Artistic quality 9 - Sound quality 9

"Although the music of Dufay is no stranger to CD--groups such as Pomerium, the Binchois Consort, Gothic Voices, and Orlando Consort all have devoted discs to his masses and motets--this offering by The Clerk’s Group, featuring selections from an important Italian manuscript known as Bologna Q15, provides a fascinating overview of both early and later works from this illustrious 15th century French composer. The hour-long program focuses on motets and mass movements that reveal a progression in Dufay’s compositional style, from the rather square motet Vasilissa, ergo gaude (the composer’s "earliest datable work") to the complex rhythms and free ornamentation of O gemma, lux et speculum and the sophisticated structure and highly developed melodic/harmonic relationships of the Credo (manuscript No. 108).

If you’re an early music fan, you’ll be right at home with this mostly male ensemble’s finely focused, reedy sound (there’s one woman among the group’s six members, veteran alto Lucy Ballard), and there’s no letting down of energy or concentration throughout the longest phrases within individual motets or across the more extended mass movements. The closely recorded voices and overall bright sonic quality wears a bit after 15 or 20 minutes, but you can’t fault the singing, which brings a vibrant, assured presence to these ancient works; and if you’re looking for fine, clearly sung, stylistically conscientious performances, you really can’t go wrong here."

David Vernier

This is the Clerks’ Group’s third CD for the Signum label, and as before they focus on one manuscript, and in this case on the work of one composer therein. Choosing to make the source the unifying device for a programme permits enormous stylistic variety within the programme, and this is certainly the case here. We hear Dufay at his most conservative cheek by jowl with with some of his most daring experiments, and all of it beautifully sung by the Clerks. The Floating Earth engineers allow the group slightly more bloom than they are normally afforded on ASV, and the results are pleasing allowing Dufay’s melodic lines to soar and float as intended. In addition to a bewildering variety of motets, we have two pairs of Mass movements, while the Kyrie Fons bonitatis is sung with appropriate plainchant, restoring the intended nine-part structure. The Clerks’ Group are now so familiar with this sort of repertoire that their technical assurance and interpretative confidence are unparalleled."

D. James Ross

DUFAY is arguably the greatest 15th-century composer, and the vast Bologna Q15 anthology includes many of his works. This disc presents half a dozen motets: the medieval-sounding Vasilissa, ergo gaude of 1420 contrasts markedly with the wonderful Supremum est mortalibus of 1433; while the final Amen of O sancte Sebastiane is pure spiritual ecstasy. The motets are interspersed with six mass movements, including four written as two “pairs” — a Gloria and Credo, and a Sanctus and Agnus — before the custom for writing complete mass cycles was established. The effect of the various juxtapositions is unexpectedly dazzling, suggesting a composer full of original ideas. The Clerks’ Group, under Wickham, sing beautifully." ***

Stephen Pettitt