Messe de Nostre Dame

"A splendid Messe de Nostre Dame from an enterprising French ensemble. Diabolus in Musica… like Parrott… intersperse plainchant between the Mass movements, but they also add a few tenor motets… by less well known or anonymous masters. This yields a more satisfying balance between plainsong and polyphony, and it's quite likely that such shorter pieces would have been performed in services at the time. As to the Mass itself, the singing is again superb. Guerber takes a more relaxed view of the general pacing and argument, and to the local shaping of phrases, that Parrott's more driven approach." Gramophone Magazine, April 2009

The emblematic work of the gothic period, Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame is where music blossomed into polyphony, just as architecture gained height thanks to the use of the ribbed vault and flying-buttress. A quest for light, as in the cathedral in Reims, where Machaut was canon.