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Obrecht’s Missa Scaramella has a bizarre history. We have only two of its original four voice-parts, known from an apparently Austrian set of partbooks now in Kraków. This much was published in the New Obrecht Edition in 1989. Rob C Wegman made a few suggestions for a reconstruction in his Obrecht book of 1994. Then in 2010 Fabrice Fitch decided a full reconstruction was possible and started work on it with Philip Weller; and after Weller’s death in 2018 he finished the job alone, with additional help from Paul Kolb. Their final result was published this August by the Royal Dutch Musicological Society; and now we have a full recording – of which the third Agnus Dei is entirely the work of Philip Weller. The whole enterprise is absurdly quixotic, but it is built on a close understanding of how Obrecht functioned; and the results, full of the most surprising insights, are thoroughly convincing.
In general, the rule of thumb on these things is that if only one voice is lost there’s a good chance of reconstructing something plausible. And it was a good idea to flesh the disc out with a couple of Weller’s single-voice reconstructions, one of a massive motet by Obrecht, the other of a slighter work by Brumel. In addition, they have included a short work by Fitch composed in memory of Weller, alongside the existing Scaramella settings by Josquin and Compère as well as a motet by Agricola fittingly entitled Sancte Philippe apostole.
It remains only to say that the solo male voices of The Binchois Consort are at the top of their form and that the presentation (with booklet material by Fitch and Andrew Kirkman) meets Hyperion’s top standards. |
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