The choral director Peter Phillips has proposed that if it were possible to hear 15th-century singers, the results might strike us as ugly. A number of groups, of which Graindelavoix is the latest, have appeared to test that hypothesis. Their house style is strongly reminiscent of Marcel Pérès’s Ensemble Organum in their “Corsican monks” period, in which the vocal timbres have the pungency of the cheeses of that island.

That’s to say that listeners who regard the sound of early polyphony as synonymous with the English choral tradition will find this hard going. While I’d hardly put myself in that category, I confess that my own notions of what is bearable, let alone beautiful, are sometimes put to the test here. Suffice it to say that one singer in particular has me pining for the dulcet whinge of Liam Gallagher…well, almost.

Critics of this approach might object that the recording is more about defending an aesthetic position than a piece of music or a composer. That said, this strikes me as Graindelavoix’s most convincing recording to date. Its centrepiece is a Mass by Nicolas Champion. How good a composer was he? Good enough for one of his works to have been attributed to Josquin by a well informed 16th-century theorist. It’s very fine music, and the ensemble’s coherence of vision (particularly as regards extemporised polyphony and ornamentation) is impressive. Anyone interested in the performance practice of early polyphonies should listen to this, for the questions posed by Graindelavoix are worth asking, even though their answers are unlikely to please everyone.