Not even the choir of St John's College, Cambridge can conceal their Englishness to the extent that the listener to this record might imagine himself transported back to a celebration of Compline in a Roman church of the 1630s. It's a close thing, though, and as liturgical reconstructions go this one has a true atmosphere of authenticity. The name of ''Massenzio's Compline'' may not have quite the same tantalizing ring about it as ''Monteverdi's Vespers'', but then Massenzio's music aspires to far less than its noble ancestor. Included here are purposeful, unostentatious double-choir settings of four Compline psalms the Nunc dimittis and the Ave regina caelorum pieces that sound well enough as they go along but which barely linger in the memory as great works of art. On musical grounds alone I should not choose to come back very often to these pieces, but as a church service the record makes for a reflective and soothing hour's listening. Plainchant, very beautifully sung, alternates with Massenzio's polyphony, and the resonant interior space of St John's College Chapel has been nicely caught by the engineers.
The choir's response to this serviceable music is exactly right: the singing is neither precious nor routine, and my one reservation is about the fragile tone of the choristers. Verses are sung by solo voices from within the choir, though neither these soloists nor the organist are named on the sleeve. This anonymity extends even to the composer of the incoming and closing organ voluntaries, the insert notes, which are contained on just a single folded sheet, could at least have told us that. It may be worth noting that my loudspeakers, ordinarily very well behaved over such matters, took an instant dislike to the registration of the organ continuo used in the psalms, and boomed on certain specific frequencies.'