As Philip Thorby mentions in his notes, Ludwig Senfl has not yet received the recognition that he deserves; and as this issue demonstrates, he is one of the most fascinating composers of the early sixteenth century. He combines an astonishing contrapuntal skill with a range of moods and formal control that make his German song settings among the finest of their century.
One reason why he is little heard is that the music is hard to sing: for most of it you need a tenor with an extreme lightness of touch. But in John Potter they seem to have the perfect singer, perhaps the best I have heard in this repertory. He floats the lines with effortless grace and with an uncannily sensitive projection of the texts. Just listen to his control in the longest and most serious song on the disc, Senfl’s Pacientia muss ich han.
But he is also superbly supported by the viols and recorders of Musica Antiqua of London. Their playing, too, is apparently effortless. Some listeners may feel that the recorders are occasionally allowed to run too fast, giving less than full measure to the real substance of the music; but the playing is undeniably wonderful, and superbly recorded. For the viol playing, I think no praise is too high: they do everything with a pleasingly light touch and always with a real sensitivity to the music.
There is another reason why we hear less Senfl than we should: that his best work needs to be understood within the broader context of the German Tenorlied repertory. To cope with this, the disc puts Senfl alongside settings of the same material by other composers of the time. This works nicely enough here, but it would have been so good to be able to hear more of Senfl’s own work, given the quality of these performances.'