Performer: The Hilliard Ensemble
Composer: Nicholas Gombert
Audio CD
SPARS Code: DDD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: APE (image+cue)
Label: Ecm Records
Size: 308 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: no
01. Media vita in morte sumus (Motet)
02. Missa “Media vita in morte sumus” – Kyrie
03. Missa “Media vita in morte sumus” – Gloria
04. Salve Regina
05. Anima Mea
06. Missa “Media vita in morte sumus” – Credo
07. O crux, splendidor cunctis
08. Missa “Media vita in morte sumus” – Sanctus
09. Quam pulchra es
10. Missa “Media vita in morte sumus” – Agnus Dei
11. Musae lovis
Superlative
Gombert presents stumbling blocks in the form of the seriousness of his personality and the density of his polyphony (Taruskin’s commentary in his Oxford history seems quite accurate). However, the perfection of his musical world is a direct response to what he sees as the fallibility of temporal life. Notwithstanding the comparison that one reviewer has made to JSBach, Gombert’s achievement I think is rather more comparable to that of Bruckner, whose works also struggle to reach out beyond the physical world to an ectastic spiritual plane. In this remarkable, dark composition, like a Gothic cathedral on a sunless day, the grandeur of the architecture dominates the contrasting but veiled musical colors passing through the stained glass. Gombert also evokes, in the name of the mass, the unbroken unity of life and death — as did Poussin in his wonderful paintings on the subject of ‘Et in Arcadia ego’.
This disc is not for everyone or every mood, and it stands almost solitary, like its composer. One of the great, uncompromising works of the period, to put alongside Pierre de la Rue’s Requiem, Brumel’s Et Terrae Motus, and, of course, many of Gombert’s incomparable motets and his individual mass movements (such as the extraordinary Credo). Josquin specialists can rank here their own favorite work of the master. Gombert’s unique voice, however, remains distinctive, and for this writer, the concentration and cumulative aesthetic effect is at least as great as Josquin’s.