Palestrina: Prince of Music - Missa Papae Marcelli; Motets & Offertories

Voices of Ascension's Palestrina disc is something of a "greatest hits" collection: a dozen of the prolific composer's best-known motets--including several, such as Super flumina Babilonis, Tu es Petrus, and Sicut cervus, that many listeners will have sung in church or college choirs--and the legendary "Pope Marcellus" Mass. Yet the performance is not the slowly flowing honey usually served up by, say, the Tallis Scholars (as good as that is). Particularly in the Gloria and Credo of the Mass, Dennis Keene deliberately de-emphasizes the rise and fall of the different voices' lines in favor of a more naturally speech-like declamation of the long Latin texts. This means a surprisingly fast tempo--and some rhythmic spring and syncopation one might not expect in Palestrina. Some (not all) of the motets get a similar treatment: it works well in joyous pieces like the Pentecost motet Dum complerentur, but listeners might miss that melodic rise and fall in some of the slower works. The singers of Voices of Ascension are quite skillful, and the slight edge in their tone helps make the different melodies unusually audible. Very worthwhile, but not your father's Palestrina. --Matthew Westphal