I was slow to pay much attention to Manchicourt, but this double album convinced me. The masses show a broad, flowing architecture of endless lines....
The experience that this group has singing polyphony of the era, especially Gombert, also shows. The individual lines, read in isolation per the original manuscript format, are handled masterfully in terms of phrasing & ficta, allowing Manchicourt's sense of soaring melody to shine. So a comparison to Ockeghem is also worthwhile, given the emphasis on seemingly endless melody — & this comparison is indeed drawn by the accompanying notes.
I'm still not sure that Manchicourt was really a great composer overall though, and it would be difficult to characterize him as influential, but these masses do stand out in their reading here, particularly for their airy clarity & sense of line. In this, they might be simpler than some of the music I tend to feature here, but I've been finding them to be distinctly enjoyable.
Todd M. McComb Updated: 23 May 2024