This Glossa edition of Johannes Ockeghem's Missa Caput is beautifully packaged, down to the intriguing drawings on the disc itself; the booklet contains a penetrating essay by Björn Schmelzer, director of Graindelavoix, the vocal group behind this recording. Schmelzer has done his homework; for example, the part of the essay headed "Some notes regarding interpretation, aesthetics and acoustics during this recording," he likens working with his group at the late Gothic Sint-Pauluskerk in Antwerp as being like "fieldwork by ...
Read More
This Glossa edition of Johannes Ockeghem's Missa Caput is beautifully packaged, down to the intriguing drawings on the disc itself; the booklet contains a penetrating essay by Björn Schmelzer, director of Graindelavoix, the vocal group behind this recording. Schmelzer has done his homework; for example, the part of the essay headed "Some notes regarding interpretation, aesthetics and acoustics during this recording," he likens working with his group at the late Gothic Sint-Pauluskerk in Antwerp as being like "fieldwork by an ethnomusicologist." So far, so good, though that impression only lasts as long as one doesn't pop in the disc.That the Caput Mass of Ockeghem is a devil to sing and keep in tune is a given, and Schmelzer has managed to nail down appropriate incipits and they all are present. However, the singing is uncoordinated and the choir does not blend, the sense of pitch drifts around, and the Sint-Pauluskerk has such an enormous reverb that it grabs the sound of this choir and pushes it...
Read Less