Pierre de la Rue - Motets

The Hilliard Ensemble perform a mass and motets by Pierre de la Rue.

I honestly don’t listen to this recording often; it was recorded in the early 1990s, and I purchased it in Madison, Wisconsin on Virgin’s cut-rate label for reissues.

It just came up this evening after I was listening to Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (a favorite work), and it hit me… this recording has some gems within.

The ensemble sounds great together. The music is slow, and the overall affect harmonious and sometimes otherworldly. It is those shifts of harmony into places (or back to chords) that we often might not expect coming from the 21st century that arrest our attention.

Listening to this on the extreme fringe of Easter morning, with the personal strife I’m currently enduring, this was a nice gift to come in my iTunes playlist.