Perhaps it is simply because I consider the Clement Janequin Ensemble's earlier record Les cris de Paris (HM1072, 4/82) to be one of the very finest and most enjoyable recordings of any sixteenth-century music that I was slightly disappointed with this. The same wonderful voices are there, and the same wonderfully flexible musicianship showing the clearest and most sympathetic perception of one of music's purest composers. But it is as though this was recorded on a bad day. Tuning runs awry, lines too often fail to move smoothly, and there is a faint feeling of discomfort. One reason for that lies in the decision to sing a semitone below modern concert pitch: the bass line runs regularly down to written F at the bottom of the stave, which is hard enough to tune and balance at the best of times. (Current historical opinion seems to be that there is a good case for singing at whatever pitch feels best and that there was no pitch-standard at the time.) It is a matter for admiration that the low notes (which go down to concert D) are as clear as they are here; but they do cause difficulties.
Even so, this is still an extremely good record, and the music is eminently worth having. If we now think of Claudin de Sermisy primarily as the composer of exceptionally beautiful songs whose deft portrayal of mood and unparalleled economy of gesture mark him as one of music's most consummate miniaturists, it is important to remember that he was, after all, a prominent member of the French royal chapel for most of the first half of the sixteenth century and that when the modern edition of his music is completed the sacred music will take up five or six times as many volumes as the songs. This is deeply felt and exquisitely balanced music that was to take an important place in the French tradition.
Of the works presented here, the Lamentations transfer the economy of his songs to a larger canvas—a trick that would be risky in a less masterly composer and with less expressive texts. Three of the motets are more in line with the French style of his time. Finally though, and most impressive of all, is the extended eight-voice motet Inclina Domine, which begins in two voices and slowly adds the other voices one at a time leading up to a spacious final section. Most of the motets are introduced by little organ preludes taken from contemporary intabulations of Sermisy's chansons.'