La Reverdie has focused on laude in the past, specifically of the Marian variety. Here they concentrate on the praise of other saints. Some of them are well known (such as Sia laudato San Francesco), but others are less so. This ensemble has always mixed voices and instruments in highly imaged and striking ways. In the case of the laude repertory, recent research by the American scholar Blake Wilson into the Laudesi societies that abounded in Italy (perhaps most obviously in Tuscany, from where the two manuscripts represented here originate) confirms a richly documented variety of approaches to performance of this intrinsically popular genre, ranging from voices alone to an array of hired instrumentalists of all sorts. In the longer pieces comprising many stanzas, La Reverdie improvises added counterpoints, both vocal and instrumental, and individual singers step into the limelight, sometimes declaiming the text without the benefit of music; not everyone will appreciate such episodes, but as an admitted sceptic, I found them far less obtrusive than on previous recordings.
Regarding the relationship of text to music, La Reverdie advocates a metrical interpretation of the notation's unmeasured neumes, in common with most interpretations of this repertoire. This makes intuitive sense, given the formal markers of a genre destined for a congregation singing in the vernacular. Just as the variety of performance options must have been welcome to congregations of the time, so it is on this CD: there is something to suit every taste. I have remarked before on the pleasing quality of La Reverdie's core quartet of female vocalists. Here they are matched by an equal number of equally striking male singers. The unspecified soloist on the opening track, Facciam laude a tuc'ti i sancti, rings the changes most compellingly. There is now a considerable number of laude recordings in the discography. This is one of the finest, and also the most satisfying La Reverdie recording I have listened to.'