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Reviewer:
David Fallows
The ensemble
Cinquecento – resident in Vienna but international in their personnel – have
made something of a career by recording obscure 16th-century composers with
Viennese associations. But this time the word ‘obscure’ is an understatement:
Jean Guyot was master of music at the Imperial Chapel for less than a year,
1563-64, and his known career was otherwise entirely at Liège. His known output
of 27 motets, 16 chansons and a Mass (of which, so far as I can establish, only
five chansons are available in modern edition: everything here seems to be newly
edited by the singers of Cinquecento) puts him alongside dozens of lesser-known
composers of the late 16th century: Grove does not even itemise his
works; and the only major study of him is a magnificent two-volume monograph
published in his home town of Châtelet in 1875 by one Clément Lyon, who styled
himself ‘ancien officier de l’armée belge’.
But Guyot emerges from this disc
as a marvellously fluent composer, perhaps a touch unvaried in texture but
always pleasing: only in the Te Deum that closes the disc, conceivably
one of his last works, does the music actually begin to jump to the ear. The
five adult men of Cinquecento – here joined by the countertenor David Allsopp –
are, as always, absolutely flawless in the performance of this music. Even by
the best standards of today their ensemble, balance and intonation are beyond
reproach. David Gostick’s lucid and useful booklet-note includes deft
characterisations of the motets presented.
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