An all-Eccard CD is long overdue since his music is woefully under-represented in the catalogue. This recording (released to mark the 400th anniversary of his death in Königsberg in 1611) re-establishes him as one of the most important 16th-century Lutheran composers. Brahms (who championed Eccard’s music with his choirs in Hamburg and Vienna) placed him on a par with Gabrieli and Schütz. Anglophone singers are mostly familiar with one of Eccard’s motets, the paraphrase from the Song of Simeon, When to the temple Mary went.

The Mass Mon coeur se recommende à vous is a comparatively early work, dating from 1579, and was composed at the outset of the eight-year period Eccard spent in the service of Jakob Fugger, one of the Augsburg mercantile dynasty. This is Eccard’s only surviving Mass setting and is a parody work, based on Lassus’s chanson. The 15 shorter pieces range quite widely in texture, mood, length and key from the intimate simplicity of Nun bitten wir to the richness of the six-part Der heilig Geist, through the charm of the miniature Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich to the solidity of the concluding Vater unser im Himmelreich.

The Benedictine Monastery of Cismar in Schleswig-Holstein provides this 16‑strong choir with a fresh and bright (though also warm) acoustic. Their blended tone is beautifully balanced and caught to perfection by the Dabringhaus und Grimm production team. Maria Jürgensen keeps everything moving along. Despite lasting just under an hour, this delightful disc really is a gem.