There is something of a growth industry in the recording of 15th-century Mass cycles attributed to Dufay. Scholars have been playing the game for decades, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and it is surely healthy for recordings to widen the debate beyond the confines of specialists.

Yet it often remains a matter of taste: reviewing the Binchois Consort’s Mass Puisque je vis (Hyperion, 11/03), David Fallows voiced doubts as to Dufay’s authorship; with the two anonymous Mass Proper cycles offered here by the Binchois Consort and Diabolus in Musica, I was often left wondering who other than Dufay in this period (presumably the 1440s) was capable of writing so sure-footedly. (There is some negative evidence, too: the lost Communion of the St Anthony Abbott Mass is replaced by one from another anonymous cycle, and its rough edges contrast with the elegance of the rest.)

I began here with the anonymous works to make the point that they yield little in quality to the securely ascribed pieces that accompany them. All the same, the work most likely to attract readers is the Mass Se la face ay pale, one of the iconic pieces of the period since David Munrow’s 1974 recording. There have been several readings since, but this is the first to supersede it in terms of quality. Diabolus in Musica show here their debt to Dominique Vellard and his Ensemble Gilles Binchois, but their handling of pacing, flow, and of local details, surpasses Vellard. The vocal quality has something of the mystery of the Ensemble Organum at its best, but without (dare I say it) its more notorious eccentricities.

Tackling so well-known a piece so successfully tempts superlatives. Indeed, another reason to intertwine the discussions of these two recordings is the grave difficulty one would have in distinguishing between them on the grounds of quality. The Binchois Consort finally turn their attentions to the composer whose name they bear. The contrast between Dufay and Binchois is every bit as striking in sacred music as in the secular. Binchois’s Mass movements trip along very un-solemnly, a worthy foil to the stately Dufay; but the high-point is his single surviving isorhythmic motet, here seamlessly reconstructed by Philip Weller. It is fascinating to hear a familiar voice like Binchois’s speaking in a language one’s not used to from him. If the tempo chosen for the piece stretches the singers more than usually (albeit exhilaratingly), in the rest of the Dufay programme they are masterful. The verse of the Offertory has one of those spine-tingling moments (a high countertenor f’’ conjured out of nowhere) that hits the bull’s eye every time you hear it. For me, it’s got to be Dufay; but now you can be the judge.