After centuries of being held up as the ideal of Renaissance polyphony, and then decades of neglect as listeners discovered the other riches of the High Renaissance, Palestrina has experienced a modest revival in the 21st century, with many performances of excavated works. Several have been recorded by the mainstream choir The Sixteen, and now the transnational quintet Cinquecento offers a highly distinctive Lamentations of Jeremiah, which is apparently an early work: it is found in a manuscript dated around 1558. ...
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After centuries of being held up as the ideal of Renaissance polyphony, and then decades of neglect as listeners discovered the other riches of the High Renaissance, Palestrina has experienced a modest revival in the 21st century, with many performances of excavated works. Several have been recorded by the mainstream choir The Sixteen, and now the transnational quintet Cinquecento offers a highly distinctive Lamentations of Jeremiah, which is apparently an early work: it is found in a manuscript dated around 1558. Palestrina set the Lamentations several times, and these are fascinating works that demand of the composer a whole different set of skills from those involved in his spacious masses and glassy motets. The Lamentations are sets of very short utterances; there are 73 tracks on this Hyperion album, almost all under a minute in length. The one-voice-per-part performance here is not ideal for what was surely choral music, but it works in this case: the male singers of Cinquecento, bulked up to...
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![Palestrina: Lamentations [Cinquecento] [Hyperion: Cda68284]](https://www0.alibris-static.com/cover/o59196ubs24_t.jpg)
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