DUNSTABLE: Quam pulchra es; Veni Sancte Spiritus; Mass Movements

Tonus Peregrinus;
Pitts, Antony

8.557341

Dunstable’s most famous piece (and justly so) is the isorhythmic motet, Veni sancte spiritus, in which a comparatively enigmatic formal structure becomes totally dwarfed by the music’s expressive beauty. But the Mass movements here are, if anything, more beautiful. Sample the Gloria a 4 or the Credo and Sanctus Da gaudiorum premia, where the soprano voices soar up ravishingly to the heavens. The eight singers of Tonus Peregrinus sing all this music with richly blended tone and deep feeling, and Antony Pitts, their director, has arranged a little encore with a performance of Dunstable’s four-part Gloria in Canon to which he has added a two-part canon underneath, as ‘in the original work there must have been some kind of harmonic support’. Altogether a superb disc, fully worthy of a great but still little-known musician from the distant past. • Penguin Guide, January 2009

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Naxos

25-10-2005

747313234127