The Clerks' Group once again earn our gratitude by heading straight for the top-class works that lack modern, top-class recordings. The Mass Malheur me bat is one of Josquin's most resourceful treatments of received material, taking all three voices of a secular piece and treating each separately, each in different ways; and in the magnificent final movement he follows an almost comical two-voice canon at the second with a broad treatment in six voices with two canons running simultaneously. As a display of contrapuntal techniques, this may well be his most stunning composition.
The Clerks' Group can seem less polished than previously. Intonation isn't always out of the top drawer. And the speeds chosen often seem perplexing, but on further listening, it seems that they're trying to tackle different musical problems; they're going for the music, and that has to be good.
This is particularly the case in the most welcome novelty here, the Liber generationis, Josquin's setting of the genealogy from St Matthew's gospel. How wonderful to have this and the other works here in seriously skilled performances.