CRUCEM TUAM ADORAMUS—CONCERTO PER LE SACRE CENERI 2007 • Lanfranco Menga, dir; Ens Oktoechos; Schola Gregoriana di Venezia • TACTUS 210001 (50:28 Text and Translation)

JOHANNES DE QUADRIS Processio in die veneris sancti. ANON Media vita. Pange melos lacrimosum. Misereris. Bonum est confiteri. Kyrie Qui passurus. Dirigatur. O homo considera. Dí, por qué mueres. Dios te salve

Johannes de Quadris (1410?–c. 1456) was cantor at St. Mark’s in Venice for over two decades. As a composer he has had few appearances on records, beginning with a Magnificat under Charles Ravier (coupled with the Machaut Mass on LP) and ending with two Lamentations for Tenebrae under Edward Wickham (coupled with La Rue, 26:6). Like those works, these processional pieces for Good Friday are sung in simple two-voice polyphony, nothing like music of his contemporaries, who had already moved from three-voice to four-voice works. Giulio Cattin edited a group of works attributed to him in 1972 and contributed the article to The New Grove, Second Edition. Even if documentary data are lacking, it is not clear why Cattin dates his birth only sometime before 1410 and his service at St. Mark’s only to May 1436, the date of the Magnificat in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Misc. 213. He might have been somewhat older than 46 at his death, pushing the two-voice polyphony into the earlier part of the century.

As for the other pieces, the conductus Bonum est confiteri from Codex Las Huelgas is a first recording. Pange melos lacrimosum is found in the Florence source of Notre Dame polyphony. Kyrie Qui passurus is a Good Friday chant that is no longer found in Vatican editions of chant but survives in the Premonstratensian and other rites and was once recorded by Konrad Ruhland. Media vita, of course, is the celebrated responsory for Lent that gave music history one of its enduring anecdotes and a canonical prohibition against singing it against anyone. Misereris is the introit for Ash Wednesday, while Dirigatur is a Milanese lucernarium for Good Friday, not previously recorded. O homo considera/O homo de pulvere is a four-voice isorhythmic motet from an English source that was once recorded under Edgar Fleet (4:1). The two vilancicos for Good Friday furnish the only vernacular settings.

Menga has recorded a series of discs of chant and other medieval repertoire for this label, all of them greeted here with praise. The Lenten season provides the unifying theme of this rather diverse but fascinating program.

FANFARE: J. F. Weber