Requiem: Hilliard Ensemble

Orlande de Lassus, also known as Orlando di Lasso, was one of the greatest composers of the sixteenth century. Born in Mons, France, he spent his entire career under foreign patrons, going to Italy at the age of twelve to serve the Mantuan court of the Gonzagas and then, in 1556, joining the Munich court of Albrecht V of Bavaria, where he would remain until his death in 1594. Lassus was capable of writing in many styles: he absorbed the best of Neapolitan chromaticism, Northern counterpoint, Venetian opulence and German seriousness in a body of work that ranged from the passionate and wild to the solemn and sublime.
This disc gives vivid evidence of Lassus' diversity: the 'Missa pro defunctis' was written while he was in Bavaria and is conservative and sedate (people didn't fool around stylistically with requiems at that time), while the 'Prophetiae Sibyllarum' is an earlier work and shows the influence of the Italian avant-garde Lassus observed while in Mantua. It is a series of settings of verses from the Sibyls, ancient female soothsayers whose pagan prophecies remained part of Christian lore for centuries. The Hilliard Ensemble give another exemplary performance, poised and with near-perfect intonation, recorded with ECM's usual reverberence.