Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have now reached the ninth volume of their valuable Palestrina series, continuing to explore with insight and finesse the prodigious output of that titan of counter-reformation sacred music.

Adopting a similar format to previous issues in the series, the program centres around a mass setting and associated motets, to which is added a selection from the composer’s settings of the Song of Songs.

In this volume the number six features prominently, not least because of the Missa Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La, a mass setting based on the hexachord, that series of six notes that underpinned Renaissance musical pedagogy. No surprise that Palestrina conceived this mass for six voices, imbuing the texture with a certain sumptuousness, as five parts weave around the slow-moving theme in the second soprano. 

Christophers balances the penitential Kyrie with a lightness of touch in the rhythmically interesting Gloria and exploits the variegated textures of the Credo to good effect. The bubbling Osanna is well realised, while the pleas for mercy and peace in the Agnus Dei are touchingly delivered.