COMPOSERS: Machaut
LABELS: DG
WORKS: Mass Propers for Epiphany and the Dedication (excerpts); Organa; Motets
PERFORMER: Choir of the Benedictine Abbey of Münsterschwarzach/Godehard Joppich; Early Music Consort of London/David Munrow
CATALOGUE NO: 439 424-2 ADD (1976/82)
Informative booklet notes and thoughtfully expressive interpretations contribute to an enjoyable programme. The Münsterschwarzach choir reveal the timeless beauty of the elaborately melismatic, single-voiced Gregorian chant.
David Munrow and his Early Music Consort are characteristically authoritative in the organa by Pérotin, in which chant is embellished by additional voices, and the dense harmonic polyphony of 14th-century motets, sacred and secular, by Machaut. The recordings are vividly atmospheric. Nicholas Rast