Westminster Cathedral Choir & James O’Donnell - Palestrina: Missa O Rex Gloriae Missa Viri Galilaei (1989)

Review by James Manheim
For a composer who from his own time and for most of the next four centuries was recognized as one of the crowning figures of Renaissance music, Giovanni Luigi da Palestrina remains neglected in terms of his vast overall output. A famous work, the so-called Missa Papae Marcelli, or Pope Marcellus Mass, associated with a now-discredited story, defined his style as something shorn of all rough edges, consisting of pure and perfect but rarely expressive polyphony. Some of his music fits this general description, but much does not. This 1988 recording touched on some of the exceptions, and it still sounds good in budget reissue, with the distinctively hard-edged boy sopranos of the Westminster Cathedral Choir turning in unusually intense performances. The two masses on the program are both what's known as parody masses, meaning that they're based on, and more or less frequently quote, preexisting works, and in this case the preexisting works are motets by Palestrina himself. Both are included on the album, preceding the relevant mass. These were early works, written before the musical reforms of the Council of Trent restricted the musical language of the pure church style, and when Palestrina turned to them later as source material for masses the resulting works turned out quite different from the spacious wall of sound of the Missa Papae Marcelli. The masses tone down the highly expressive motets, which could almost have been written by Josquin, but many of the basic ideas are retained. Consider the oddly moving descending figure at the words of ne derelinquas nos orphanos (do not abandon us as orphans), which shows up at several thematically relevant points in the mass. These are gorgeous pieces -- the Incarnatus section of the Missa Viri Galilae is sublimely beautiful -- and very little known among choirs, to which this beautifully recorded disc is strongly recommended.