Renaissance polyphony is generally held to be stately, calm, reassuring. But this pro- gramme of Palestrina’s six-part Missa sine nomine, complemented by five of his motets and three by Marc’Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36–92), was recorded after the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, had undertaken a tour of Israel and Palestine. There the music and its texts (‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’) took on an extraordinary poignancy, with the dispossession and desperation of thousands of years ago animating the restrained dignity of Palestrina’s counterpoint with an unexpectedly topical intensity.

Choir of Girton College, Cambridge
Historic Brass of the Guildhall School and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
Jeremy West, leader
James Mitchell, organ (Track 8)
Lucy Morrell, organ (Track 13)
Gareth Wilson, director