Brabant Ensemble, Stephen Rice - Clemens non Papa: Behold, how joyful! Messe & Motets (2004)

For the northern European composers who followed the broad paths blazed by Josquin's stupendous achievements of the early sixteenth century, text expression was a paramount aesthetic principle. The motet, which allowed the composer to pick a vivid biblical or liturgical text and then illustrate it musically, emerged as the most important sacred genre. The mass followed in its wake to some extent, discarding elaborate architectural structures in favor of free adaptations of motet or polyphonic secular song models. Masses of this kind are referred to as parody masses or imitation masses.
The oddly named Clemens non Papa (ca. 1510-1555) was one of these post-Josquin composers. "Non Papa" meant "not the Pope" (referring to Pope Clement VII); his given name was Jacob Clement, and the nickname probably had some humorous intent. The Behold, How Joyful album presents a collection of his motets, together with one mass, the Missa Ecce quam bonum. The motet on which the mass is based, Ecce quam bonum ("Behold how good...") is included, and the album's title is taken from the continuation of its text after those initial words.
Thus even without a score the listener can follow with some success the way Clemens weaves small motifs from his motet into a largely undifferentiated flow of polyphony in the mass. The other motets are interspersed among the mass sections on the disc. They are denser than Josquin's and lack the stark expressiveness of the works by that master, but they're well worth a hearing; Job tonso capite, for example, is a beautifully reverential depiction of the praying, shaven-headed Old Testament figure of Job as he repents.
England's Brabant Ensemble takes its name from the region where many of the masterpieces of Netherlandish polyphony originated. Recording in the chapel of Oxford University's Merton College, the ensemble delivers a precise, bright sound; the female sopranos and altos keep the lines clean enough to suggest the boys' voices for which this music was written. (All of this music is for a cappella chorus.) Group leader Stephen Rice is a better musician than annotator, however; the liner notes of this disc seem to display active hostility toward non-specialist listeners. He never explains the parody or imitation mass procedure, and he writes of recent discoveries about Clemens' life without deigning to tell us what they are, referring us instead to an as-yet-unpublished book. Guess you have to know somebody in the business to find out! Notwithstanding this complaint, Behold, How Joyful is a useful and attractive recording of music by a composer who has rarely been represented on disc.