This disc is subtitled ‘Seventeenth-century musical dialogues’ although in fact only about half of the pieces strictly conform to this type, the others being more straightforward motet-like works. The dialogue is a quasi-dramatic church composition for voices and instruments in which the singers take the roles of saints, sinners, angels, the Devil, biblical characters, allegorical figures, the Soul and so on, a genre which flourished in many countries during the 1600s but which seems to have died out by the end of the century. Its influence on and relationship to the development of oratorio, however, is obvious.
The ‘Saints and Sinners’ title takes it name from a book published seven years ago by the musicologist Frits Noske, for which he transcribed many of these musical dialogues, and it is from these scores that the Dutch group Cappella Figuralis has compiled this fascinating collection of pieces from Italy, Germany, France and The Netherlands, most of which must be receiving premiere recordings. I enjoyed Giovanni Antonio Grossi’s Quo Domine, with its defeated devils sounding very sorry for themselves indeed; and also a wonderfully touching, cautionary depiction of Adam’s and Eve’s fall – complete with heart-rending final off-stage plaint from the outcast couple – by the North German Augustin Pfleger. Aside from the dialogues there are some other gems, including an exquisite Ave Maria by the Dutch Carmelite monk Benedictus a Sancto Josepho (sometimes known as Benedictus Buns), and O Jesu splendor – a lively and wide-ranging celebration of Christ’s goodness by another Dutchman, Carolus Hacquart. There is fine singing here by the group’s two sopranos Anne Grimm and Johanette Zomer and the bass Bas Ramselaar, but elsewhere I found some of the other soloists disappointingly insecure. This is a disc of such unexpected pleasures (how many the seventeenth century still holds!), that it is a pity the standard of singing could not be just a little more consistent. Well worth investigating though.'