Last summer a curious assembly of musicians, including no less than five cornettists and 12 sackbut players, travelled north for a few days of splendid isolation at Brinkburn Priory, Northumberland. The quest for silence as an aural backdrop to recording sessions has led to some unlikely venues, but this 12th-century priory a mile from the nearest road has it all (or rather it doesn't): no electricity, no water, no heating, and no noise. The director of the Gabrieli Consort and Players, Paul McCreesh, and his wife, soprano Susan Hemington Jones, had glimpsed the Priory while honeymooning in the area, but its potential as a recording venue had also been picked up by producers David Murray and Nick Parker. Sponsorship from Technics made it possible for the recording of music by the group's namesakes the Gabrielis for 'A Venetian Coronation 1595' to take place there. 'It is a wonderful recording venue,' enthuses McCreesh, immediately regretting that he has let the cat out of the bag. 'We were desperate for somewhere quiet, and it has a fantastic acoustic – the sound is magnificent.' 

It was also important to have enough space to be able to convey the changing perspective of sound if they were to convey something of the effect of the original event: the Coronation of the Doge in St Mark 's Venice in 1595. The recording includes fanfares for the entry of the Doge, plainchant, a polychoral mass setting by Andrea Gabrieli and motets and instrumental canzonas by his nephew Giovanni. Such pseudo-liturgical reconstructions of early sacred music are becoming increasingly common on disc, but McCreesh is keen to dispel any myths about the possibility of re-creating an historical event. 'We have no historical evidence for the pieces performed on this occasion, we can only make intelligent guesses. It is impossible to recreate a specific event, and that's not the point anyway.' The point is, he maintains, to provide a framework in which the music can make more sense. 'Reconstructions can illuminate the music; even with the inevitable loose ends, the overall effect will be greater than the sum of the component parts. For me it provides the most valid option – a record of one motet after another is not the way to do it.' 

In order to make that effect as convincing as possible, however, McCreesh has consulted with various scholars in the field of Venetian music and has himself studied the details of ceremony at St Mark's. 'There is tremendous attention to detail in the Cerimoniales, but the music is almost always described in glowing, but more general terms. Still you get some idea, and the documents and the texts that were set reveal a strong social and political message.'He hopes that this recording will go further than most in an attempt to convey such extra-musical considerations: 'We even thought of superimposing the sounds of an Italian cathedral – echoing footsteps and mutterings in Italian – but then decided that the music had to stand by itself.' Nevertheless, the use of changing sound perspectives, cross-fades (the Fanfare interrupts the Introit, for example) and the flow of the pieces to form larger sequences go some way to re-creating the feel of an actual liturgical celebration. 

McCreesh talks equally enthusiastically about the subtleties of the music itself, believing that its colours and contrasts can all too easily beguile the ear into accepting superficial interpretations. 'There has been too much loud Venetian music – having said which there is some of probably the loudest sackbut playing ever on this recording! But we are aiming for basically a more vocal style of playing – actually I'd like to take the brass players on a singing weekend!' This is not to say that colour is not important. Indeed, this recording adds two more subtle shades to the Venetian musical palette: in the particular combination of voices in the Gabrieli Consort and in the adoption of something like the pronunciation of Latin in 16th-century Venice. 

Over the last few years McCreesh has worked hard to find a male alto sound that is not immediately identifiable with the English countertenor. 'The top line of much of this music,' he explains, 'is basically mezzo-soprano in range. In Venice at that time it would have been taken by two kinds of male soprano: naturale and castrate. We specialize in the former due to a lack of the latter!' The question of pronunciation is still more complex. 'We had to take into consideration the "usual" Latin of the late-16th century and the fact that the Venetian cappella was largely made up of local musicians – even the Gabrielis were local. This resulted in the sound being rather more nasal and slurred – as if the singers were slightly drunk!' He admits that ultimately the pronunciation is hypothetical, but takes the line that the sound of standard Anglican Latin must be wrong, so some attempt in a different direction must be made. 

The need to question and to experiment is at the heart of McCreesh's work with the Gabrieli Consort and Players. 'I believe passionately that any musician in any field should go to the sources and really study them. If you then decide to ignore what they tell you, that can be valid in a different way – but it's not valid just to accept tradition, to not bother.' Nor is it enough, he believes, to take a quick scrape at the surface as an excuse to whip through the record catalogue again.