Listeners may be puzzled by the title of Anonymous 4’s latest recording. Don’t expect anything to do with August 1st, nor a specific Mass of Our Lady. It’s not at all like that: “A Lammas Ladymass” consists of a well-chosen selection of chants and polyphony honouring Mary, principally round about the time of her great summer festival of the Assumption. The proper chants are, indeed, those appointed to be sung for the Vigil of the Assumption, and also at the Lady Mass from February 2nd through to Advent. They are the spinal chord of the programme. Anonymous 4 approach this music with great serenity and near perfection. Their vocal blend is matchless, their timing quietly sedate. There are no misplaced flashes of brilliance, and very little suggestion of new solutions to the manifold problems of rhythm. They could, for example, have found a precise model for the way in which the chant was rhythmically ornamented in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries in the treatise by Jerome of Moravia (fl.1272-1304), who actually gives as an example the opening melisma of the Gradual verse Virgo, which they sing. But no: they prefer to remain, rather quietly and beautifully, in the warm shadow of Old Solesmes.
The CD contains many memorable moments: I shall treasure particularly the joyful Gloria and the Agnus Dei, with its almost hypnotic swaying balance of phrases. It is lavishly packaged, with a 53-page illustrated booklet and indications of all the sources.'