Josquin des Prez
Josquin des Prez shaped Renaissance vocal polyphony into something keenly expressive: independent voices that imitate, answer and lock around the text. Masses, motets and chansons still sound alive in the throat.
His Missa Pange lingua takes a plainchant hymn and builds long, seamless architecture, entries and exits woven so the line barely breaks. Motets such as Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, Absalon fili mi and Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria shift between dense imitation and sudden openness, the words riding inside the weave. Secular pieces cut closer still. Mille regretz and Allegez moi carry leave-taking and desire in short, repeating motifs that pass from voice to voice. The writing asks for blend, knife-edge intonation and space to breathe; when those arrive, the polyphony feels less antique than urgently human, whether in chapel mass, Christmas liturgy or the spare sting of a chanson.
Josquin des Prez is featured on the following titles
Old Wine, New Bottles
Floyd Williams and JANUS illustrate the cross-fertilisation of folk, popular and jazz idioms within classical music. The premise was to play early music of the 14th–16th centuries on modern instruments, free of purist historical constraints.
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
The highly acclaimed recording of the Choir of Ormond College's European tour. Includes the amazing choral soundscape I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Australian composer Philip Nunn.
Josquin to Martin
A miscellany spanning High and Late Renaissance motets and nineteenth- and twentieth-century sacred works, drawn from Ensemble Gombert’s first European tour in 2004. The programme was chosen to complement Hommage à Gombert, then in production, with Gombert, Lassus and Monteverdi.
Compositions by Josquin des Prez also appear on
Laughing
The internationally acclaimed Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, turns to the lighter side of a cappella singing across jazz, madrigal and spiritual repertoire.
A Thousand Beautiful and Graceful Inventions
Subtitled ‘The glorious age of medieval and renaissance canons’, this programme of late Middle Ages and Early Modern choral music is sung by the University of Queensland Chamber Singers under Graeme Morton. The illustrated booklet has programme notes by Denis Collins and Jason Stoessel, with complete texts.
A Baroque Christmas
The music on this CD is a historical Christmas “pick of the pops”, from the late 1400s to the end of the Baroque period. Directed by Douglas Lawrence, the Australian Chamber Choir offers a programme recorded live in concert during their 2019 European tour. The 17 tracks are drawn from lesser-known seasonal works, championing a sublime repertoire that is all too often neglected.
A Valley Fair
Pastance's then most recent offering is a delightful collection of traditional, original and early music for Celtic harp, recorders and voices.