Like most of his contemporaries, Josquin’s motet production has been overshadowed by his Masses; in fact the last all-motet anthology I can recall is La Chapelle Royale’s about 35 years ago. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this new offering is the programming. Alongside a string of single-movement laments (including the one by Gombert for Josquin himself) sit the monumental Planxit autem David and the Miserere, a complete setting of Psalm 51. This brings the range of Josquin’s invention into focus: the directness of Planxit autem David, the sheer ambition and formal control of the Miserere, the intricacy of Absolve quaesumus, Domine and Nimphes nappés, and the utter perfection of his musical testament, the Pater noster/Ave Maria. I’ve sometimes found Josquin easier to admire than to love; but perhaps because contrapuntal wizardry is toned down in these works, this disc reminds me how deeply moving his music can be.

Cappella Amsterdam are a mixed choir singing roughly two to a part. Their sound is situated midway between their Flemish and English counterparts, and their performance style is on the cool side, though never forbidding or overly objectified. They are at their best when textures are clear and the musical discourse is most legible, as in Planxit autem David. In busier textures I might wish for more positive shaping of individual phrases, although in Nimphes nappés (perhaps the densest piece of all) the decision to go one to-a-part and without sopranos pays dividends, and Gombert’s motet is a fitting epilogue. Whether Josquin wrote Absalon, fili mi is still disputed but the programme plainly justifies its inclusion. Despite its focus on only one textual area (the lament), this seems to me an admirable introduction to the motet repertory as a whole.