Palestrina Revealed - Byrd, White, Mundy

Quality and quantity were never mutually exclusive in the work of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, choirmaster of the Cappella Giulia at the Vatican and the leading composer of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Clare College Choir mark the 500th anniversary of his birth in 1525 with an album of genuine revelations, including five world premiere recordings drawn from the prolific Palestrina’s output. Graham Ross encourages his young choristers to give shape and life to soaring lines of counterpoint and the Latin words they carry. They bring a sense of reverence to this music, intensely so in their enthralling performance of the Missa Memo esto verbi and the motet on which it is based. The tracklist interlaces Palestrina with works by his English contemporaries, displaying the contrasts between two distinct strands of European sacred music.