Mouton: Missa Tu es Petrus & other works

Jean Mouton was a Renaissance French composer and choirmaster, much acknowledged but more rarely recorded, who wrote a body of music that's both technically inventive and immediately appealing. Here Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble - renowned exponents of sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish repertoire - perform all of Mouton's eight-part music, two four-part motets, and his only five-part Mass setting, the Missa Tu es Petrus. The latter is characterized by light, clear textures and a soaring cantus firmus, while the double-choir Nesciens mater is rightly famous for its ingenious canon. Sheer compositional skill aside, all these works demonstrate Mouton's vivid and original imagination - one that has the ability to speak directly to our time.