and Missa Faysant Regretz, it's best to have no distractions from the strikingly bold underlying structure.

The Schola Cantorum in Basel has long championed the imaginative exploration of early music, creating expertly-researched programmes and encouraging superbly-performed interpretations with a close attention also to the most appropriate recording conditions. Such was the case with Amours amours amours, a disc of lute duos starting from music composed in the fifteenth century, recorded in 2001 by Karl-Ernst Schröder and Crawford Young.

Biographical and musicological certainties may be in short supply in the life and work of Josquin, but there's no gainsaying the magnificence of the music. This program of shorter works, from The Brabant Ensemble and Stephen Rice, most in unusual guise, celebrates his 500th anniversary.

A composer admired by his contemporaries, Josquin Desprez (ca 1450-1521) was a solitary artist who sublimated in his chansons the melancholy character and the elegance emblematic of the Renaissance. For their first recording, Dulces Exuviae explore the intimacy of these chansons in a fresh light: the sweet melodies are embellished by ornaments and accompanied on the lute, leaving ample room for improvisation, and thus allowing music to come out all the more alive, delicate and filled with emotion. The ensemble Dulces Exuviae is baritone Romain Bockler and lutenist Bor Zuljan.

Founded in Paris in 1978 the Ensemble Clément Janequin devotes itself principally to the secular and religious music of the Renaissance. Its interpretations of the Parisian chanson are regarded as authoritative, and recordings of works like Les Cris de Paris, Le Chant des Oyseaulx, Fricassée Parisienne and La Chasse have brought back to life one of golden ages of French music. Now available to a wide audience, the music of Janequin, Sermisy, Anthoine de Bertrand, Costeley, Roland de Lassus and Claude Le Jeune illustrates the contrasts in which the Renaissance took such delight…

In 1968, six former choral scholars from King’s College, Cambridge established the King’s Singers, later described by The Times as “the superlative vocal sextet”. The group has always comprised two countertenors, a tenor, two baritones and a bass, and over the years it has proved consistently exceptional for vocal distinction and breadth and diversity of repertoire. This celebratory collection of eight CDs focuses on Renaissance composers from Italy, England, France, Spain, Germany and the Low Countries.

Tallis Scholars are among the world's preeminent choral ensembles. Cultivating a distinctive vocal sound backed by impeccable scholarship, the group has helped raise the general level of interest in Renaissance choral music in Britain and beyond through a large catalog of recordings and numerous international tours.

The Tallis Scholars are hands down the most difficult performing ensemble in the world to review. The reason is simple - they have been around for so many years and have produced such a consistent and high quality product, both on record and in the concert hall, that there is simply little to say about them anymore except "bring it on!"

The graphics for this Tallis Scholars release mention scholarly disagreement over the Missa Mater Patris, long attributed to Josquin but "recently shown to be by the little-known Noel Bauldeweyn," writes director Peter Phillips. "Or is it?" he adds. He sketches out the controversy, pointing out that the mass does not resemble any of Josquin's other compositions in the genre; he doesn't answer his question. However, you might take the album as a rejoinder to those questioning the authenticity of the mass. Its possible removal from the Josquin canon rests entirely on this musical evidence, so Phillips is entitled to adduce musical evidence of his own: the genuine Bauldeweyn mass included here sounds nothing like Josquin but is basically a work in 15th century style with a bit of imitative counterpoint thrown in.

This release by The Tallis Scholars, the seventh of nine in a project to record the complete masses of Josquin des Prez, explores two unique and contrasting works. Missa Gaudeamus represents Renaissance artistry at its most intense. Based on the first six notes of a chant melody, it deploys mathematics in a number of clever ways. Missa L'ami Baudichon represents Renaissance artistry at its most playful. It is based on just three notes from a secular folksong that sounds distractingly like the opening of Three Blind Mice. Known as the most adventurous composer of his time, Josquin's restless, searching intellect is on display in all his works.

Renaissance composers frequently based sacred works on the melodies of secular songs, which were typically placed in the tenor part as a cantus firmus. The mixing of such elements, as in Josquin's Missa Di dadi and the Missa Une mousse de Biscaye, which were based respectively on the chansons N'aray je jamais mieulx and Une mousse de Biscaye, was common practice in the 15th century. However, Josquin also used images of dice in the tenor part of the Missa Di dadi, which have been interpreted as symbols representing time ratios, indicating the length of notes relative to the other three voices.