The King’s Singers: Renaissance—The Music of Josquin Desprez

From Fr. Jerome Weber, Fanfare:  This program of five motets and sixteen chansons is presented as a collection of the composer's six-part works. In fact, besides its acknowledged omission of Praeter rerum seriem, it ignores ten more six-part motets in the Smijers edition, of which The New Grove works-list downgrades four to the doubtful category (the others have more or less claim to authenticity, a big debate among Josquin scholars). On the other hand, only nine of the chansons are six-voice pieces, and one of those is doubtful. 

The King's Singers, who have recently moved to their new label, offer music more rarefied than their usual popular collections, demonstrating an affinity with other Oxbridge graduates who currently dominate the English early-music scene. The six male voices are nicely balanced, as usual, and their idiomatic interpretations are quite satisfactory. The five-voiced lament for Ockeghem and the four-voiced Mille regretz are among the more familiar items, while O virgo prudentissima seems to be a first recording. The sound is clear, the notes by David Fallows are useful, and texts come with translation. This is a good addition to the Josquin shelf, hardly too crowded anyway.