François-Joseph Gossec’s Messe des morts of 1760 was one of his first breakthrough works. With its rich orchestration, it soon became unmoored from its liturgical bonds and enjoyed many years of popularity in France as a concert work. Mozart almost certainly heard it as a child in Paris, and one scholar has held it up as ‘a French forerunner’ of the Salzburger’s own Requiem. Published in a printed edition in 1780 – comparatively rare for a sacred piece – it was clearly influential: reports of the ‘sinister effect [in the ‘Tuba mirum’] of the three trombones together with four clarinets, four trumpets, four horns and eight bassoons, hidden in the distance and in a lofty part of the church, to announce the Last Judgement’ bring to mind the Requiem of Berlioz, composed less than a decade after the long-lived Gossec’s death.

You won’t, however, hear such monumental sound effects in this performance. The outer packaging doesn’t say, but this recording presents the work in an anonymous arrangement from c1800 that is not only halved in length to around 40 minutes and slimmed down in terms of the orchestral forces required, but whose ‘Dies irae’ sequence is replaced by a parody of Haydn’s Stabat mater, composed a little later in the 1760s. It’s a slightly odd mix – Gossec’s language occupying a place somewhere between Rameau and the post-Revolutionary composers, Haydn’s sacred manner at the time channelling the Neapolitan style of his teacher Porpora – but it’s performed with care and conviction, and draws in the listener in unexpected ways. Nevertheless, for the whole story, there are recordings by Schernus (Capriccio, 1980), Devos (Erato/Apex, 7/88) and Fasolis (Naxos, 1998).

For some reason the Requiem has lain unissued since 2009; perhaps it was waiting for its coupling, a Christmas oratorio that again majors on Gossec’s ear for effect – a case in point being the third movement’s pizzicato strings, bassoons and what sounds like chalumeaux. This and the compact two-part motet Christ, Redeemer of the World were recorded seven years later in a different venue, imparting an entirely appropriate halo of resonance to the recorded sound.