It is one of the joys of a recording like this that it brings a remote moment in classical music history – in this case the brief fame allotted to Pierre de Manchicourt in the mid-16th century – so vividly alive. Through the variety of its programming and the quality of the performances, this disc enables you to feel the force of Manchicourt’s contribution to the rapid evolution of the Mass and motet, which along with the chanson were his principal genres.

As one of the elite composers who held prestigious positions during the lives and reigns of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Philip II of Spain, Manchicourt’s career culminated when he was hired as master of Philip’s Flemish Chapel. Yet by 1600, as John Bradley’s engrossing booklet-note unhappily reports, ‘Manchicourt was largely forgotten’.

After a conventionally powerful and eloquent Missa Reges terrae (its first recording) covers familiar ground, Caro mea, an unconventionally sweet, six-minute surge of passion, nearly overwhelms its formal dimensions. On a disc with only one apparent duplication (the opening motet Reges terrae, on which the Mass is based) the other most notable music is Vidi speciosum, an exquisite tone poem for eight voices.

Compared to the Huelgas Ensemble’s sumptuously precise groundbreaking anthology (Sony Classical, 1/98) and the Brabant Ensemble’s stunning Missa Cuidez a decade later (Hyperion, 6/07), the 12 members of the Greenwich Village-based Choir of St Luke in the Fields under David Shuler show a warmer, more human side of Manchicourt’s art.