A Faint Echo

Album: Johannes Regis: Missa Ecce ancilla Domini; Missa Dum sacrum mysterium
Composer: Johannes Regis
Instruments: 5 vocals
Musical Form: Mass
Year: ~1460

At least once before I've been disappointed by the whims of modern recording artists applied to early music, but this time it's a real shame because it's preventing me from hearing a key turning point in Renaissance music. Johannes Regis, a Franco-Flemish composer from the mid 15th century, was important for his part in establishing a tradition of five-voice arrangements in masses and motets. Yes, five is tougher to compose than four (and much tougher than three), so this is not a trivial change. Regis' masses made a big impression on later composers, including the likes of Josquin des Prez, for whom five voices would be the standard.

In the only album I could get my hands on, Johannes Regis: Missa Ecce ancilla Domini; Missa Dum sacrum mysterium, the crime was not so much the arrangement as the presentation; just because music was originally written to be performed in cathedrals and just because it projects a "deep" mood doesn't justify adding echo to match a German yodeler at the Grand Canyon. I can barely make out the notes in these masses, so the usual "texture" of early Renaissance polyphony is all but gone. Yes, it's true that being able to distinguish individual notes is not a universal quality of good music -- try making out every note in a Dead Kennedys album sometime -- but composers of early polyphony had no intention of blurring the lines between notes anymore than da Vinci meant for the Mona Lisa to be viewed through a fish-eye lens.

This is no artful reinterpretation, it's just careless production. Moving on.